Crossroads

            Yesterday, May 7, would have been my father’s 72^nd birthday. As many of you know, he passed away nearly seven years ago, when he was 65. I have been thinking about him quite a bit lately, as I am at a crossroads in my life much like I imagine he was several times during his.

            He always had wanted to be an artist, a creator of photographs and of stories. He wanted to be a writer, and he was, in his earlier years. He was always a great photographer, and of course inspired me to strive to be the best one I could be. He did not consciously teach me anything about photography. But what he taught was that photographing people isn’t really about photography at all; it is about people. He loved meeting people, talking to people, capturing their smiles. When he photographed nature scenes, flowers, sunrises, etc., it wasn’t about the photography. For him, I believe it was about recognizing the wonderful and beautiful world that we have been given. Unlike me, he was a morning person, and that made it easy for him to get up and watch the sunrise, appreciating the beauty of God’s artistic canvas and creation.

            As I walked along the beach yesterday, and as I stood on the balcony this morning and watched the sun peek over my beloved Atlantic Ocean, I thought heavily about my dad, and how he always looked forward to a new day and what it had to offer.

            My parents were married in 1967, when he was 22, the same age I was when I got married in 1999. He had high hopes of becoming a globetrotting photographer and writer, and for a few years, he and my mother had some fabulous little adventures. They traveled around Montana, camping, meeting people, and even spent a summer working at a fire lookout! He took several jobs in photography and writing, as well as some small “regular” jobs here and there so that they could pay bills.

            When they started having children, they had both been in college. My father quickly realized that he needed something either very lucrative or something very steady, career-wise. He realized that his priority was to take care of his family. And that is what he did. He stopped going to school and took what was supposed to be a temporary job, learning how to repair gas pumps and other service station equipment. The job provided a steady paycheck, insurance benefits, and a sense of purpose. It was a job that had to be done by somebody, so it might as well be him to do it. For now, he probably thought, the art can wait.

            And that is where he found himself nearly three decades later.

            I don’t want this to sound like my father did anything wrong; he didn’t. His priorities shifted, and he did exactly the right thing to shift with them. He was the best father anyone could have hoped for, and his marriage with my mother lasted 42 years, ending only because of his passing. He was a provider, never letting us know hunger nor true want. I truly believe that he had no regrets whatsoever, but I also think he always thought of “what if” scenarios where he would have followed his dreams into journalism and art.

            I don’t know whether I will have children to provide for someday. That is yet to be determined. What I do know is that if I don’t follow my dreams while I can, I will always be left to wonder what would have happened if I had.

            That brings us to the current crossroads to which I alluded earlier. I have been thinking for many years what it would be like to be a writer and photographer. The photography, I’ve got. After shooting almost 60 weddings and meeting such great clients (now friends) and industry professionals, I can honestly say that photography is one thing in my life which helps me honor my father and will never go away. I expect to be photographing weddings, portraits, and nature for decades to come.

            As for the writing… I am not the greatest writer I know. I try, and I read, and that makes me better, but there is something missing. Some basics I never grasped, some foundation in the language that I didn’t pay attention to when I was young and hated school.

            I am enrolled at Georgia State University, where my bride earned a bachelor's degree two years ago (with honors, by the way; did I mention that?). Starting this fall, I am going to attend school full time, and will be working towards a degree in English, with concentration on writing.

            Please join me on this journey into the world of telling stories and documenting life in this way! It should be fun, and difficult, and frustrating, and rewarding!

Political Emotions and What To Do With Them

“He was elected; deal with it.”

“You lost, get over it.”

“Not my president!”

“Shame on America for electing this horrible person.”

I’ve heard them all, at this point. The above statements have been thrown around since Election Night. Whether your least-hated candidate won or lost, you’ve heard them too. The inherent hypocrisy in those statements, though, is distracting from your real message, but I’ll get to that shortly. You might recall a mere eight years ago, when these exact statements were hurled back and forth. It’s just that now the people are saying the opposite declarations from the ones they said back then. Same people, just on the other side of the argument now.

I get it, trust me; I get it. I can think of several people who would make a better president than the one we have chosen through our electoral process. I can also think of several people who would have probably won against Donald Trump, had they won the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary Clinton. More than I have ever witnessed previously, the voters truly voted against the candidate they did not want, rather than for the candidate they did want to win. This may seem like a semantic parallel, but I assure you there is a big difference here when it comes to your attitude about the outcome.

When someone is emotionally invested in a political candidate or a bill they hope becomes law, or emotionally invested against a candidate or legislation, it becomes very tempting, even comforting, for a person to abandon logic and reason. It becomes tempting to give in to those emotions and throw prior friendship and useful discussion out the window. This is how we come up with posts on social media that throw around clever little accusations without any substantiation. You have seen them. During the campaign season, social media and watercooler conversations were abuzz with claims that Hillary Clinton was going to take our guns, and Donald Trump was going to reverse “gay marriage,” which is slang for the historic Supreme Court opinion that marriage licenses should not be denied based on the gender (difference nor sameness) of the applicants. These fears of rights being taken away overtook otherwise intelligent people, even though, in the words of the nice old lady on the Esurance commercial, “That’s not how any of this works!” I will leave that topic for another time, but suffice it to say that almost all fears about the opposing side’s candidate taking away people’s rights are and were unfounded.

My hope is that we won’t blind ourselves with our mistrust (or with our trust) of the new administration. So many arguments I see on social media stray from the actual issues and find the participants trying to catch the others painted into a hypocritical corner. The assumption becomes if you support one politician over another, you must support everything he or she does and says. Most of us don’t agree with this sentiment, but it is somehow easy to expect it of others. We need to be more comfortable with criticizing specific actions and statements while remaining on-topic.

Being able to dissent is one of our most important rights, guaranteed by the First Amendment. One thing to keep in mind, however, is how we are giving our dissenting message, and how effective that message will be. When leaving emotion as part of the message, people tend to exaggerate their statements, which sometimes leads to overreaching blanket statements. This draws attention away from what the people are actually trying to say. Making generalizations about, for instance, the supporters of the “other guy (or lady)” alienates those supporters immediately, which causes them to make an early decision not to listen to what you’re trying to say. Many times, they will then look for a generalization to make about you and your fellow supporters of “your guy.” Obviously, this escalates quickly to an argument about each other rather than your actual ideals and opinions.

So, where does this leave us? Where are we in this reality? And what do we do about it?

Donald Trump is currently the president. Some of us didn’t want that reality, and others of us wanted that reality. However, that is the reality. It just is, whether you think he is legitimate or not. Much like 8 years ago, Barack Obama was the president even though some people said that he was illegitimate since he had not produced adequate proof, to their satisfaction, of being a citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution. It was true that he was the president, just like it is true that Donald Trump is now. The question becomes, whether you like him or not, “What, if anything, are you going to do about it?”

I am not one of those people who suggest that if you don’t like the way something is going, you just need to “get over it” and “move on.” If you don’t like it, search yourself for the reason why you don’t like what’s happening. Ask yourself if your dislike is based on facts or unfounded fears for the future. If your dislike is based on facts that you can confirm to be true, then call it out! Write about it, blog about it, video-blog about it. But do so in a way that is helpful to your cause. Arguing about it online with some guy you went to high school with might not be the best use of your energy when it comes to helping your cause. You can always write a letter to any of your elected officials, up to and including the president. Whether the letter gets read or not, I do not know, but I know that you will normally get a response from the person’s office. I know people who write to the president and their senators and representatives on a regular basis to voice their opinion and concern. The point is that there are ways that you can make your opinion not only heard, but listened to, and there are ways to do it less effectively, which are unfortunately the more popular ways, it seems, these days.

When you voice your opinion, have a suggestion in mind, and tell how you would do it better; the more specifically you do this, the better. Voicing disgust or dislike for an idea or something that is happening but then not offering a suggestion or solution is perceived as simply whining.

Marriage by the Feds

     I am a big fan of the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, and especially the last-but-not-least 10th Amendment. This amendment says that anything that is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution or its amendments, nor prohibited by it, is left up to "the States, or to the People." This means that each state will decide for itself those matters not covered by the Constitution, or we can have a national public vote to decide.

     This amendment was important at the time of (leading up to) the Civil War, because it was not specified that slavery was federally outlawed, so it was up to the States.

As with many laws and amendments, there are times when it doesn't fully make sense to do it a particular way, so another way needs to be figured out. So as to disallow any given state from putting a law into effect limiting the life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness of any US citizen (including the slaves freed when the 13th Amendment was ratified and adopted), they made the 14th Amendment. This one goes on to state that all US citizens shall be afforded the same rights in the eyes of legal matters.

     One of the many matters that is not covered specifically in the US Constitution is the matter of legal matrimony. Since it is not mentioned, this matter is left up to the States individually. But many federal and state government documents, procedures, and other matters such as taxes, in some part rely on an individual's matrimony status. This elevates the (traditionally religious) matter of marriage to a legal matter, much like many contracts that are executed in business dealings, child adoptions, automobile registration, etc.

     For many people this is an emotional issue, but for the government, it is not. They (The Supreme Court, for instance) have to look at the laws and compare them with the wording and (their interpretation of) the intent of the Constitution. It needs to be as un-emotional as possible when they are looking at it. Laws should not be made or changed based on emotion. And, according to the 1st Amendment, laws shall not be made "respecting [regarding] an establishment of religion [any religion], nor preventing the free exercise thereof [any religion]."

     So they looked at the facts. The facts are these:

• Marriage is not specified in the Constitution, so it is generally a matter left to the States. 
• Many states have decided to include all human beings, not just heterosexual humans, in being able to enter legal matrimony with the person of their choosing, regardless of gender.
• Some states have decided not to include homosexual citizens in this ... this... um ... let's say.... this particular pursuit of happiness.

     Similar to several states not giving equal rights to people of color back in the day because it was a state issue, the federal government has decided to step in and force the states to include all citizens in this matter.

     As a person whose political views lean toward libertarianism, I say great!

     As a person whose spiritual beliefs lean toward Jesus Christ, I say great! Jesus taught us to welcome all into the fold and love your fellow human as you would love yourself. He taught us not to judge someone based on what we think their sins are.

Facebook Merging

I have had two Facebook profiles for these past several years. I also have a Facebook “page” for my photography business, but two actual personal profiles. My reasoning is simple. I wanted to be completely honest and uncensored on Facebook, but I wasn't sure that I wanted clients, colleagues, and potential clients and colleagues to see the uncensored side of me. It’s not that I was in any way untruthful on one or the other profile, but just that there were sides of my personality that I wanted to remain guarded from certain groups of acquaintances. 

So I created two profiles instead of one. One of them, my main one, was for family and friends whom I knew from childhood and in the Navy. The other profile included mainly those people whom I've met since getting out of the Navy, and/or people with whom I've interacted here in the Atlanta area. 

Having more than one personal profile is against the Facebook Terms & Conditions, and I have read that if they find out that you have two they will either delete both of them or will warn you to deactivate one (and then delete them both if you fail to comply).

I conducted an online search about the benefits and pitfalls of having two profiles to separate your personal life from your business life. Most of the search results referred to the Terms & Conditions mentioned above. The more I thought about it though, the more I wanted to combine my two profiles. Most people I know have just one profile where they are friends with family, friends, clients, colleagues, co-workers, etc. and that was beginning to finally seem desirable to me. It is annoying having to log on to two different profiles. Since you can only have one instance of the Facebook app on your cell phone, I would have to go to the internet browser to check my “other” profile. Likewise, the Facebook Messenger app only works with one profile, so I'd have to check messages on the browser for the other one. 

I have been working on simplifying my life and my home these past couple years, so combining profiles just makes sense now. So I put out a message on my “other” profile (the one where clients and colleagues are friends) telling them that I would like for them to friend me on my other profile which will soon become my only profile. I am pleased and grateful that many of the people accepted this almost immediately, and many more over the next couple days. I still have some pending friend requests out there, which I'm sure they will get to eventually. 

I must say that there was an immediate feeling of relief inside when I started getting the friend notifications. I don't know if I can pinpoint why, but for some reason I just feel so much better having invited the rest of my friends over to my main profile. It’s a nervous and exciting feeling inviting people with whom you've only had a professional relationship into your real world and letting them see your true self. In the end I will be happy to have everyone in my life all on the same profile. This is a feeling that most of you probably took for granted, or possibly it’s not the same for you; maybe you long for having two profiles so that you can keep yourself guarded from certain people and groups. To you I say if you do not feel like using the existing enigma of privacy settings in Facebook, you may need to pare down your friend list so that you can be yourself and express your true feelings without fear. 

Write a Letter

            I have written a few letters to friends and family lately. This doesn't seem like it should be a big feat. But I have been living in the land of computers for a very long time now. I got my first e-mail address about 20 years ago, and since then have not really actually put pen to paper and written in the old-school ways.

I remember being in college the first time, Fall Semester of 1996, at Montana State University – Billings, sitting in the office of The Retort, which is the student newspaper. I would stay there all night sometimes, surfing the Internet, e-mailing high school friends whose email addresses I knew, and hanging out on chat rooms that I could find. I was fascinated by how easy it now was to communicate with people in distant lands like Nebraska. Back then the chat room messages weren't in real time. You actually had to refresh every few seconds to see if someone else had commented (“A/S/L everybody!”). I digress.

Anyway, I had stopped actually penning letters to my one pen pal Leah, who I had met in Spearfish, South Dakota when she and two of her friends were attending the same Christian music festival as my brother, my cousin, and I were. We were all staying at the KOA “kampground” and we met up at the onsite laundromat. Great story, actually. I'll have to tell you about it someday. Maybe.

I am a sentimental type who likes to try the old ways of doing things, and lately I've realized that for the most part, I like them better. Shaving, photographing, writing, among others. All very good blog topics. Sometime.

It’s a nostalgic and very “real” feeling, putting actual pen to actual paper. Also, I would imagine when someone opens the letter that you've actually taken the time to write him or her, they feel special. They know that you've thought about them specifically. This is much more personal and intimate than writing on their Facebook timeline, the motivation for which may be as inorganic as just having seen a post by them. You weren't thinking of them, you didn't go out of your way, you may not even have remembered that they existed, for all they know, until you came across the photo of their breakfast or cat or kid.

     So pick up a piece of paper and pick up a pen or pencil or crayon for that matter. Put the two together for five minutes and let someone know that you are thinking of them.
     Write to your friend from high school whose posts you haven't seen for awhile on your news feed.
     Write to your nephew or niece, who is being inundated with digital communication in this new age.
     Write to your mother, who will feel overwhelmingly wistful and grateful.

I picked these notecards up from Target for about $15.
Atop is one of my Pilot Metropolitan fountain pens, which also cost about $15 online.
You don't have to get fancy though; a piece of notebook paper will do!

     And for God’s sake, folks, write to your father this week. Send his letter so that it will get to him in Saturday’s mailbox at the latest. You will miss this opportunity when it’s gone. Trust me.

Memorial Day thoughts

For years I’ve seen people and businesses confuse Memorial Day with Veterans’ Day, and it’s always bothered me. In fact, many people can’t remember which holiday comes at what time in the calendar. This year though, I’ve finally seen other people speak out about the fact that they are different holidays for different purposes. When someone points out that someone else is confusing the two, some of the responses are truly baffling to me.

            “Why are you complaining about getting a discount or something for free?” they will say when a veteran points out to a restaurant offering free meals to active duty and veteran military members that it’s not Veterans’ Day and they shouldn’t treat it as such. “Gift horse, man,” is one of the actual responses I saw the other day. They just don’t get it, and I don’t know if they ever will.

            It is probably more difficult for civilians to understand, since usually that is who is offering the responses that we veterans shouldn't complain when we get something at a discount or for free on Memorial Day.  I would imagine that even some veterans don't really care about the difference. But some of us do. We care a lot.

            In the military, you see a lot of credit and accolades being given to those who you think don't really deserve it. Likewise, you see a lot of punishment being doled out to those who really didn't have any control over the situation that warranted punishment. For me, this gave me an attitude of “give credit where credit’s due” as much as possible.

            When you join the military, whether your reason is selfish like getting a signing bonus & free college or more noble like “protecting freedom” or something, you know and must understand that you are offering your life to the nation, and if you lose your life in defense of your country, that is part of the gig. There is a chance that you will make the “ultimate sacrifice” for your beloved republic. To honor those who have put their lives on the line, we have Veterans’ Day.

            As a military member, during your time in the service, you may possibly lose one of your colleagues, brothers-in-arms, in combat or some other way. Some of us lost brothers, sisters, and friends. Others of us did not lose anyone personally close to us, but we were given the distinct understanding of that being a possibility and made to understand what that means. It means that is the last thing that person will have ever done in life; lay down their life in service to their nation. No matter that person’s motivation or what else they've done in their life, the last thing they did was to die for their country.

            This is the noblest thing I can think of, and to me, these individuals deserve the highest honors. They should receive accolades more than anyone else. This is what Memorial Day means. We think of, and are grateful for, those who have died in service to … us. At most, they personally saved millions of citizens by laying down their life. At the very least, they heard the call of the country and answered it, and that was the last thing they did. For this they deserve a special day.

            “What’s the big deal?” many people say to us. We care about the difference between Memorial and Veterans’ Day, and we say so. We call out companies and businesses that capitalize on Memorial Day under the guise of “honoring our veterans” and we mention on social media that we don't want people to thank us for our service on Memorial Day. They ask, “What do you care? What does it hurt to thank a veteran on Memorial Day?”

            Well, to us it means you are taking the focus off what is important, and what is special about this day. It means you are lumping us all in together. It means you are not giving credit where credit is due. Yes it is true that we volunteered to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, up to and including with our lives. But we didn’t die. We didn't end up making the ultimate sacrifice. Someone else did. Thousands upon thousands of servicemembers have died in service to this nation (over a million if you include the time before WWI), and these are the people who deserve the respect and thought on this day.

            This is why we living veterans don't like it when we are lumped into the Memorial Day reverence. It feels like a slap in the face to those who truly deserve the respect and thanks.