The Absence Explained

After months behind the camera, it's time to start writing essays again

At least it took seven months to break that New Year’s resolution.

I’m not the type who approaches the turn of a calendar year as an opportunity for a clean slate. I have goals in life, but they’re more of the big picture variety and without a specific timeline.

Perhaps that’s because my birthday falls in mid-January, and I know any food/libation related resolutions likely will go out the window just 17 days after the year begins. (“Dry January” is not something that happens here, especially after going through the gauntlet of December family birthdays and other holiday activities.)

But this year, after two years of Covid-related next-to-nothing on the freelance front, I broke my “no resolutions” rule with a silent vow to return to writing at least weekly in this space. The goal was two-fold; I needed to find time to write for me — not for some shadowy figure known as “the man” — and at the same time I hoped to build on my relatively small subscriber base.

For a time, it worked. I wrote 14 “Stage Dad” essays and published them from April to the end of June. In 2022, I’ve posted essays on music, education, mental health, childhood memories, school shootings, football, creativity, and visual storytelling. The experiment was working; the balance of one for them, one for me gave focus to my freelance work. The subscriptions trickled in an upward motion.

And then, at the end of June, the posts just stopped. Why?

I’ll answer your question with a question: Have you ever been stuck? Not in neutral, but in a “driving with the emergency brake on” sort of stuck?

This is not new, but I write to process. Sometimes I share what I write and sometimes I don’t (cue disbelief by numerous family members at the second half of that statement). Sometimes things seem like they’re coming at me so fast that I’m unable to process. Writing becomes a series of “Type sentence. Delete. Type three words. Delete. Wash, rinse, repeat.”

The noise that surrounds us doesn’t help. And given the level of uncivilized discourse in this country, chiming into the social media void with opinions on anything and everything makes limited sense these days. (Note: The closeness between opinions and assholes has never been narrower, but that’s just what I think.)

The primary reason I’ve been stuck is that things have been really busy on the business front, for which I’m grateful. I knew it was coming, thank goodness, and tried to prepare for it by writing and scheduling posts early on Substack to keep my resolution. After two years of making next-to-no money due to Covid, from May to mid-July I shot more photos for clients than I did in 2020 and 2021 combined, including:

• Six performances of Metropolitan School of the Arts' spring production. (Go here to see those photos, or stop by my Facebook photography page.)

• Five multiple day conferences in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

• A one-day meeting in D.C.

• A large evening event in D.C.

• Headshots for a local business, a nonprofit organization, and a musical theater camp.

• A high school graduation ceremony, two artist showcases, and two summer intensive performances.

• And… six concerts for Americana Highways (The Chicks/Patty Griffin, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, John Hiatt & The Goners, American Aquarium, The Band of Heathens, and Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit.) See the reviews in The Music Diaries section of this website.

Five features and two columns also were published in national magazines during this time, as was a fascinating two-part conversation (here and here) with Ed Jurdi of the Band of Heathens. I’ve also been working on another feature and column that are due next week.

So that’s why the resolution I resolved not to make was broken. Good reason, I think, as things are looking brighter from a business standpoint than they have in more than two years.

Also, when it comes to resolutions, six months is not bad for me. It’s reasonable that my brain would get clogged given I haven’t had time to think, much less write.

But get ready. A lot is bottled up in there.

Recent Magazine Articles

If you’re interested, check out these recent magazine stories. Topics range from schools moving to clean energy, the challenges of the digital divide in low-income and rural communities, and the ways physiologists are studying how organisms are responding to climate change. Just click on the link at the start of the description to read them.

Let the Sun Shine In (August): School districts are starting to look at solar power as a viable alternative as they struggle to deal with skyrocketing energy costs—the second largest expenditure after personnel—crumbling infrastructure, and increased pressure to address their role in climate change. Today, more than 7,300 schools serving 5.3 million students utilize solar, an 81 percent jump over the past five years. Written and photographed for American School Board Journal (ASBJ), the magazine of the National School Boards Association.

Survival of the Fittest (July): As scientists warn of the devastating effects of climate change, physiologists are studying how organisms are responding and how that will impact human and animal populations. In the process, they are moving away from tried-and-true research models. Written for the American Physiologist Association’s magazine, The Physiologist.

Vital Connections (June): The mad scramble to mitigate the digital divide and institute virtual learning was seen in school districts across the U.S. at the start of the pandemic. But the problem was particularly acute in low-income and rural communities, especially those with large numbers of Native American students. Written and photographed for ASBJ.

You can see more of my 2022 magazine work here.

And Finally…

Anything is Possible, a magazine article I wrote on an arts education program in Texas' Aldine Independent School District, received a 2022 Bronze EXCEL Award from the SIIA AM&P Network In late June. The timing was serendipitous. One year to the day of the awards, I was in Aldine reporting on the story.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with new posts soon.