Went on my first walk of the week yesterday on the prowl for a praying mantis, but I found this beautiful ladybug instead. I like how serendipitous life can feel sometimes, how the universe gives you something you didn’t expect but realized you needed all along. I needed to go on that walk yesterday. I needed to take my time on the creek bank and to go slowly as I scanned the world around me. I found those two ducks from last week in the same spot and took more photos of them. One of them didn’t look well, so I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with it. Maybe she’s pregnant? I’m not sure. I also found nature at its gnarliest:

I asked a friend what was happening and she said it looked like a fly eating a mayfly, and I said, “cool!”

I hope to find a praying mantis soon. For now, that’s my bucket shot, and that has given my life a meaning I need right now.

As I sit down to write this, there’s an active and loud thunderstorm outside, and it sounds beautiful. The lightning lights up my window every few seconds and then the crackle of thunder roars in the distance. I love thunderstorms. I love how powerful they feel. If the world ends, that’s how I would like it to be: loud and powerful.

Every now and then, I have the urge to burn bridges. To live with a clean slate. To start fresh. I had another one of those urges during this mini-vacation, but I didn’t act on it. Not yet, at least. I’m caught between my impulsive nature and my desire for a more rational mindset, and I think this conflict is what hurts me the most. It’s why I feel depressed a lot, I think, why I can’t control my anger sometimes, and in turn, my mouth. I say things I wish I never said, but once they’re out in the open, I can’t take them back. I can’t rewind time and start again. Life is not a video game, no matter how much I wish it were sometimes. I don’t know what to do about my nature, but at least I can listen to the rain fall and watch the sky light up with electricity.

Death Valley recorded 130°F temperatures over the weekend. It wasn’t as hot here yesterday, but it was hot nonetheless. I spent the day inside in my air conditioned home and played video games, vegged out on lots of food, and otherwise spent life lazily. I’m doing the same today. I want to turn off all the devices I own that send me notifications because too many people from work are contacting me for help. I’ll be back tomorrow. Chill out.

One of my favorite things recently has been spending time in Lightroom editing my photos. My photos are nothing to cry home about, but I love tweaking this setting and adjusting that curve until I come away with something I think looks good. It’s an art form, a new way to express my creativity, and I love it. Now to ignore my depression because it’s kicking in and I don’t like it when it does.

I played The Last of Us Part II last night after eating half a dozen vegan burritos and downing four amber ales. In the game, I killed dogs sent to kill me and then their owners as I searched house after house for supplies and clues to where my friend went. I flashed back two years and spent time with my mentor and realized this was all his fault. His death is on him. The world is messy. It can’t be all sunshine and rainbows. Life has radicalized me against those who think this way.

I haven’t worked on my book in weeks, and I wonder if I even want to be an author. I haven’t gone for a walk in a few days. Trying to take one good photo a day is burning me out, so now I take pictures of my TV, a screen I look at for hours a day. For many days, my life is my TV, and is there nothing more American than that? I don’t go to work today or tomorrow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I spend them indoors illuminated by the blue light of my OLED god.

I reactivated my Instagram account last night and posted some of the photos I’ve taken for this website. I have a love/hate relationship with social media, and I was drunk enough last night to think it a good idea to return to one. That terrible beer with a skull on it? It’s grown on me. It’s still terrible but the 9% alcohol content helps. I had planned to return to both Instagram and Facebook once school started because many of my co-workers use Messenger for their communication with each other, but I think I’ll skip Facebook for now. Instagram is simpler, but it’s still owned by Facebook.

Is it just me or is it mind-numbingly difficult to be a moral human being in the times we live in? I disagree completely with how Facebook has dealt with viral misinformation and that it helped the Russians interfere with the 2016 presidential election, but Facebook owns Instagram, a service I really enjoy, so it’s tough to not be caught in its grasp. I hate Google for many of the same reasons and then some. I don’t like how they track everyone on the web for the sole purpose of collecting as much data as they can about us so they can then sell it off to advertisers and other companies. But I love YouTube and I love all the talented creators posting videos on it. It’s a great resource yet I feel morally conflicted to use it. And now there’s Apple and their monopoly of their app store. Epic is taking them on in attempt to loosen their grip over iOS and iPadOS, which is great, but Epic also isn’t infallible.

It’s hard to have a stance in anything. I’m for green energy but at what cost? Instead of burning coal and ruining the environment, we dig for resources by exploiting human labor. I’m vegan for many reasons, one of which is that I think whatever force powers my life is the same force that powers a cows life or a chicken’s life or a small insects life. But the modern economy depends on fossil fuels and on other stuff that hurts the environment anyway. It’s tough choosing a side when all the options have consequences I’m against. All that is to say that I’m out of beer, and I want more.

I woke up this morning hungover and hungry. I bought another pack of beer with a skull on it, and it was terrible. School starts up in about a week and a half, and I’m not looking forward to it. Teachers and students are all making their way back on campus and I’m nowhere near ready for them yet. Earlier this week, the governor updated his mask mandate to include schools, which threw everyone on our staff and all the parents of our kids into a tussle. I’ve been wearing a mask all week, and you know what? I don’t like it. It fogs up my glasses and makes my beard sweat. But I’m still going to wear it. Apparently, a parent of a student tested positive for the virus and school hasn’t even started yet, so who even knows what’s going to happen in the long run.

It’s Saturday, and I’m headed off to work for a few hours before my mini-vacation next week. God knows I need it.

I went for my first walk of the week. I wasn’t expecting anything special, but when I looked out across the creek, I saw these ducks relaxing on the water. I hung out with them for a bit and took a few pictures, but my session with them ended early when I ran out of memory on my SD card. I only have the one, and I figured that’s a good enough reason to invest in another one. I like how much easier it is for me to leave the house than it had been before. One of my goals had been to expand my walls beyond the physical ones of my home, and I think I’m succeeding. It’s a slow journey.

For the past few years, I’ve been following Craig Mod, a writer, photographer, and walker based in Japan. What attracted me to him was how he was living the type of life I wanted to live. He would walk hundreds of miles across Japan, take beautiful photographs, and later write about his journey. He would talk to people and learn about the land and eat new food and otherwise absorb the world in a way I wanted to do, too. Last year, he wrote this essay about his quest for pizza toast that has stuck with me since I read it. I’ve had this crazy dream to walk across America and do something similar to what Craig does, but I don’t know if I have what it takes. But there’s something about walking, photography, and writing that appeals to me so much. I wonder if I’ll ever get to do a long walk like he has done, something in the 500-1,000 mile range. Maybe one day.

It was a cold and cloudy day, and I spent a majority of it indoors. I skipped another workout because of my back, and as I sat on my couch and watched another episode of One Piece, I felt unaccomplished and lazy. “You should do yoga,” a friend of mine told me yesterday. “It’ll help with your back.” I said that I should, that I have Beachbody On Demand so I have access to quality yoga videos, but I didn’t. Instead, I watched an old man yank on Luffy’s outstretched neck and help him pull himself up from the water. Luffy then rejoined the fight and defeated the super strong fishman. I cheered and felt happy.

“I’m not a young man anymore,” I told my friend. “I can’t push through the pain anymore. I have to listen to my body.” My back continues to hurt, and I think I will take the week off from my workouts. I asked for next Monday and Tuesday off from work, and I’m going to spend those days relaxing. The weather should hit the high 90s early next week, and I’m hoping to drag myself out of my house and go to the river or the lake. I haven’t walked for a few days, and I miss it.

Sat down to take a breath in my office and wondered how much time I had left before school started. I looked at my calendar and realized it was still on July. I flipped it over to August and noticed the “Welcome Back!” message, and all I felt was dread. “All the teachers are coming back,” a coworker told me. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I miss the kids more than I do the teachers.” She laughed and said, “Me too. The teachers are just so needy.”

I’ve spent the last week taking down one computer lab and refreshing another. My fingers are sore from plugging and unplugging cables, and I’m tired from lugging desktops and monitors from one building to another. There’s a certain sense of accomplishment, though, when everything is ready and I push the On button on two dozen desktops and see them all spark with life. I’ve been at this job for six years, and I continue to feel joy when the machines I’m in charge of hum happily in the background. I can’t wait to see the kids use them.

Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate last night, and I felt the same vibe when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination twelve years ago. Four years ago, many of my coworkers and friends in Montana voted for Donald Trump to be president, a stark contrast from twelve years ago when my coworkers and friends voted for Barack Obama in California. All the pollsters and pundits predicted a Hillary Clinton win in 2016, and all the pollsters and pundits predict a Joe Biden win this November. I don’t know if I trust anything they say, but in my characteristically contradictory nature, I subscribed to the New York Times last night for the first time in my life. Other than unlimited access to their reporting, I wanted access to their crossword and their vegan recipes. Like with anything else, I’ll see how it goes.

Like I feared, the pain in my lower back has impacted how I spend my time. It hurts to get out of bed, it hurts to stand up from my seat, and it hurts to bend down or twist to the side when I’m standing. But I’ve been here before. With enough rest and time, the pain will fade until it no longer hurts. Can the same be said about wearing masks?

Over the past couple of days, I’ve noticed more and more people not wearing them inside grocery stores with signs on their doors that mandate them. People are brazenly and shamelessly defying common sense and altruism for what? A twisted sense of patriotism? Of liberty? Of not wanting to be muzzled? At this point, I’m tired of this. Yesterday I received a package of more masks for me to wear, and I’m going to wear them. I believe in their effectiveness, and I want to do my part to ease the pain this godforsaken virus has caused and will cause. Because like the rest of the world, I want this to be over sooner rather than later.