Time Capsule

It's been an amazing three days. Bittersweet and sweet. Looking to the future and looking to the past.

On Sunday morning I got up and decided it was silly to be renting a storage unit when I live in a huge space now, so I reserved my iGo car, I got a Honda Element van, and managed to get everything back here in only two trips. Of course I picked the hottest day of the year and I forgot to ask anyone for help, but it worked out just fine.

It's been a little odd going through all the boxes. It is a bit of a time capsule. I remember getting the storage space at a time when I was looking to maximize every square foot of my little one bedroom apartment that had become a photo studio, dark room, music studio, film editing suite... oh and I slept there as well. It's funny to see what I deemed important enough to not throw out. Not too bad really. I think I only really need to jettison maybe 25% of it now, so I was being pretty ruthless at the time.

But what I didn't throw out are things I'd completely forgotten about that I'm glad I get to go through again. Videotapes of a musical I had a starring roll in about 18 years ago. I thought that was gone forever. Tapes of the MTV Spring Break from the 80s that I won a trip for two at Daytona Beach. I had a bit of a radio career way back then as well and there are some audio tapes of me on the radio from that era.

Books. Some that seem horribly out of date now that my interests have evolved, but some that I really loved that I know are probably out of print. Great photography books. You can see going through the titles that I've had my eye on my photography prize for a long time.

Jeans, jeans and more jeans. I remember packing them away one miserable day when I knew I had gotten too fat to wear them. They were the smallest waist size I had ever been as an adult and there must be six or eight pair of them. I think the optimist in me just couldn't throw them out. I had hope that some day I would get my health under control and be able to wear them once more. It's kind of nice to find them again now, because it won't be long now until I'll be able to slip them on again. I'm getting closer every day. I'm really close!

My photography! One morning years ago I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a steady stream of water dripping outside my bedroom. Someone had overfilled a washing machine above me and it was pouring into a closet that I had been storing my framed photography from recent gallery exhibitions worth thousands of dollars. I rescued what I could and apparently that was one of the catalysts for my getting a storage away from my leaking unit because I now have boxes and boxes of framed museum quality photographs that I had honestly forgotten about. I'll probably inventory all of them and have a bit of a sale. They do have the distinction of being original prints when I was still doing my own darkroom work on silver gelatin prints.

And then there's my music gear. At one point in my life I was just getting my film editing career off the ground and I decided that besides that there was really only one other major thing I could have going on in my life at one time. I was just getting confident in my photography and although I loved playing music, composing and recording, I thought at the time my photography was stronger than my music. Even though I had sold a few original music compositions for television commercials and other videos, I had to pick one and put the other one away for a time. I picked photography. The music went into storage.

So now I have racks of keyboard gear and effects and all the stuff that goes with that. I haven't decided what to do with it. I may keep some of it because even though it's been a while since I played music on a regular basis, maybe it would be nice to sit down and play again. Not that I have any more time now. In fact I probably have less, but we'll see. Maybe selling some or donating it to a school or something would be in order.

It will be a few more days before I can get through all the boxes and find out what other secret treasures I stored away all those years ago. A little fitting that I decided to collect all of it again on Memorial Day weekend. I know that Memorial Day is not really about a storage space time capsule. But for me, maybe it is. I've been through a lot since I packed all of that stuff up. It's good to see how far I've come.

The bittersweet part was getting to spend a little time with my friend Ryan before she moves to California in a week. I've known Ryan for six or seven years now and we've gone through a lot together. She came by my studio on Saturday after Morgan and I got done shooting for the day and the three of us had a nice dinner and cosmos up on my roof. It was really a great time getting to enjoy one last evening together under the beautiful Chicago city lights.

Ryan has been such a strong supporter of me and my art and many of my successes this past year have been because of her encouragement over the years. I'll miss her terribly.

I love you Ryan. I can't wait to see what great adventures the next few years will bring you. You deserve the best that life can give a person.

The beautiful photograph of Ryan above is from our trip to Vegas last year the evening that Ryan and Morgan told me things that made me realize how much I loved living and how I really needed to change my life if I wanted to accomplish everything I wanted to. I will live a long healthy life because of them. Thank you both.

And speaking of accomplishing things, there is so much going on photographically these days that I actually have an intern now. My first one. We had a little orientation session on Sunday and I think it's going to be really good. I'll have Caitlin until August when she heads off to USC to do amazing things with her future.

There is so much work to be done here that if I spent the next month not sleeping and just working on everything, I still wouldn't be done, so it will be nice to have some assistance with everything. Of course getting everything ready and organized enough to have someone come in and be able to make heads and tales of thousands of negatives is a job in itself, but it's one I've put off for too long. Having to go through the process of preparing for an intern has really forced me to get so many things in order. It's a win win.

So the organizing began today. Going through boxes of negatives and contact sheets and notes written on scraps of paper to help identify them all. But even though I was on a roll, I managed to pull myself away and ride my bike over to my friends Mark and Melissa's for a wonderul holiday BBQ. It' such a fun group of people and I got to meet more artists like myself, just trying to get their work out in to the world. It's amazing how simply being an artist gives you a bond with other artists. It doesn't matter the medium- design, pottery, ceramics, photography, whatever- you can see the thing behind their eyes that pushes us all forward. We couldn't stop doing it any more than we could stop breathing. We talked and grilled and ate and played cards and then I rode home through another beautiful Chicago summer night.

I've been doing a lot of bike riding lately. Even though a three mile walk is nothing to me these days, it just takes too long to walk five miles or more, so my bike has been a good way to fill in those gaps and not have to resort to cabs or public transportation. And it's nearly as fast in most cases.

And of course the shooting continues. On Saturday, the lovely Morgan and I had enough time to get a couple of sets shot just as the sun was setting. This image is one from that shoot. It's much softer than images we've been creating together lately and it's been something I've wanted to create with her for some time, so I'm glad we got to get our toes in that end of the pool. Of course with us there seems to be a never ending list of ideas we're working on, so we're never sure what each shoot day will bring. But those days remain my favorite days. Shooting, creating, experimenting. I feel most alive during those moments.

So yes, it's been a weekend of remembering the past, paying attention to friends that are with me today, some if only for a few more days, and forging ahead to the future. I wonder what a time capsule of this year would look like in ten years. Interesting I'm sure.

Last Look Before it Goes...

Smaller Pleasures

Not much time tonight, but some fun things should not go unwritten before turning in for the night.

First, I stopped at the Gap his evening to buy some new jeans. Not a big deal to probably everyone who is reading this, so let me explain. When one achieves the ridiculous body size that I had achieved at this time last year, one isn't able to shop in everyday stores. You have to shop at one of the appropriately named Big and Tall stores. So being able to walk into a store like the Gap and walk out with a pair of jeans, or two in this case, off the shelf, well that's pretty cool. Now granted, since America has gotten huge, the Gap does stock larger sizes, but happily, I'm getting in the more normal people sizes now. Still a ways to go, but really, that was a nice little moment today.

I was once asked what my fetishes were. It was on TV, so I thought quickly and said "watches and shoes." It was PBS, so I guess I could have been a little more... interesting, shall we say, but I decided to keep it clean for Big Bird. Anyway, I do collect watches. I have a nice variety of them. But like so many other things in my life, when you get big, so do your wrists. And I've had to keep that collection tucked away, waiting for a day when my appendages were a little less like tree stumps.

Well that day arrived this week as well and it had been long enough that I had to take them in and get new batteries put in them. So yesterday I picked up three and dropped off another. It's been fun to wear them again. I missed them. One of them is a beautiful watch that has a Man Ray photograph of a nude on the face. I bought it in Milan when I was there in 1999, and it was good to see that old friend again. I've been reading a lot of books lately that coincidentaly keep mentioning Man Ray's work in Paris about seventy or eighty years ago, so it's been nice to wear one of his images again.

And my last smaller pleasure today was a nice quiet moment framing a photograph long overdue to be delivered. I spent so much time getting my big show framed this past winter and spring that I'd forgotten how nice it was to just deal with one photograph at a time. It's a photo of the little town of Bellagio on Lake Como in northern Italy. I was walking along a small path that links the small towns together, winding along the shore of that beautiful lake, nestled at the base of the Italian Alps. This particular print turned out just great and like all of my framed art, it's always a little sad to see it go.

I'm pleased to say I have art hanging all over this country now and even in several countries in Europe as well. So it's nice to know people are enjoying it in their homes in far off lands. It's the one thing that I really love about being an artist is that every once in a while I'll be visiting someone and see one of my photographs hanging on the wall and I will have completely forgotten about it. A small pleasure I do enjoy when I remember to slow down and close my eyes and imagine my work as little dots all over the globe.

Sometimes the smaller pleasures are the best ones.

Advice from the UK

I got to call the BBC today. That was fun. I've never done that before. My friend Monkaey is working on a music project for the Manchester Big Screen and I got a chance to call her at the Beeb where she's got a bit of an office there while she nurtures her burgeoning music and film empire.

She's been such a good friend to me over the years, always supportive and encouraging and hopefully I do a little of the same for her. She's been keeping up with me through my blog and vice versa and it was about time we connected and filled in some of the blanks that blogs in their necessary vagueness, seem to be full of as of late.

So I got to tell her of some amazing things going on in my photography world, that sadly I still cannot discuss in public, but they're great! And I also got to fill her in on a bit of a quest I've been on to find a new model or two to help me realize some nude work that I need to get back to.

She was quite helpful and even though it's been a frustrating challenge to find just the right person to collaborate with in the last few years, I am looking for someone I can forge a very long term relationship with on an artistic level. In the past, models that I've had the opportunity to create that particular art with are always so much more than bodies in front of my lens. We've shared a vision of what it is we're trying to create and I can honestly say is one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in my life. I know they would say the same thing.

So I have things I need to do and prepare as I strike out to find a new inspiration. I'm excited about the possibilities since I've had some time to consider the new directions my art has taken. It's an important thing that I cannot and should not delay any longer.

This is an photograph from my current show at Echo Gallery that has been extended a little while longer because it seems that people are still making quite a few appointments to see it before it comes down. Thank you!

Ma Première Feuille de Larme de Français (My First French Tear Sheet)

tear sheet | te(ə)r sh ēt |
noun
a page that can or has been removed from a newspaper, magazine or book for use separately.


Tear sheets are a bit like merit badges. They're proof that someone thought your work was good enough for it to be published. There's nothing better than seeing one of my images in an unexpected place, like a magazine or a poster or flyer. I guess I have been published like that many times, but for some reason, this one was different... special.

It's been a week of introspection for me. Starting over on some level and at the same time realizing so many of my goals are well within my reach. It's a bit of a paradox. But then, art is like that.

So when I got an email from Jillian Ann this afternoon, with an unexpected attachment, well it pretty much made my week. A few weeks ago you may remember Jillian was in town to shoot some pictures with me and one of our projects was to shoot some images to use to promote her music. I made arrangements to use a beautiful Steinway piano in my building at Music in the Loft so we could make some photographs of Jillian performing in an interesting space.

When I opened today's attachment I discovered that our favorite image from that set was featured in an article about Jillian in this months issue of a popular French teen magazine called Filles Clin d'Oeil (Girls Wink). As I read the article beneath the photo - I can now because my French is getting better every day - it was really an incredible feeling to have a photo credit in the context of this beautiful language that I'm am really enjoying learning.

It seems like there are so many little successes like this pointing me in a very specific direction. Would I have been excited about a tear sheet from an Italian or German magazine? Sure, but there is something about the French language and culture that really resonates with me these days.

Maybe it's because I have decided to rededicate myself to shooting more of my art. I died a little the other day when I decided that it had become necessary to put a artistic nudity warning on my website. I'm realizing that this country is not moving forward culturally or in a truly human sense. It's moving backwards. As far as my art is concerned, I feel that Europe, any more specifically France and Paris is more like home to me. I can understand why nearly a century ago, artists from all over the world flocked to Paris to discover their true selves. The idea that I had to put a warning on and electronically rate my site as "R" goes against everything I believe my art is. So maybe it's true that you can't be a prophet in your own land.

But back to happier things. The scans of the magazine are a little low quality, but I've done my best to clean them up and make them a little more presentable. My photo credit is basically a smudge on this scan, but it's there and with any luck, I'll be able to get a real copy of the magazine in the near future and I'll be able to scan it at higher quality. But in the mean time, here it is!

Jillian called tonight to check up on me. She's really on the verge of huge things, but she took the time to call and make sure my recent introspection wasn't getting to me. We talked for an hour as she walked her dog in LA. She's going to help me find models that have my creative sensibilities to help create my art with and also help me take the next few important steps that I'm ready to take to achieve more of what I need to.

Things are going to be alright!

Les choses vont être bien !

Begin Again

Deep Breath. Close my eyes. Imagine what is possible. And jump.

I'm back. Back on the path. Determined.

More art soon.

Time Out

I'm not sure if when I get done writing this I'm going to actually go ahead and post it.

I woke up this morning and felt out of sorts. Not myself. Nothing seemed right. I usually look forward to Sunday mornings because I can usually fill them with relaxing things that make me feel very good.

For some reason this morning, none of it seemed to work. After a few hours of going through the motions I had to admit to myself that I was feeling restless and something that has been perculating in the back of my head for the last few weeks had finally escaped and was running around in my head without a leash.

Around noon I packed up my cameras and put them away. Lights, cables, stands, all in their cases.

The last time I went an extended period of time without picking up a camera was a very painful part of my life. My therapist Charlie used to call it most controlled nervous breakdown he'd ever seen. For about three years I went to talk to Charlie once a week, and like most anything that ends up being worth anything meaningful, you get into it and the further you go, you realize how much harder it's going to be than you thought. In fact it was probably good that I didn't know. I'm not sure I would have felt strong enough to start.

To make a long story short, I thought my issues were simply the usual things things that people feel aren't right in their lives, girlfriend problems and job frustrations. As the sessions with Charlie continued, I discovered it was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I'm not really interested in airing all of the details of that journey here. I just know I was exausted at the end of those three years and I'm a more whole human for having gone through it. Charlie was a great guide and has since moved on to other things in his life and is now a great friend.

But it's not really like you graduate from something like that and you're all done. In my case, I simply had a better understanding of who I was and what was really important to me in my life. I don't have any more control over things going on around me in my life, but I can see why I react the way I do to them and it allows me a little more freedom emotionally because I know why certain things affect me the way that they do. Life becomes less a series of extreme up and downs and more of a gentle hilly ride that is not perfect, but is much more stable and enjoyable.

During the journey with Charlie I began to dismantle who I was. I kept peeling away layers. It was sort of like I was a house. I began my time with him and walked through the front door and straightened up the foyer, the front closest and the living room. It took a few months do put the downstairs in order, and then the bedrooms upstairs. Then we went the basement. A little more murky down there, but we managed. I felt better and thought we were done. But then there was this little sub basement door. We opened it. More unpleasantness. But we got through that. Every time I thought I was at bottom, we'd find something else. We'd work through it. Then we'd find another secret hatch and have to go down into it.

By the time we were done there wasn't much left of me. I really didn't know who I was because I realized I wasn't at all who I thought I was or who others thought I was. The only thing that was left, and how I visualized it, was this large room that looked a bit like what I imagine the inside walls of an enormous mouth would look like. In in the center of this cavernous room was just this little nub. Sort of raw and vulnerable. It was all that was left.

It was my art.

Throughout everything going on in my life, that was the one thing that I could say I felt positive and good about. It was small and almost gone, but there it was.

There were times back then I didn't like who I was and was sure I didn't deserve to be on the planet, but then I thought of my art and I thought maybe that was something good and I could contribute to the good of the world though that. And then I could stay.

While I was going through all of that I wasn't really in any place emotionally that I could make photographs. My creativity was out there, somewhere, patiently waiting for my return. I actually went an entire year without picking up a camera. Truly amazing if you know me and know that photography is akin to breathing for me.

So during one of those sub-basement explorations, as Charlie later put it, "For a guy who could barely leave the house during that time, couldn't really be around people, he did the most insane thing he could have. He got on a plane. He went to a country where he didn't speak the language. Nothing would be familiar or easy. And he took his cameras."

Even though I didn't feel like doing anything, I realized that I needed to use that little bit of me that was left and make that my center and try to build on it. I packed the cameras that hadn't seen daylight in a long time. On that trip, I had decided to base myself out of Milan with a very generous friend of mine called Tonia who for some reason agreed to let this very damaged man sleep on her extra bed and leave most of my luggage there while I took trains to various cities in Northern Italy for a few weeks. At one point, I arrived in Venice, checked into my hotel, fell into the bed and slept for 13 hours.

When I woke up, I decided that I would take a camera with me on a walk around the city. I didn't even load it with film. I just decided to take it with me. It was my beautiful old Hasselblad from 1969.

Most people when they go to Venice spend time on the water, but I never did. Maybe it was because I was still really not ready to interact with too many people. It was easier at that point to simple walk through the maze of sidewalks a bit more anonymously. I found a lot of dead ends, which were comforting because I could sit there where the sidewalk ended and the water canal passed in front of me... and just think.

At one of those canal crossroads, I decided to take out my camera. I held it in my hands for a few minutes and then decided I would load some film into it. It is a medium format camera that takes what is called roll film, not like the little canister of film that you put in a 35mm camera. I realized that it had been so long since I had loaded it that I couldn't really remember how. It took a minute or two before I remembered how to unroll the outer paper and wind it around the reels.

I took a picture. I really couldn't tell whether it was a good picture or not. It had been so long. I didn't really try to think about it too much. I just looked through the viewfinder until something seemed right and I clicked. It felt so odd not to know what I was doing. My confidence was just not there. But I kept shooting. Hundreds of pictures in Venice, Milan, Bologna, Montova, Lake Como, Bellagio.

I returned home and the day the film was ready to be picked up from the lab was one of my Charlie days. It was the first time back to see him since my trip. He looked at me as I sat down and I told him that I took a lot of pictures but I wasn't sure how good they were. I really had no idea what I had done. I asked if he would look at the contact sheets with me for the first time.

We pulled out the first one and looked at the 12 photographs on it. To my surprise I saw pictures that were... well... good. We took out the next one. More good images. It was so strange looking at the tiny 2 inch square images on each page. It was as if someone else had taken them. I knew I was just on a sort of autopilot while I was shooting. Not even really trying to take a good picture because I didn't really know how. But somehow the photos were there. The composition was correct. The ideas were good. Captured moments. It was almost like looking at the work of another photographer. But somehow not, because it felt familiar. It was me. I wasn't as lost artistically as I thought I was.

But today I feel a little lost again. I'm going to keep the reasons a little to myself. I needed to pack my cameras away. I don't know when I'm going to shoot again. Maybe in a week. Maybe a month. Maybe longer. I know I'll pick them up again when I feel ready. But something is missing and I can't work again until I find it. Maybe it will find me.

Maybe I won't feel this way tomorrow, but I know I feel very strongly about it today. If I sound very confused, I am.

I need to go back into that enormous room and say hello to that little nub and remember what made me the artist I know I am. My friends are going to have a lot of things to say about this. They're going to try to find easy solutions for me to work through this, but I think deep down I know what I have to do. I'm just tired and it's not going to be easy.

I've put so much energy and effort into trying to make what is important to me... no... what is critical to me. And somewhere in the last few years, I've lost my way. I need to find it again. Packing everything away today, may simply be a symbolic gesture. But I think I had to physically do it and make it an act of admitting that something is wrong.

I need a little time out. Even if it's just for today to say, "Put the cameras down, Billy. Don't think about it today. Put them away and breathe. Take a walk."

And so I will.

Eroding Rights

There is a lot of wonderful photography news to talk about today, but I wanted to take a little moment and relay a little storm on the horizon that I've been noticing lately and is going to be troubling if it arrives the way I suspect it might. Our rights and freedoms are being slowing eroded away. Not so much that you'd notice, unless you were really paying attention. So here's a little heads up.

A woman's right to choose is in play for real these days. The extreme conservative religious movement is digging their heels in in several states. That's been in the news a lot, but here's something else that has just shown up on my radar.

Birth control.

Something we've all taken for granted for years since it was officially made legal in the mid-1960s, could be limited if some groups have their way. Basically they believe that any sex that is not intended to procreate is wrong. Even if you're married and you decide you want to put off have children for any number of reasons, if you use birth control, it's wrong.

So now we have groups trying to stop condoms being distributed to teenagers. We have pharmacists refusing to fill certain prescriptions involving birth control and the morning after pill. The FDA, even though an overwhelming number of doctors and scientists maintain that the morning after pill is safe for over the counter use, has decided to postpone approving it - indefinitely. It's been available in Europe for 20 years. The US government is withholding relief money to countries being ravaged by AIDS unless they agree to teach abstinence and minimize or completely remove any discussion of condoms or other birth control. Oh, and we don't want sex education in schools because kids will think about sex. So no birth control and no sex-ed. Sounds like a genius plan to me.

I have no problem with people believing whatever they want to believe, but I have a big problem when they start limiting what I can do in my personal life. There was an frightening article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine titled Contra-Contraception. You may have to sign up for a free membership to the NY Times online, but it's an important read. Take 20 minutes and catch up to what's looming out there.

So what does all of this have to do with photography? Many things. But at it's most basic kernel is the idea that if you start restricting people's rights, especially rights that we all thought were safe, other troubling things are probably not far behind.

On Saturday night there was a closing reception for my photo exhibition at Echo Gallery, and we noticed that a group of five women were intently looking at my work and really discussing it. One of the people I was standing with went over to them and told them that the photographer was right over there. So they eagerly came over to me and introduced themselves and told me how much they liked my work. I have two themes of art that I'm showing. Ten photographs make up the Underwater Gallery which are huge three foot by four foot images, and the other ten are the Love and Ecstasy Gallery which are framed a bit smaller to 16"x20". They were particularly intrigued by the Love and Ecstasy images. They said they really loved the way I captured the beautiful sexuality of women without objectifying them. That was wonderful to hear because that is exactly what I was trying to do with that series. It's a very fine line to walk and I still have to work carefully, but intuitively to create something in that area that I hope will contribute to womens' positive sense of self worth about themselves when they see the photographs.

But clearly I succeeded with them. They were from Oklahoma, visiting Chicago for a conference and happened to stop by the gallery. Now Oklahoma is not exactly what I would call a liberal state, but it really made my night to hear that they were able to get what I was trying to do even though you might expect people from Oklahoma to be a little less comfortable with my subject matter. One of them said, as they were walking away, if only more men and more husbands saw women the way you do.

I'll admit my preconceptions about certain parts of this country were proved wrong. And I'm glad they were. I worry that artists like me are really are getting squeezed when it comes to how we can express ourselves in public. I've always felt that my work is art. There has never been a question about it. I do create images that contain nudity, but I think I do it in a positive, beautiful, inspiring way even when it gets to the edge of being sexual or erotic. But the way the government has been really going after artists, some that I know personally, it's forcing me to be more careful. I don't like that.

I think if someone under the age of 18 sees my work and then walks into a 7-11 and sees the cover of Maxim and FHS and the other lad magazines, my work, even though I might be showing more of a woman's body than the cover photos on those magazines, is so much more positive when it comes to how people might react to it or have their opinions of women shaped by it. My work is emotional, inspiring and perhaps in some instances provocative, but not in the "come and have sex with me" way that the lad magazines portray. I'm not saying they should not be there. First amendment and all. And I like a sexy picture as much as the next human. But I'm saying, I feel that since my subject matter involves nudity, I'm more likely to be hassled by the government, even though my message is more positive from a humanity standpoint.

I was having drinks with a great friend of mine last Friday. She used to work for the MCA here in Chicago (Museum of Contemporary Art) and we were talking about my website and how even though I don't believe any of my art would be considered "adult content" in a pornography sense, I may have to put a warning on it and rate it as "R" so that I don't have to worry about it being able to be seen by people who might be offended by it. It really makes me sad. I feel like putting a warning on my site is censorship and I really find that offensive.

Meanwhile most of the country is on a "violence is okay, but sexuality and the human form is bad" bent. I just don't understand it. But okay. As my friend said on Friday, I have to protect myself these days in this political climate.

But more good stuff. She has been living in Europe for a few years and is back now and she's going to shop my work around to her gallery contacts and see what develops. She was one of the first people to begin collecting my work about 13 years ago and it's great to see it on her wall when I visit her. She's one of the good ones.

And then there's Paris. Morgan and I will be returning to that wonderful city this summer. We have an apartment there right across the street from the Luxembourg Gardens. Absolutely beautiful. We're already planning the pictures. Should be amazing. I can't wait!

Here's a photograph of Morgan from last month when we were fooling around with a ridiculous pair of platform boots that I found about 4 years ago. Yeah, we can do sexy too. Ironically, the first time I ever photographed her was in those boots almost a year ago before she was even considering modeling. She and her sister Ryan were over on her birthday and we had consumed just enough cosmopolitans to play dress up and take a few pictures. She found those boots. I think we've been wanting to revisit them ever since. And now we have.

Cream Rising

Amazing things are happening. Things I can't write about here. Things I haven't told anyone. I'm lucky. I work hard and sometimes a wave washes over me with such amazing fortune that I'm overwhelmed. Not the fortune you might be thinking, but the fortune you can't buy. That's where I am tonight.

Feeling lucky.

Feeling like my hard work is paying off.

Knowing that incredible things are on my horizon.

Knowing that it's happening because I believe in myself.

Knowing that it's time for me to stop dreaming about it and start doing it.

Anything less would be... not me.