It was the end of the year and Instagram wanted to know if I was curious what my top 9 photos were for 2015. Of course I did, it sounded fun. After plugging in some information and waiting a few minutes I was treated to a collage I should have seen coming. All 9 of my most popular posts were beautiful female model friends of mine in various states of undress. I suppose I wasn’t surprised, I’m not above following how my posts are doing (though I would like to be), but I was jarred a little. While these were numerically my “best” work they were definitely not a good overview of all that had happened to me that year. I am not ashamed of any of the photos. I made and shared them because I was proud of them. But this post had done they very thing I have tried to avoid with my social media. It had curated a year down to only the enviable, only the beautiful. It had omitted honest posts about struggles I was having because they never get at much interaction. I had been dealing with the loss of a family member and a continual battle with anxiety and depression. I had been trying to find a balance between the loss of a belief system and a desire to not lose all spirituality in my life.

In swift reaction I decided to immediately write out what this situation was making me feel, and what I felt is this:

What this is, this looking at our most popular posts are, is Fun, and we should be careful that that’s all it is. It’s interesting to see which post was the most well received but it’s dangerous too. If it seeps into your head and makes you believe that what you should create it what has been the most ‘liked’ then you have changed your artistic progression from a line to a circle. Creating for you is what makes your work actually authentic or real or meaningful or any of those adjectives that imply value by definition but seem to have become twisted into meaning ‘popular’. Treasure those things you make that you like more than your audience. Hold onto that new direction that isn’t as understood as your past work but is pushing you to a new place. We’re here to live, to be us, to be kind and to create. We’re here to Love and be Loved in return, not like and get likes in return. I take great comfort in knowing that if Facebook and Instagram took my accounts away, the next day I would be creating. For me. For the people I meet. This part? This popularity part. It’s nice, but it isn’t real.

Too much information and four photos:

As a lot of you who follow me might know I suffer from rather intense depression and anxiety. I have spoken about it fairly openly in the past few years. While the response and support I have received have been heartwarming, it has not lessened the intensity of what I feel.

The hardest part about it is that I feel like two drastically different people, the one I am known to others as, and how I see myself when I’m alone. In groups I’m usually fine, or at least able to distract myself. Alone I feel worthless and without anything to offer. Alone I feel unable to reach out to people I don’t already know.

Alone I’m artistically tormented because my favorite work is documentary in nature. Honest portraits of things as they are. Everyday I see hundreds of pictures that I am too afraid to make and it kills me.

Tonight, after a day of sitting inside wishing I was some other version of myself or someone else altogether, I set out on a walk. Earlier in the night I had offered the advice to a friend that there is power in being honest about what is torturing you. Trying to take my own words to heart I set out with my camera to see if I could be find the courage to make one of the images I always retreat from.

I walked to the park at met a man named Benny. He was sitting in a wheelchair watching the sunset. He told me about his life in Portland and I made a few frames. I met Francois who is visiting from France and made a few more. I talked to a couple eating dinner under the bridge and made a few more. It was a good step out of my comfort zone but I was timid and not as present as I wanted to be.

I started the walk home a little encouraged, but knowing I had left the photos I could have made with more courage behind. As I walked the main street here in St John’s I paused to take a picture of a car.

As I was making the frame I heard someone yelling at me from across the street. A man hunched over a garbage can yelled at me “You taking pictures?! Take a picture of this!” I made the first frame shown here from across the street.

I wanted simultaneously to get closer and to leave for home. Hoping to make the most of my brief bout of courage I crossed the street and met Tim. He informed me that he was drunk and on drugs and if I wanted I could get a couple of shots of a “classic tweaker”. He was flailing, yelling things I couldn’t quite make out and barely holding still long enough to make a frame. Several times while I was shooting he told me to stop, which I did until he told me I could continue. Somewhere in several minutes of this I made the second frame shown here.

His fits of yelling were punctuated with several moments of intense calm. He told me that he didn’t know where he was going to sleep tonight, that his wife had died of alcoholism, and that he was now dying of leukemia. While calm he almost never broke eye contact. I asked him in each moment like this if I could make a photo, each time he told me no. As I could feel that things were wrapping up I asked him one last time if I could make a frame of him, the real him. He agreed and calmed from one last rage and looked right in the lens. I made the third frame shown here. He immediately shook my hand and started to walk away. As he walked I asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell me.

“Throw away your TV” he said.

Now I’m home looking at the faces of the people I met tonight. I don’t have any less depression or anxiety. What I do have are memories and photos I people of met while I felt like shit, not after I got over it. Now I’m trying to remember that the only times you can be brave are when you’re afraid. I’ve been waiting to feel better to have a life. I might not ever feel better. I might just end up with pictures and stories from days I would much rather have stayed in bed.