1. I don’t know what’s worse. Swatting a giant moth in your house, splattering it everywhere, and then having to clean it up? Or swatting a giant moth and thinking you’ve killed it without knowing where it went? Then it’s like a double surprise when you find a giant dead moth in your shoe or somewhere else a week later. That is the hell I am currently dealing with. UPDATE: I found it the day I published this blog in the corner of a window sill, it has since been flushed.
2. While walking to my car after leaving a store a woman heading in and said something out loud to me. I thought she said ‘you look like the coolest guy ever.’ Surprised I stopped and politely asked her to repeat that. She said ‘it looks like the coolest sky ever’ about the clouds. We talked for a moment and then she left. Thankfully I didn’t say something foolish like ‘yes I am the coolest guy ever.’
3. It never dawned on me just how many people have likely never been up close to a lighthouse. When visiting Nobska in Falmouth I watched as every other person who visited while I was there went over to the entrance to the light and tried to open it, as if lighthouses are left unlocked. Every, single, one. By the end, it was pretty funny.
4. A trip to the supermarket was insane from the jump. I hadn’t even made it all the way inside when a screaming match was all around me. From what I gathered a very large man had grabbed a container of danish and was eating them in the bakery section near the front entrance. A female customer saw this and called him out saying he needed to pay for his items before eating them, and that he appeared to be trying to leave first. The man screamed at her that he had diabetes and was going to pass out if he didn’t eat them. An employee came over to diffuse the situation. He thanked the woman who left and got the man a motorized cart to ride instead of pushing a regular cart. The rest of my time in the store was very mundane because it easily peaked with that craziness before I’d even made it all the way inside.
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| It might be AI but this is not far off from what happened. |
5. A friend went this week on a fishing trip out around Minot’s Ledge Light off of South Shore Massachusetts. We’re both huge lighthouse fans and this was a photo trip that squared us as I had been lucky enough to visit Point Gammon Light on the highly secure Great Island on Cape Cod. To make up for the jealousy I felt over his awesome adventure I took my camera and headed out. I ended up in Falmouth at the Knob and also Nobska Lighthouse. In true ‘dedication to the craft’ fashion I managed to stand on railings that were so unsteady that if my weight had shifted a little I’d have gone down and broken something. In the end, the great photos, and risking life and limb for them, didn’t soothe my jealousy over my friend visiting Minot.
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| Risking life and limb for a good photo |
6. As the sun starts to rise later in the morning I find myself driving in the dark to work a few times a week. That means more of a chance of running into wildlife. It’s typically rabbits, squirrels, maybe a coyote, and sometimes deer. Today it was a deer. In a fun moment, I spotted a young male deer on the right side of the road. He had some nice antlers. My thought was do I stop to try to get a photo. Then as he stared me down as I approached I feared he might dive in front of my car, or charge it, so I left him with no photos and the deer staring me down.
7. After nearly 4 years I’ve finally crossed the threshold where I can have paid advertisements on my podcast. Now, just because I can doesn’t mean I’ll immediately accept any ad that comes my way. In fact, I’ve already turned one down. It was a Bible and Constitution podcast. I figured that content doesn’t jive with my fun Gen-X nostalgia podcast. Am I wrong?
8. The perfect combination of fun and also feeling old is waking up the next morning after running and playing with my 5-year-old niece at my mother's the previous afternoon. The running was fine, it was more the carrying her on my shoulders for 20+ straight minutes while she controlled me like Ratatouille. But neck soreness aside those types of moments mean more than anything, especially knowing that someday I won’t be able to carry her around like that. That just means that maybe when I’m old she’ll push my wheelchair around, or use me as a bowling ball to knock things over. Who knows?
9. I am a creature of habit. I know this. However, I think it goes far deeper into my subconscious. This manifests a lot in the places I go to take photos. In a scenario that happens far too often, I choose a place, seemingly at random, to go get some photos. Then the next day in my social media memories photos of that same place from years past pop up. It just happened again this week with a sunset shoot at Stage Harbor Light in Chatham.
Stage Harbor Light in Chatham
10. Speaking of that sunset shoot at Stage Harbor. It was far more impactful than I could have thought. I walked the mile over soft sand out to what is a ‘headless’ lighthouse, meaning it has no lantern. With my trusty selfie stick in tow, I got some great photos. The impactful part comes two-fold. One, I had not been out to that lighthouse since July 2020, two months before I quit drinking. Two, on the way back in the twilight I walked slower until I finally stopped. I sat up in the dunes and played some Hawaiian music on Pandora, enjoying the scenery and thinking of my Uncle Eric who passed in January 2023. The 2nd song that was played was a song titled Pele Kane by a band named Maunalua. It is a song that reminds me of him as he used to play it a lot at family gatherings. It was more emotional than I expected as it felt like he was letting me know he was there in the dunes with me at that point.
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