Hello. I think we’re meeting here as two very different people than we were before. My last post here was in September of 2019, which literally feels like an eternity ago. The irony of that post is not lost on me, and it still stings to look at, much like sanitizer in a papercut. I’m sure you understand.
Anyway, what’s to be said that hasn’t already been said? Frankly, not much. I don’t see much point speaking of the ~unprecedented times~ we find ourselves in because I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. I don’t have anything productive to add here so I won’t even try. Time has passed and things really are different now. Maybe the one thing worth mentioning is that I have less to say now than I ever had before. Yet here I am!
How about a little update on me: I am approaching my 28th year. I graduated from university last year. I left my job of nearly 7 years and started a new job a month later. The timing there was truly divine, but I think it was heavily influenced by some prayers by my grandmother. She’s doing okay, and she’s moved into our secondary suite recently which is awesome because she’s such a warm light. Despite the stability of my schedule, I’ve been taking fewer photographs, and I’ve been wasting my time more. That’s something I’m hoping to change. I’m doing more things for me, but I think the things I’m doing are for my shitty side. I’m working on changing that (and by that I mean I’m doing the bare minimum in the self-improvement department).
a relatively recent photo of me in White Rock wearing a wonderful San Poncho rain coat.
How have you been? I hope you’ve been well. I hope that you’ve learned about your own resilience, and found some things that make you happy. I hope you’ve had the chance to reconnect with your loved ones, and found some things that you find joyful. It’s been such a difficult time, and the difficult-ness warps and mutates and grows, don’t you find? It’s different but the same, but bigger and more complex. I hope you have found the strength to endure it.
I always hesitate to post here, because I feel like I need to create something profound and innovative every time, but that’s literally never been the case when I’ve posted here before. I don’t think anything on this blog is groundbreaking, but I do think that it is (or could be) enjoyable. I’m realizing now that just sharing something I enjoy or something I think that you might enjoy could be enough, so that’s something I’m keeping at the forefront moving forward. Because at this point, I think it’s time for things to get moving forward.
It took me some time to get here though. I find myself in the company of the Joy-Thief quite often lately, especially in the past year or so. When I was younger, my aunts used to share ghost stories from the motherland, and the one that I remember most was about a woman who woke up in the middle of the night with a demon sitting on her chest. The demon stared at her in the dead of darkness and she couldn’t move, no matter how much she wanted to or how scared she was. She was stuck in place until she fell back asleep.
I feel like the Joy-Thief is like that demon when I look around my little room with all of my hobbies looking back at me, but I can’t move or act. Sometimes the Joy-Thief holds my arms at my sides when I see a scene I want to photograph. Sometimes the Joy-Thief keeps my phone hostage when I think about reaching out to a friend after coming up with a project that I want to pursue. I hear the Joy-Thief whisper, sometimes shout at me, telling me there’s no point because it won’t be any good, that no one cares, that no one wants to see it. The Joy-Thief loves to share things with me though, loves to show me all the things I wish I could have done. It’s cruel and I think that’s exactly how they intend it. They taunt me by showing me the most beautiful things, and tell me that it’s my fault that I am where I am, that I should have started sooner, but now that I haven’t, I can’t start at all. At its worst, the Joy-Thief has buried itself inside my head and has sat there for months, even years, radiating a paralytic.
Writer’s Rendition of “Joy-Thief“, 2021.
As I grew older, it became clear that the demon that woman saw that night was a sleep paralysis hallucination at work but it’s easier to think about my struggles with executive functioning as this external thing because maybe then I can conquer it, but the reality is that it’s me and always has been. I know that I hold myself to an impossible standard that paralyzes me, and I see it exemplified by this blog, and my Sisyphean effort to keep it going. I would like to afford myself some grace here, but I don’t really know how to be easy on myself after all this time. Maybe that’s the perfectionism. I’m choosing to blame it on the Joy-Thief. Please bear with my delusion as I try to wring the life out of this demon by throwing fear to the wind. I don’t think things will be good for the first while, or for some time, but I think it could be important for me to just try.
Over the years, I have written many versions of something like this, and I’ve always held off on posting this because sometimes I view these sorts of dialogues as cringy, but when I’ve posted things like this in the past, some people have resonated with it. So while I do very much view this post as cringy, I’ll post it anyway, just in case you might find some solace here. I guess I am about on schedule to do so, as it’s been about 4 years since the last time I did.
yes, i did come up with the term photo dump in 2014.*
Anyway, consider this a hand reaching out to you. Consider this your sign, too, to start (even if it is for the umpteenth time). Consider this a whisper saying that you can do it, and that I promise it’s worth it even if you think it’s no good, and that I care, and that I want to see the things you make.
With love, always,
reema
*this is a joke.