Unresolved

2025 has been absolutely unhinged.

I've been sick and have had a clogged ear for weeks.
It's still clogged and ringing.
Driving me absolutely fucking insane.

I started a new part-time job so I've been trying to find a new flow, a new version of normal.

I’ve also been consumed with the horrifying reality that California is facing right now with the fires in Los Angeles. The unfathomable damage and hurt weighs so heavy on my heart I can't even speak to it.

It’s so bizarre- as I sit glued to screens watching the devastation, I look out my window and I'm in a place covered with snow.

It’s so disorienting to be reminded in such an intense way of how different our realities are. Going about life as normal here feels wrong/inappropriate/cold.
But we also know that more suffering doesn't help suffering.

Growing up, even as a young girl, I always felt really guilty and privately ashamed of how deeply I felt the pain of something else happening- someone else's painful experience.

I would carry it with me feeling sick.
Just hearing a story on the news would leave me sick to my stomach for days.
It certainly felt like something was wrong with me when I noticed how the people around me could go on with life far less impacted.

Now we call this empathy.

We acknowledge it as a sort of noble, compassionate trait.

But, I don't know.

I don't even know what I'm trying to say, really.
I just feel like somehow being that affected by the suffering of others while not being able to help in any meaningful way or have any personal intimate connection to the situation feels like a form of selfishness. As if somehow the emotional experience only belongs to the people involved and I don’t have the right to experience it. Cognitively I understand that everyone has the right to feel whatever it is they do and it’s beautiful. I know it means connection and love.

But under the table,
privately,
personally- I feel selfish for feeling so deeply for someone else’s intimate experience.
Almost narcissistic.

And yet,

I have never thought that of someone else having a similar experience.
I have never once thought of anyone else’s deep feelings as anything but natural and beautiful.

Why is it this deep seated thought of shameful emotional malfunction only belongs to me?

Why are we such monsters to ourselves?

I was in a poetry class and the facilitator,

Trivarna Hariharan

of Wildflowers as Prayers said something that really resonated with me. She had commented on how a poem doesn't need to resolve. Whatever it is you're addressing, it doesn't need to be resolved within the piece.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

I immediately recognized that I am not only asking my art to heal me, I'm expecting it to resolve so many things inside of me.

Just because art can clarify and illuminate and help you feel through things, doesn't mean that those things resolve or feel complete.

The subconscious expectation and unfulfillment of that expectation can do some damage.

So.

Right now I am feeling through and working on a new level of unconditional with my art and what that means.

Here’s this morning’s journal entry born of that intention-

I feel guilty for the pictures I don't take.

I know better than to dismiss it as being lazy or incapable.
It all just feels like too much.
As if I want to, but I can't.
And also I can, but I don't want to.

I see photographers photographing their families so exquisitely.
So often.
And I feel the pang of a gross mix of guilt and apathy.

At the core, I'm concerned with this and what it means.

but I can't tell whether it's concern for my life or my work.

I can't and won't force it.
And so I sit.

I want to be compelled.
Irresistibly drawn, obsessed, nearly possessed, by my art.

But what if that's killing it?

What if I was right all along to feel uncomfortable with my photographer title
because it was never about the photographs.

There was just no other way.

There was just no other way.

So why this pull?
This responsibility and demand of myself to create art of life?

It's not exactly the creation part, it's more the not feeling compelled to do it that bothers me.

Part of me feels like maybe I'm just not inspired right now.
And it's winter and I'm tired and the holidays and all of the obvious shit.
We can't always be in a season of creation.
That makes sense.

And then another part of me feels like that’s desperate rationalization.

Maybe I'm just really wanting another way.

Maybe I'm just really craving to experience life through a different modality.

And the guilt for not wanting and being genuinely inspired to be taking these pictures feels like falling out of love without wanting to.

Knowing and resisting.

It’s wasted energy and also important information.

I don't think guilt has to mean, “It’s a sign I should be doing it.”
Guilt is shining a light on shame.
How do we un-shame?
How do we get more curious about why we feel like we need to do anything?

Make it okay.

What happens then when you come from a place of neutrality?

One more piece of writing-
this one I made for my fucking ear.

it’s been 3 weeks since the virus traveled to my left ear
& decided to confidently make a home for itself as if answering a prayer.

a constant ringing
a muffled clog.
everything too loud & too quiet all at once-
the most familiar experience.
it is my metaphorical life.
but this time in physical, tangible form.

I’ve always desperately wanted to put my finger on the exact point of this sensation

and now that I can, I plead for it to go away.

i push and pull
i squeeze and try to blow it away with fear of the searing pain that
always threatens to come with getting what I want.

each morning i open my eyes and for a brief moment, unsure if it’s still here.
a possible freedom from the very thing i’ve always wanted.

before the virus i would put in earbuds and listen to brown noise.
an attempt to quiet my mind and life in order to hear myself.

7 thousand ways to listen and not one of them allowing me to hear whatever it is that I want.

A taste of my own medicine and I cower
like a child finally getting what they want
and not prepared to withstand what it means.

this virus, too small to be seen but able to multiply within the living cells of a host.
maybe it will leave once I kill the part of me that invites it with conditions.
maybe if i welcome it unconditionally,
it will die of the contentment of having nothing else to prove.

Speaking of UNRESOLVED… I finished that and was like, “oh, scary.”

Contentment feels scary to me?

I don't know.

That's another episode/entry- I'm not ready to unpack that.

It is midway through January and I have not done any sort of new years visioning.

I'm not there yet.

That's okay.

I want to give permission to you if you feel like you need it, to let your personal new year start whenever the fuck you want.

The prompt for today-

Whatever it is you're struggling with,
whatever it is you’re wrestling with,
bring it to the forefront of your mind…

We're going to do a magic trick-

Okay.

And now:

Before you start thinking about or feeling into an answer or an impulse or an exploration around where to move with it…

Right before anything else, insert: “There's nothing wrong with me.”

There's nothing wrong with me for feeling other people's experiences deeply.
There's nothing wrong with me for not feeling like taking pictures.
There's nothing wrong with me for any emotion I feel.
There’s nothing wrong with me for wanting what I want,
or not wanting what I don’t.

The jumping off point is,
“There's nothing wrong or broken in me.”

Starting there is probably the biggest “life hack” you can make.
Talk about a fast forward button!
Quantum leaps-
Non-linear, quantum leaps will occur when you save yourself the swirl of questioning your soul before anything and everything else outside of you.

I hope you take that to heart.
I feel like I’ve wasted years like a scratched record skipping over the same tired spot.
I think this is the year I let go of feeling like I have to fix myself.

If this episode/entry feels incomplete it's because I feel incomplete right now and I'm going to let it be incomplete because as you know, I am working on not demanding everything I create to resolve something inside of me.

(And ironically, maybe that will resolve everything. lol. )

I want to end by sending all of my love and heart and light and everything inside of me to everyone struggling in the fires of California.

If you've lost irreplaceable family photographs, I would love to offer to help make new ones for you or create photographic stills from old home videos. If that’s something that you would like, please reach out.

Okay.
I am going to peel the kids out of bed, get them dressed, and drive to work.

Let's just keep on moving slowly and gently with ourselves, shall we?

Maybe I'll start the new year soon…