Inexplicable:

the pull of vagueness ahead,

Inescapable.

I am starting this blog one week after returning from a photography workshop in Maine. It seems more than fifty years of creativity was unblocked in that week, a week where we spent more time on discarding all predefined notions of photography, and instead went through exercises and experiences to reconnect with the untamed, wide-eyed, wonder-filled innocent source of creative energy that lives within us all. It certainly helped that a lot of my self-definitions as a long-time photographer and a person were broken down on the way to the workshop, not just by all the thinking time on the eight-and-a-half hour drive up to Rockport, but also through five or six years of hard work leading up to this session, years spent befriending long-time ghosts and the many shamed (and, therefore, angry) sides of my shadow self, coming to terms with the fact that, ultimately, all I have is what I travel with inside me, and that is more than enough for what needs to be done in the world.

It’s therefore no coincidence that over the last two months I have been tasked to change the scope of my day job, one I have enjoyed and learned from for many years, but one which took away time and energy, obscuring from me the new path unfolding ahead. And, it’s also no surprise that, this week, I begin a new field of study in mental health counseling, and a concurrent six-week program in grief counseling, in response to the calling I now hear more clearly as the distractions and anxieties die down, old responsibitlies are shed, and I inhabit a new lifestage where fathering and husbanding take on a different tenor.

I am glad for the creative disruption of that week in Maine, and the way it helped me just lean into this onward journey even more.