On The Feeling of Home

These times certainly pose opportunity for contemplation.
Contemplation, and solitude of course are not foreign states for me. They’re ones I find myself inhabiting regularly, if not striving to obtain more routinely and consistently.

The concept of home is one that is often on my mind, but especially so in these last few weeks.
How many don’t have a safe or comfortable one to retreat to in these times.
How many I have had over the years.
How tired of mine I am.
How happy in mine I am.
How I often ascribe the feeling of home with temporary places or people that I meet.
(Most recently with a man in a pair of raw denim jeans, beat up leather boots and kind eyes, standing on a sidewalk…)

I am fortunate to have had many homes.
Indeed, to still have many homes.

And while I am both in the midst of trying to find a permanent place and home that is wholly mine, and also get back to one of my homes (The Road), I am still pressed to move into a state of gratitude for it all.

So here’s a little collection of film photos from one of my old Richmond apartments.
My favorite one in fact.
Taken in a new season of my life, albeit long ago, and blossoming with exciting potential, contented wonder and settling in.

And as hard and utterly frustrating as some things have been in this current season of my life, I still associate those same aforementioned feelings with where I am now.

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Quarantine: A Self Portrait

I continue to be healthy and well, as are those closest to me and I am grateful for that.

I haven’t wanted to write about what’s going on because, frankly, I’m tired of reading about it and talking about it and thinking about it.

But in a world of rising unsureness, it is in a way unnerving to attempt to make plans and think about the future when you’re not really sure what the future is going to look like.

When will things go back to normal?
What will ‘normal’ even look like after all of this?
Will everyone I know and love be okay?
Will I be able to pay my bills?

Then again, that is largely how it’s always been.

There have always been bad things going on in the world, things we haven’t been able to control or understand, and while this particular case is unlike anything we’ve seen in many of our lifetimes—every generation has such events.

There have always been daily invitations into downward spirals of stress and anxiety. 
Things to draw our attention away from resting in contentment and finding joy in our present.

So while we wait and watch the world around us shifting into more panic and fear, regardless of our feelings on it being warranted or not, there are two things we can do:

1. Take it all one day at a time.

2. Be grateful for the good that you have in your arms to hold and the ability to hold it.

Quarantine: A self portrait.
Masks made from raw denim, recycled copper wire, leather and vintage thread.

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What's Coming Next

I am coming back to blogging.

I have found myself saying that often over the past few years in my sporadic sharing on this platform. This is the year I am really going to do it! And then….. five posts later, Okay now THIS is *really* the year I am going to do it…. cue same result.
And perhaps this time is just like all of those other times, but honestly this time feels different.

Because now this time, in many ways, it’s all I have.

With the world in its current state of social distancing and staying at home and daily doses of fear that invite so much confusion and anxiety—It feels like now is the time more than ever that I need to remember who I am.

And one of the things that has always pulled me back from any edge I have ever found myself on (we won’t get into how many there have been… I am an emotional creature) is sharing the beauty I see in the world.
Through words.
Through images.
Through stories.

It is a common understanding that we are all made of stories, and yet it is one of my biggest pulls to any individual I cross paths with.
Everyone’s unique narrative and my ability to bear witness to it.

I am living out one of my own that feels important to share. Not for the validation, though that is often the temptation, rather for the specific ability to offer a communal understanding and empathetic view of shared experience. Of opening up our minds and hearts to things unknown to us until exactly now that were found only within the bravery of open expression.

I also feel the need to share honestly in that part of me has felt empty since coming home.

And that’s largely because when I pulled into Virginia four months ago, after living a life on The Road for 333 days last year, I stopped telling stories.

Sure, verbally I told a few to some friends and family, and the occasional stranger who I’d meet that would pull one out of me because they’d comment on my jacket, or my hat, or the fact that I-don’t-look-like-I’m-from-around-here-even-though-I-am-it’s-just-that-I-hang-out-with-cowboys-too-much….
But mostly I’ve kept to myself and closed up in the unknown of what’s coming next in my life.

I stopped writing.

And writing has always been an integral part of me.
I have long felt that as long as I made time for both reading and writing, it was a day well lived.
The coupling of learning something new, and sharing my experience.

All of our experiences are different, especially during a time like this, but it feels important now more than ever to share that.
Resources, stories, kindness, wisdom, love, understanding, empathy…
It is within the recognition that there are experiences outside of your own that life is most often meant to be lived.

Which is why yours is one worth sharing.