That 2020 Feeling
December 31, 2020There’s an upside-down world feeling that you get in the ocean when you and nature aren’t seeing eye to eye. It goes into three stages: realizing how out of control you are, the importance of doing everything you can to protect yourself, and then holding on tight. You don’t even have to be in the ocean for that feeling, you could simply be alive during this 365-day whirlwind. The photos I’m sharing have that swing and miss quality, 2020 in a photographic nutshell.
In an effort to keep this from becoming a totally depressing monologue, here’s a story that I couldn’t quite get to fit anywhere else this year. I think in this blog, it works (stay with me, it all ties together).
One morning when I went to leave for a shoot, I opened my car door and saw a spider web. Questionable, yes, but no culprit to be found. I went to the shoot and then when I was getting ready to leave, felt an overwhelming sense that something was watching me as the hair stood up on my neck. Then I saw it, a spider as big as a saucer a few feet away that had managed to crawl into my car. The spider jumped towards me - which sent me into full-chick mode and caused me to let out the girliest horror scream imaginable. I opened all the car doors in hopes that it would leave. Thinking I was in the clear, I started my Toyota, only to look in the rearview mirror and see the spider sitting on it.
Leaping out, I devised my damsel-in-distress plan. Spotting two guys down the street, I called out that I needed help. They came up, armed with slippers and remarked, ‘Oh shit! That is a big one’ (insert me feeling validated about being a pansy). A few moments later one of the guys whacked it, then whacked it again saying, ‘Boom! Double-tap.’ Lesson learned: it’s always good to exercise Rule #2: The Double Tap. I’ll keep them in mind for my Zombie apocalypse squad.
If I look at that story with a glass-half-full mentality, I could say it has been a year to appreciate the weird. Like laughing about how you can go into a bank wearing a bandana and not arouse suspicion. How jokes about “killing the mother” were suddenly socially acceptable in reference to sourdough. While I didn’t develop a sourdough-making-bank-robbing habit, it did make me realize that yes, life can be a live-action satire ala Mel Brooks.
Frankly, what has happened has been beyond challenging. Thoughts and prayers to those who have lost loved ones during this time. I hope you have people in your life that can keep you in the light when everything else is in a topsy-turvy cycle. Cheers to 2021, hopefully the washing machine will stop spinning and we can all get our bearings again. Always remember, you don’t need a Zombie apocalypse to apply Rule #32: Enjoy the little things.
You Funk me right round, baby, right round
Dear reader that catchy closing line is under construction as I don’t want to be Funked around or it may endure the test of time, stay tuned, dun dun dun
