A month ago I made a commitment to blog more regularly. Once or twice a week. Because I want to. Really, I do. I used to blog almost daily – and I had a lot more to say then. Maybe it wasn’t always interesting, or worth reading, but I was writing. And isn’t that the point?  I told myself I’d make a conscious effort to post more – to share more about my life, outside of photography. To talk about fashion and grammar and popcorn and pinot noir and all the other minutia of my life that makes me….me. But I haven’t. The truth is, I’ve spent many an evening staring at my computer screen – a cursor flashing angrily in front of me, taunting me as each second pounded by, the page remaining blank. Stark. White. I don’t know what to say. I’m afraid I won’t say the right thing. Maybe you’re not even really interested in anything I’d write.

Or maybe I just don’t know where to start.

Maybe it’s been too long since I typed out drivel in the shape of romanticized and facetious prose.

Maybe it’s all of these things. Or none of them.

It took the words of Cheryl Strayed – through an amazing gift from my friend Anda – to make me realize what my big picture is. Why I do this. Why I slave and cry and dream and fail and try again and fail some more and dream even bigger and laugh and win and cry some more. Why, in the name of all that is holy, I put myself through this whole ordeal.

Why I am an artist.

I take photographs, a fact that is remarkably apparent. But the engine behind this space, this blog, this career/hobby/passion is that I am a writer – my medium is just a little bit different. I’ve spent most of my life with this hole in my chest – this desire to write a book. To write something meaningful down and share it with the world. Put it out there – vulnerable. Real. Raw. Me.

But after reading “Tiny Beautiful Things,” I realized I don’t actually have a hole anymore. It went away. All on its own, without me even noticing. This -this is my book. These images are it’s pages; The faces on this blog are its characters. This is the story of my life. It’s being written every single day by other people. I’m simply dictating it.

In the smallest measurements.

Tiny pieces of so many beautiful things.

For any of you who woke up one day and finally did that thing that you felt like you were born to do – you will know what I mean when I say that the hole, it closed. It is no more. It’s constantly being filled over and over and again and again. I may never publish a book, you see. But that’s not the point of being a writer anyway. A writer isn’t a writer because she is published. No, that’s just an accolade. A thing. An event. A writer is a writer because she writes.

And so I write. Through words. Through photographs. Through remembering as much as I can from every day that passes through the boundaries of the horizon.

Even if I fail.

Whatever that means.

I’ll know that through all of this, I’m one step closer to wherever it is that I’ve always been going.

xo