Once more I have a backlog of posts to write, but an unwillingness to voice thoughts to the void. Between a newly-vocal willingness to literally kill homeless campers and lick the boots of your neighborhood gestapo,[1] I don’t know what good voicing thoughts does anyone.
So let’s not, at least while in this headspace. Instead I’ve indulged in four weekly tennis matches and practices, until last night where I landed myself in the ER with a 103° fever and bacterial pneumonia. Oops. Sorry, Wil, the tickle in your chest wasn’t ragweed. It’s been a week.
Anyway, Darien and my better judgment are encouraging me to take it easy, and I’m catching up on my photographic backlog. The last photos I posted on Instagram are Simon’s proposal to Ariana. Before that, some of our wedding, and then Iceland. Iceland was September 2022.
For a while, I had a misguided idea that showing signs of life on Instagram would help me find local photo exhibitions.[2] IRL networking yielded better outcomes, but I kept posting. I enjoy exhibitions, but need to try something else — I’d always sell a few prints, but never enough to make it worthwhile. So Instagram posting dried up, and my friends would never even know that I’d lived a year and a half in Pittsburgh. The same amount of time I’d lived in Belgium, which is extensively documented on the ‘Gram.
So I’ve finished editing my last two sets of Pittsburgh photos — Pittsburgh 4, 5 — and my post-wedding pre-honeymoon time in Austin, Austin 9. There’s some relief to put the Pittsburgh scenes behind me. My last photos from that period are November 2023, despite us moving in April. I don’t think I took my camera out once. Looking back, it’s a blurry, anxious fog.
I’m creating art again, but mostly on occasion and less passively. I had a hell of a time in Chicago a few weeks back for Jenna and Abhi’s bachelor and bachelorette parties. Took both cameras and walked left with a couple hundred great photos of the wedding party, that[3] I’ve already edited. The wedding party and guests received the full 201 to choose from, and I only need to cull the album before publishing here. It’s a great reminder of how much better we’re doing now than in PGH, even when now planning to leave the country. Also, coming from TX, Chicago’s a breath of incredibly fresh air.
I thought I was going to an event at Apple Park this coming weekend, but my doc’s advised me to not go far until I’m fully cleared. Maybe this’ll force a slower, or at least less-avoidant pace. I don’t want less tennis, but it’s been a hell of a convenient way to not twiddle my thumbs in the face of anxiety and impotence. On the plus side, more art, and maybe better plans of what the fuck can we even do.