It has been nearly two months since I last posted something to this blog.  And over a month since I updated my website or put anything up on Instagram or any other social media outpost.  I needed a break.  Time to rest.  Recharge.  Reflect.  Reset.

I’ve still been photographing nearly every day.  Some of it while traveling, mostly in my garden or around the house.  I’ve continued to be entranced and entwined with the garlic growing in my garden, joined an online abstract photography workshop with Susan Burnstine, and even managed a 10-day family trip to the Big Island.

Still, this post-pandemic (can we call it that yet?) life is strangely hard to adjust to.  I’m no longer apprehensive of going out in public, worried about catching the Corona virus and dying from a trumped-up version of  the common cold.  It didn’t take long after getting vaccinated to get over that.  But it still feels weird to be out in public.

I think I might have forgotten how to leave the house.  To just go out in the world and explore.  It was much easier during the pandemic to get out.  Streets and trails were empty, and I was free to poke around without worrying about prying eyes and airborne viruses.  But now, now there are people everywhere.  Crowding the trails, slowing down the streets, getting in my way, distracting me from myself.  Where did they all come from?  Why are they here?  Why am I?  Something just doesn’t feel right.

So I have continued mostly sheltering in place.  It’s been too easy to just keep following the patterns of the pandemic.  Occasional trips to the grocery store, a meal out here and there, Amazon and Door Dash for most everything else.  After more than a year of forced isolation, we’ve been conditioned to turn inward, to keep the hustle and bustle of outside life at bay.  To disengage from the world beyond the bubble.  Enough.  It’s time to venture back out.  To leave the comfort of the garden.  To reconnect with the world at large.

But first there’s some figurative house cleaning to do.  It’s time to clear out the cobwebs,  finish the lingering projects, and put things back in their proper place.  To get my photographic house in order.  For the past few weeks I’ve been going back through the images I’ve shot during the last 6 months or so.  Organizing, editing, sorting, reviewing. To see again what I did and try to figure out where it’s (I’m) going. 

I’ve begun sprinkling some recent images into the Fresh gallery, and will be adding more over the next few weeks, including galleries of images from the pandemic trips to Yosemite, Oregon, Hawaii and parts of California.

Consider it a digital spring cleaning. Once I clean out my archives, I think I’ll be ready to rejoin the world. 

Welcome back.