I don’t really know what to say about 2019. I’m not often speechless. Writing, especially about things that matter to me, normally comes pretty easily, but I’ve stared at this screen for minutes and the only thing that’s coming to me is the fact that nothing is coming to me. Let’s see where this goes.

For my entire career I’ve been naming these year end posts “Progress” but 2019 didn’t feel like a year where I was making progress. 2019 felt like a year where I was starting over. For so long, my life was on a steady trajectory, and 2019 saw that line snipped and a new path appear. Near the end of 2018 I ended a decade long relationship and on the first day of 2019 I moved to a new city. I made new friendships, deepened others, and saw some end. I dismantled things that I had long believed about myself that were not true and in the process discovered new truths that were waiting for me to uncover them. I reflected, a lot.

In 2019 I ripped so many things that weren’t serving me out at the roots, turned the soil over, and planted new seeds. To be honest, for the first time ever, I put much more energy into working on myself than into working on my career. I can’t say for certain that it effected my work as a photographer or how but I have to believe it must have and I have to hope that it did so for the better. Even if it didn’t dramatically change the photographs I took, it changed the person taking them, and I think that’s what I’ll be celebrating about 2019.

I celebrated my 32nd birthday in 2019. On that day, the words came easy and I wrote this: You get to grow something new in the death of something old if you can just manage to turn the soil over. Here is some of what grew from that turned over soil.