I take photos and write words to try and grab onto moments, to externalize memories and feelings, to free up space in my brain to be present.

Not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow or anything except now – just being, feeling – is bright, sparkling, crackling clarity. Like stepping outside and taking a deep breath on a subzero morning. Like midday sun on bright snow. It makes everything real.

Time speeds up while I try and figure out how to work (future financial security) and live (breathe, love, walk, create) without things getting too far out of balance. The fight to find the balance never ends.

I look at photographs from two months ago and it feels like another lifetime. Months feel like days. Years feel like weeks. Work consumes time, energy, relationships, but paradoxically creates future freedom for those things.

The list of people to reach out to and catch up with gets longer. I have to release the guilt or it’ll consume me. I have to focus on spending time with the people who might be running out of time.

I snap pictures to remember things. I tweak them – to make them look more like how the moment felt for me – and send them out into the world. I do this mostly for myself and partly for whoever cares to see them. I think that’s okay.

I write things like this for the same reason. To capture a feeling or remember a moment that otherwise might disappear into the ether.

The small moments deserve to be remembered as much as the big ones, like:

Thunder rumbling as I typed that last sentence. Turning around and locking eyes with Rigby, in his bed, buried under a blanket. (He only became afraid of storms after moving to Australia.)

It’s Thursday. It’s cold and rainy, but I’m inside, I’m warm, and I’m grateful.