Tatramajjhattatā

The new year has arrived, and we are anchored down in Chula Vista, California... which sounds so strange to write down. This was certainly not something we had planned heading out six months ago.  I have done a horrible job writing on the road, and an even worse job writing once we fell off the road, but it was a definite plan to hunker down somewhere for the winter, California just wasn't on our list of options, because part of the point of this journey was to escape here, if only because of the gas prices.

Life takes us places. Rarely do we have much control over that. I don’t feel like we should have any stress or judgement or anything else around it. No matter what you want or plan for or work towards, the universe generally stops you and gives you what you need.We came down here for some functional dental work in the very well documented financial break of Tijuana, Mexico, thinking we would stay with grandma for a week or two, but we quickly realized that grandma wasn’t getting the attention or care that she needed at 94, so we found ourselves called to spend more time here. It wasn’t an easy decision with the family, but it was an easy decision to spend more time with grandma. Now instead of feeling like this or that Christmas might be the last time we see her, we see her everyday, watching her mental and physical ebbs and flows.

We set out on the road June 1st with a vague plan, but pretty much the entire time out there it didn’t feel right to me, and I’m not sure why. Not that it felt wrong, or that it wasn’t what we expected. Something just felt ….. off, just about everywhere we went. I, of course, am not the best at articulating feelings like that, so I just felt it the best I could. We went to some beautiful places, that I personally feel like we didn’t truly appreciate, and we will go to a lot more beautiful places with different heads. I have a tendency to just keep my head down and keep going, but our time on the road felt very rushed, like there was always a deadline or agenda, and that never allowed any of us to just be where we are. That made me feel quite lost most of the time. 

Even the posts I did do on the road were written over days in different locations, during brief moments of calm in the chaos and going. I was never able to strike a balance between being present with my family and taking time to process all that into words and photos, forget going through video footage and editing. Even now, I have an overwhelming desire to go off into the woods by myself for a couple days. It wasn’t difficult to put my creative drive on the shelf to be wherever we happen to be, but the actual work is personal, if that makes any sense.

One thing that I know was silently looming over my head on the journey was how much work I still had to do organizing and sorting through all my photos and files. The plan was to get a platform solidified at the start of the journey, but all of my creative preparation was put way back on the list behind all of the practical preparation. So, right now has been a great opportunity to finish all of that up, which there is still a lot to do, but I've finally got the time to breathe and figure it all out.

The biggest hurdle has been to switch my website from Wix to Hostinger, at a fraction of the price, but there's a lot to move around and code to figure out, which has been a primary focus this last month. Mainly moving my blog, since Wix makes it impossible to move your site. I manually c/p'd every little thing, bit by bit, into this old blog. That took days and resulted in a ton or formatting errors, which I spent another couple days fixing, cursing Wix under my breath with every click. 

On top of that, I've had more time to wrap my head around transitioning my work into more of a healing journey, to go with the Kambo training, so I'm restructuring the site around that, and making it more about our journey as a family. This also involves getting all our phones synched up with platforms that make them readily accessible, because one thing I discovered pretty quick on our journey is that I didn't take many photos lugging my 5d around; most of the living journey snaps are on our phones. Don't even get me started on the dash cam footage, and the action camera that I accidentally abandoned about halfway through our journey. I realized that there were certain things we need, like a gimbal, but they don't really fall into our budget, so my creative mind lost interest in having that extra camera, which means most of the videos that were recorded were also on my phone, creating an even bigger storage and transfer problem. This post suddenly got very technical, but I have nightmares about this stuff. What I don't want to say is that the action camera isn't great, it was affordable, and the dash cam is great, but the brand stamp won't go away, even when I turn it off. My 5d is getting bigger and heavier every time I pull it out, but I'm still not sure why I haven't shot any video on that, aside from having an even bigger gimbal and storage problem. 

At the end of the day, while we do have our silly issues, including having some trouble connecting with people in San Diego, most would agree that there are far worse places to be right now. Most of the country is frozen solid, and we're out here grumbling when it gets below 60. There are obviously far greater things going on than the weather, but things are a bit easier to figure out when we can leave the house whenever we want and it's usually sunny out. Things are actually quite beautiful, and writing on this blog feels so much more comfortable than writing on the website, probably because I was here for the better part of a decade before I switched to the new format. It feels a lot easier here to just rant about how I'm feeling, instead of "official" website blog stress, where everything needs to be well thought out and important... ish.  With the integration of the website posts here, this blog looks more like the evolution of a soul that the original idiedatbirth blog was, and I hope that comfort will translate to more casual posts across all mediums.

The time here has also meant more music, which is another thing I felt was missing. I had the opportunity to shoot a dear friend's show on my little mountain, which is more like an authentic Irish pub comedic debacle, and that really sparked something in me. Meanwhile, my mom randomly sent me a dulcimer, so I've been learning a bunch of songs with that sound. Send me a fiddle, mom! We need more people in our lives that spark, and we are still searching for community that all spark each other. I hereby promise to post more than once a month, or three months. 

Happy New Year, all you beautiful souls!