Folded Upon Itself

My thoughts have been all over the place today, and there’s no clean thread that connects them all. That’s as it should be, I think, because sometimes life is a series of moments with no “story” to it yet. My day was like that today. I could sit here for half an hour and figure out a convoluted way to write an entry with a clear beginning, middle, and end and some sort of moral at the end or something, but I don’t want to tonight.

Fire season is coming up, and a few weeks ago, I was debating whether to even sign up, but over the past few days I’ve become very excited to go out there again. I think a big reason for that has been that I’ve been going through many of my old fire photos and posting them on my Instagram. The process I’ve enjoyed the most has been editing them, especially cropping them, because it’s given me an outlet to tell a story. I like telling stories.

Last fire season, I remember wanting to buy a lot more supplies to make this fire season a bit more comfortable, but once fire season ended, those desires faded away. They’re back now, though, and the two big things I want to buy is a battery case for my phone and not one but two battery packs to give me that extra juice to keep my phone charged, just in case I can’t use a car charger. I need to keep my blog updated, and I have to use my phone for that; not only that, I want to take even more photos than I ever have before because, again, I want to tell stories with images. It’s fun and it’s kind of addicting. I’ll see, though. I have to make room for it in my budget.

And all this talk about photography has made me want to drive around Montana just to find cool places to photograph. In fact, with photography on the mind, I’ve been seeing the world differently. I’m noticing light a lot more now, and I’m composing shots in my head in a way that conveys some sort of feeling and/or story I want to tell. To go along with that, I’ve been focusing on feelings and tones a lot more, and I like it. For example, say I’m feeling adventurous. I’ll think about taking photographs that not only convey that but sustain that emotion over a series of photographs. That’s a cool way to think about stories that I haven’t considered before.

Speaking of stories, I finished Chapter 14 of my novel, and tomorrow I start Chapter 15. I think I’m three chapters away from finishing my book, so this is a big deal. I’m weeks away from finishing this first draft, and I can’t wait to get there because I really want to start on the rewrite. Yesterday I cracked one more story for one of my characters, and I really want to go back to the beginning and mold it into the novel. I hope it works.

Unlike last weekend, I plan to make this weekend epic. I got a lot to do and only two days to do it in. More reading, more writing, more friggin’ awesomeness. How about I stop talking and start doing? Yeah.