Do you know there is a single source, one, that unendingly reaches us, keeps us warm, and enables us to do what we do each and every day? How often do we pause, zoom out, and attempt to fathom all that must have happened in order for us to open a hinged door as we walk outside our homes each day, have a conversation via a shared language, or take a bite of food that was grown in cool, dark dirt and somehow made it into our kitchens and onto our stoves and into our mouths made of muscle and bone?

I often think about the infinite list of things that happened before I took my first breath to simply provide the opportunity to study what I study, eat what I eat…pursue what I pursue. I can’t help but pay homage to the miraculous blip that is today, a Monday in July, as I write to you about “who it is I seek to be and what it is I wish to do”. If we can accept, together, or at least entertain, that we’re somehow spinning on a spherical rock, anchored to it by forces we hardly understand, while remaining in motion day after day thanks to a ball of fire 93 million miles away, then I think we can take a deep breath, fall heavier into our seats, and describe the ways we’re choosing to experience this thin slice of magic that is our short lifetime.

So, that’s what I’ll do today. I’ll write to you, in an admittedly over-simplified way, about who it is I seek to be and what it is I wish to do.

Canning. Photography. Dialogue.

These are my guides. My goal posts. My North Stars. One who practices canning, photography, and curiosity-driven dialogue is who I seek to be. Practicing each in a way that grows and strengthens my sense of self and artistic worth is what I wish to do. Allowing myself to remain unbound from a predetermined set of standards is how I wish to do so. Most simply, I preserve seasonal fruits and vegetables, and I create photographs. I do these things because they’re my personal, familial ways of honoring and celebrating the aforementioned list of things that happened before I took my first breath. All the while, I aim to remain curious and in dialogue as I, and as we, navigate and experience the miraculous blip that is today, a Monday in July.