Grounded and honest

Five years before the world stopped, I had a life I was still learning how to live. COVID didn't just pause things, it rearranged them. Now I'm calling this Step Zero: the place you stand before the first step, where everything familiar feels slightly foreign. Relearning my music, my videos, this blog, not from scratch, but from somewhere stranger than scratch. Like finding an old journal written in your own handwriting and having to remember who that person was.

Yesterday I pulled everything out. Photography gear, video equipment, SD cards, cables, the physical evidence of years I hadn't sorted through since before everything changed. I wasn't organizing it neatly. I was looking for something else. Memories, maybe. A clue about who I was when I was making things. I built this studio space during the pandemic thinking it would solve something, thinking if I had the right place to sit, the creativity would follow. But standing there with all this gear spread across the table, I realized I wasn't trying to get back to who I was five years ago. I was just trying to understand why I ever wanted to make anything at all. That's Step Zero. Not a return. Just a question mark.

I don't know yet, and that's okay. Step Zero isn't about having answers. It's about admitting you've lost the thread and being willing to find it again, even if it takes longer than you want. The gear sitting on that table represents years I can't get back. The studio I built during the pandemic was supposed to fix something I couldn't name. But standing there yesterday, I realized I'd forgotten why I even loved making things in the first place. Maybe that's the real work now. Not rebuilding. Just remembering how to want it.