Life Update & Overdue Explanation, 2020

The last couple years have been pretty eventful, though this is the last place that would show it. Here’s a quick rundown of that time period that might just serve as an overdue explanation.

The story goes that I went back to school in 2017 with the goal of completing an accelerated Bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management. To make that work, however, I quickly found that I had to make some tough sacrifices in order to take on a full course load and graduate sooner. Working on any sort of photography and pursuing personal projects were a big part of what had to be put to the side. I graduated in March 2019 — so that sort of covers the time period with a sensible explanation.

What about that almost year-long gap from then till now in 2020?

Well, that was the hard part. I wasn’t sure what’s next for me, and to some extent, I still don’t. Obviously photography and creative pursuits are still key, otherwise this site wouldn’t be here.

But don’t think I didn’t have to question myself hard on that. It wasn’t so obvious just a month ago. More on that later.

What I did do after graduating was give myself a well-earned break. After all, I had been working in consulting full-time and going to school online for more than a full-time load. The burnout was real. I went hiking a bunch, snapped some pictures that went nowhere, then stopped carrying a camera because, “What’s the point — I’m not doing anything with these pictures, anyway…” I simply enjoyed my time in the woods and worked towards my next goal of climbing Mount St. Helens (which I did with a camera, because that would be crazy not to).

In September, I went on a work related trip to Boston and New York for a marketing conference which was pretty sweet.

The same week I got back from New York, I embarked on a 10-day road trip with my now-fiance over to Montana and Wyoming to check out Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks, which were also pretty sweet.

Grand Teton National Park, 2019

Aaaand with no less than a week back in town from the trips, we moved out of what will hopefully be our last apartment and into a little house that will hopefully be our last rental altogether.

With summer over it was time to basically sit around and wait out the Seattle rain. Call it seasonal depression or whatever the locals like to say, but it’s around then that I got hit hard with trying to make sense of what’s really next for me. The post 2010s reflection also brought an interesting light, really showing that my publicly creative output was zero, after it had peaked in exactly the decade midpoint that was June 2015 when The Mob Rules premiered.

The reality was that I had posted maybe 3 times on my Instagram in the last 2 years, and had not put together any project after that midpoint in 2015. I questioned whether I was even still interested in photography. More on this quarter-life crisis later, but the short of it was summed up earlier — Obviously I was, otherwise the site wouldn’t be here.

This is one of the reasons I advocate for having a website. It keeps you honest. Moreso than just posting images on Instagram every day, your site serves as a standing culmination of your assembled work to the world. You look at a stale site that hasn’t been updated in years and realize, “I have way better images than this crap.”

Alongside that, I looked at the thousands of digital negatives and pushed myself to get to work with something — anything — out of them.

The first order of business was decided: to start making some sense of all these construction and development pictures I’ve taken of Camarillo over almost a decade, which resulted in Field Closed for Maintenance. This is still a work in progress as I go back to visit every now and then, but there are definitely some stories to be told out of them.

Then, after putting together a completely new custom website rebuild, curation of new galleries and re-curation of older ones, I’m happy to say that I’m reinvigorated with creative energy for the first time in a long time. Here’s to keeping this up.

—Anthony, 1/21/2020