Hannah and Josef bring Mary and I along to a gathering of Palmtower residents. I meet Robert for the first time. We all go to Chili’s and Club Contact, where it turns out it’s K-Pop night.

Like many mornings lately I wake up and immediately go outside to feel the sun on my skin. My anxiety fades quickly.

I leave the shop in Laveen. I look at the sky.

I sit at Aftermarket.

For just a moment in the sanctuary of Nissi, I feel a comfort I can only recall from childhood. Wooden pews, a vaulted ceiling, warmly lit, stained glass windows. It is late. I am a child again, whole, safe, comforted. I feel alone in that building, but in my heart I have a family again.

Sam showers in my bathroom. I have a moment to write while I wait. I feel like I am slowing down. I am not sure what to do next.

I scroll through eight months of near daily Twitter image posts. So much comes rushing back into my mind. When I sit and reflect it can feel difficult to remember how I felt at a given time, but a handful of photos are enough to bring me right back. I feel an intensity in my head, a warmth focused at the back of my neck, above my forehead, in my shoulders and the top of my skull. I wonder what it means to connect to past versions of myself this way.  Nothing reminds me of my past quite the way a feed of images do.

I notice I have not been taking many photographs the last few weeks.

Hannah and Josef pick me up to have dinner at Casey Moore’s with Joriel. I order the Cajun Cream Linguine with Blackened Chicken and an Orange Ave Wit. I am in bed and asleep by 10:30 PM.

I lay in bed shirtless and finish editing a handful of images I shot of our new leather tote bag, the Dakota. The sun dips down below the horizon and twilight fades to black. I don’t get out of bed to turn the lights on.

I feel lost again. Why am I encountering so much resistance?

I photograph the new Dakota tote with a D850 and 70-200mm telephoto. I find it difficult to emphasize more subtle qualities of an object like a handbag through studio photography. I lack a thorough understanding of the nuances of lighting. Josef and Hannah make plans over text to go to trivia at Arizona Wilderness. I listen to Random Access Memories by Daft Punk.

I sleep through my alarm and wake up late for hot pilates with Hannah. She Waymos to my house and drives us both in my car to the Workshop while I email my resume to an interior designer I know through Instagram. Hot pilates is more challenging than I expected, and I had even expected it to be more challenging than I expected. Afterwards, we drive to AJ’s for iced tea and Discount Tire to fill up my tires. Then we meet Emily and Joriel back at their apartment for an afternoon of work and study.

I drive back to Phoenix just in time to pick Emily up and meet Hannah and Josef at AMC Esplanade 14 to watch Wuthering Heights (2026).

Erik and I cook three ribeye steaks, five burgers and a sprawl of aspargus, squash and red bell pepper. Happy Valentine’s Day to the boys.

The five of us sneak in to Modernism Palm Springs to see Kaitlyn Wolfe’s booth for Ground Floor and enjoy an open bar. Because yassss!

In the parking lot of the Palm Springs Convention Center, I facetime Emily. I look at the clouds.

Henry and I visit the Palm Springs Art Museum.

I run into a Turrell from 2005, 2-O-R. Measuring 23” x 34”, it is constructed of “Hologram and glass.” Across a particular angle of viewing, a rainbow hologram is revealed within the surface of the artwork.

After an ardous editing session, I upload nine images of the Intersect booth for Belhaus to use on its social media and Artsy webpages. I plan to study further how to better reduce inconsistent color casts from lighting on the gallery walls while photographing artwork.

With Gino assisting, I fire off a handful of photographs documenting Belhaus at Intersect Palm Springs.

We almost finish setting up the Belhaus booth under the glare of vicious white LEDs. Daniel, Gino and I snap a selfie in the reflection of Davey Leavitt’s mirror cowboy.

My favorite part of Palm Springs becomes the looming mountains to the west. I love how the clouds play among the peaks and crevices.

While loading in artwork for the Belhaus booth at Intersect Palm Springs, I capture an image of a well-worn furniture dolly.

Gino and I play tennis at a public court in Palm Springs. I have a hard time keeping up at first. I haven’t swung a tennis racket in years.

On our way to Palm Springs, we stop and fill up with gas at a Shell ten minutes past Quartzsite. Gino opens the trailer to smell the gas can.

At our soccer game, I go down hard. I land on my head. Right away I leave the field. Within five minutes, I can’t remember if I went to work that day. I don’t know what has been going on with work or relationships lately. Chelsey asks me if I remember watching the Super Bowl yesterday, but I don’t in the slightest. I try not to scare my mom, so I go on a walk with Hannah and sit in her car for a half hour talking about what happened until everything comes back to me, one bit at a time. Along with the memories come the emotional weight of recent circumstances. I feel heavy again, but I glimpse for a moment how it feels to live without this unnecessary stress. Hannah, Josef, Joriel and I go to In-N-Out after the game and sit and talk for a while.

I sit on the brown leather couch at the Ezra warehouse and type out these words. I woke up late today. Tomorrow I leave for Palm Springs with Gino. My mind is humming chaotically. I am full of unarticulated emotion.

At Hannah and Josef’s, we watch Super Bowl LX. Bad Bunny appears for possibly the best halftime show I have ever seen. We rate the commercials out of 10 and few score higher than 8. For every touchdown scored, we all do shots of vodka (except Matt and Chelsey) with pickles or lime. We fall behind in the fourth quarter and the Seahawks begin to dominate.

I meet my mom at Fixate for the 12:30 PM service. Hanna and Jorgen sit by us. We talk a bit. I take notes. After service, a man in a wheelchair, Eddy, asks me to push him to the bus stop. He says he lives near 83rd Ave and rides the bus to the church every weekend.

I sit at Aftermarket and upload the September Personal Journal to Youtube while talking to Jordan and catching up on blog posting.

I change into all black and buy a six-pack of glass bottle Modelos at Mlik and Honey on Central Ave.. I sneak them into Palabra in my black Phoebe and meet Joriel backstage while he sets up Parker’s FX3 to film By Storm’s live set for My Ghosts Go Ghost. Afterwards, I run into Daniel. We talk about Kanye’s show in CDMX, Gnuhr, the state of fashion design, running long distances and Nightgame (2025). Then we run into Quinton in the parking lot and chat for a while about his experience as 1st Assistant Editor for In Whose Name? (2025).

I show up at Otto’s shop to meet Augusta and his friend Ray. I am appointed to jump the block wall fence to retrieve a hidden key within the shop yard. We continue setting up the Gweike M3 Ultra. I drive to Circle K and pick up two gallons of purified water, a bag of Extra Toasty Cheez-its, a bag of Fritos, and a peach Liquid Death. We work far enough through the instructions to run a test cut.

I drive to Apache Junction at the last minute to join my grandparents for cake and ice cream. It is my grandpa’s 82nd birthday. I give my grandma a hug. We sit around the table and tell stories about our lives.

I go for a walk. Something about the changing of the seasons puts me back in college. As if I have the opportunity to change my life in some unknown yet significant way. New possibilities are at my fingertips. I end up at Dark Hall. I order an iced americano. I feel free. I am nervous.

I sit in the passenger seat of my own car. The last time I recall doing so was briefly on the way back from Yellowstone while Emily drove. It was not long before I was back in the driver’s seat. Now, I relax. I share with Lee a story of the last six months. We talk about performance. Phil is asleep in the backseat. We talk about using other people for validation, and to self-soothe. We talk about being misunderstood.  We talk about self-improvement with the goal of loving someone else properly. Lee speaks from experience.

I sit around a table with Phil, Lee, and a handful of other artists. We talk about James Perkins, Kid Cudi’s painting practice, the Critical Response Process and the tagline of the exhibition: The African American experience. Vi comments on how the room we are sitting feels like a production set. Eventually, I urge everyone to go outside and look at the rocks. Only Lee joins me in the parking lot.

Phil, Lee and I drive to Sedona for the [Sound and Vision](https://sound and vision sedona arts center) exhibit at Sedona Arts Center. On the way, we stop at the Chapel of the Holy Cross and shoot a handful of editorial images for Ezra Arthur.

I order Cheba Hut and Mesquite’s to 440 E Van Buren while I sit on the 7th floor with Hannah and Josef. She studies, he edits video. I fill out a list of expenses for February and edit product photos of green wallets.

Phil and I meet at Aftermarket to watch Tampopo at a phx movie club. Afterwards, Bruno discusses the beauty of amateurity, learning and the road to mastery.

I watch Otto and Augusta investigate the new Gweike M3 Ultra they ordered.

I drive to work at Ezra. Sebastian and I talk about buying Bitcoin, coding mini apps with Claude. I set up the Nikon D850 with a 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED VR andTC-20E II. I photograph green wallets for St. Patrick’s day. Sebastian and I talk about the deaths of pets, belt sizing standards and returns via Nordstrom. Otto calls and asks if I will stop by the shop in an hour.

I sit on the big white couch in my living room. Outside, the wind is blowing.  My eyes sting from shampoo.  I re-read text messages from Tuesday night and feel worse about myself.

I watch the traffic on the I-10 from the 21st floor of 440 E Van Buren St. In the room over, a man I never see assembles a dresser. Before Hannah leaves for work, we talk about our friends. I sit down at her desk and edit video. Josef sits at his desk to my left, editing video with the Knicks game playing on his monitor. I go down to the 7th floor to use the free espresso machine. I call Joriel. We talk about our plans this weekend. Eventually, I order pizza and we put our work aside to watch the end of the Knicks game, as well as the first and second overtime periods. We talk about the sound mix of live NBA broadcasts. We try to remember what we talked about the night before. Hannah comes home. We go downstairs and work on our laptops more. I ask Claude to build a GUI for converting .MOV files to GIFs. I try it, and upload a few to Are.na.

I text Hannah. I don’t want to go home.

I soak a piece of black English Bridle leather in water for five minutes and bite into it to leave an impression.

A pizza is delivered. I press the cold rim of a glass bottle up to my lips and sip cane sugar orange soda.  I am deeply lost in my thoughts, perched on concrete blocks outside the shop, the cardboard box balanced on my thigh. I look up, to my left. A dog is standing silently, watching me eat. I don’t recognize him. He appears almost like an angel. I offer him a few pieces of crust, and he lays down in the dirt beside me. A tag on his collar reads Mr. Cooper.

I wake up. I drive to Aftermarket. Gino calls and commends me for my honesty. Phil meets me at the coffee shop, I am 40 minutes late but he does not hold it against me. Danae shows me how to make a matcha, I struggle with steaming the milk. She tries on a belt we made at Ezra yesterday. I take a couple photos with the LX 100 II.

I go to Josef and Hannah’s apartment. Instead of going to Bikini Lounge, we play Black Ops III and Hannah orders Chinese food. Mare shows up. Then we order Shake Shack.  We talk about the last few months. We talk about codependency. We play video games.

I learn to use gallery-dl to scrape the pins I have saved this past month and upload them to Are.na. Turns out the process is no different than scraping Instagram. I learn to retrieve cookies directly from the browser. This is much faster than exporting them to a text file.

Four hours on the phone today. I feel sick. What have I done?

I wake up earlier than usual. Turn over, check my phone. My red light glasses are in my car. I know I will be wide awake now. I get out of bed, eventually, take a shower. Light peeks through the bathroom window, casting a gentle shape on the wall. I start to get dressed, unentangling a tee shirt from the pile of laundry ever present on the bedroom floor. Lately I find a strange comfort in wearing clothes I have slept in. Even before the day begins, my scent permeates the fabric.

I work for a couple hours in Otto’s backyard demolishing the remainder of a concrete slab. I feel alive from the intensity of the physical labor. I love how the grey concrete dust stains these Salomon RX Slides. I look for another pair and discover they are rather expensive on GOAT.

I wake up. It feels early. My mind is well-rested, my body is exhausted. I have a soccer game tonight. I check my email. The HOA of the townhome we rented in Tempe invites me to join a new online platform. There are many people, owners and long-term tenants, who live in the same units. I was only passing through: days of wandering between the towering red brick homes. The memories of those spatial sensations are not lost in the slightest, I uncover them in an instant.

We play basketball. I play well, though I am especially tired from manual labor earlier. We are all improving significantly. After basketball, we go to In-N-Out. I order a 4x2 animal style with an extra toasted bun, light salt and raw onion added, and a fry extra well. We eat. I am rather quiet tonight.

I visit Otto and Lynnsey’s house for the first time. Connor shows up. I haven’t seen him since I left for Utah. We demolish a concrete slab in the backyard and haul debris into the dumpster. It is a blessing to exhaust myself with physical labor, an outlet for pent-up anxiety.

While on a short drive, Julian and I converse over text.

Micah speaks at Fixate. I realize I take notes just like my mom, who tagged along to meet him. She sits in the pew next to me, also typing on her phone. Hanna shows up late. I am glad she came. It is nice to have a friend at church who also exists in other social circles. Micah and my mom sit on the altar steps after service and share a short conversation. Then, her and I go to Aftermarket for a few drinks courtesy of Matteo.

It is February now. I need to pay rent. I sit at Aftermarket, update the blog with a new page for the month. I eat a bagel Matteo gave me and work on the Personal Journal for September.

I drive to Emily’s house in Tempe. We talk for hours. I go home late. I don’t know when I will see her again.

I drive to Sunnyslope to visit Gino’s house for the first time. We eat salmon bowls from Sushi Friend and talk about relationships. The sun sets, the moon rises. It’s very calm and quiet here.