Lake Greenleaf State Park, Fall in Oklahoma at 12:30 am. ©Billy Sauerland
The above image was taken during a night of camping at Lake Greenleaf State Park, Oklahoma. I was camping with a friend of mine Elizabeth “Moe” Barton. We took the opportunity to go camping and to catch up with each other. She had spent the previous summer in Alaska working at the Kennicott Glacier Lodge, in Wrangle St-Elias National Park. That night we shared where we are at the moment in our lives and where we might be going. She also shared some stories from her adventures that summer, like the one about how a bear cub stole her campfire mojo.
What does that mean? Asterisk* : a symbol (*) used to mark printed or written text, typically as a reference to an annotation or to stand for omitted matter.
In this case it’s omitted matter. What’s been going on since the last post? Both a lot and nothing much, huh? The latter part of 2018 was a MF’r to say the least. Not to go into too much detail, my sister with whom I didn’t have the best relationship with passed away, on Nov 21st, after sometime in the hospital. Then in December my mother went into the hospital with pneumonia, thankfully she recovered and was released to go home. These two events, more so my sister’s passing, triggered some long deeply seeded issues I have with myself and my past. By the time January arrived I thought I had been dealing pretty well, wanting and feeling the need to move on, I moved into my own space for the first time in several years. Up until then I had been renting a room in a friend’s house, sharing an apartment with a friend. I felt good and things where moving forward, until they weren’t. What I had lead myself to think was that I had been processing things well. I even remember waking up one morning in the middle of December thinking I felt good and was doing well. Looking back I believe I was actually in some kind of denial, and that I had actually shifted into a previous mode I use to live in all the time. Growing up my life was always in some kind of chaos, always having to deal with one f’ed up situation or another. So in a strange way, the end of 2018 seemed familiar and oddly comfortable. And that whole frame of mind flowed into the beginning of 2019. Until sometime around late March or early April, when after being alone in my apartment for a couple months everything really began to surface and I began to spiral. It wasn’t an all encompassing debilitating depression, but I could just not function when I didn’t have to. On the weekend I would just not exist then when Monday would come I would function, I would goto work, barely and that’s about it. The 2019 holiday season was pretty low for me. I spent them with my mom as usual, checking all the boxes I am supposed to. I needed to create a break in my behavior, in my thoughts. Then when January 2020 came around, I am not one for resolutions, I began to make some changes. So around the second week of January I joined a gym and began working out, having not worked out on a regular basis since my twenties, it was slow going but I did the work to start the movement forward, ugh. I also started a new retirement/investment account, starting today is better than starting a year from now was my newish mantra. Trying to create a fresh frame of mind and fresh outlook for the future. Then, 2020 happened! F’n 2020! Covid-19 and all that it brings along with social/political unrest centered around justice inequalities and racism in the country primarily involving policing. So here I find myself nearing the end of June 2020, and I’m still tumbling, not a full free fall but not yet stable. Slowly adding fragments of stillness to my day and to myself. Thus allowing me to actually work on the post and possibly to formulate future post. I started this post almost a year ago, I’ve written and rewritten and then just stopped, not sure what to do or say. However I’m needing to do something, either stop everything, including my photography and try something different, or to stand and keep pushing forward with what I’ve already started, or both in some form or another. I’m still not sure exactly what I’m going to do or how, or where for that matter. But something needs to change, things will change.
