About a decade ago I was in a pretty bad accident. A few cracked ribs and the worst concussion of my pretty concussed life. I had lost the ability to sit at a computer, to read, to do the alphabet, to concentrate on anything longer than a few minutes. It was humbling and, having lost all the things I was using to distract myself from myself (the writing, the reading) I was going a bit mad.

A friend of mine, no doubt sick of hearing me bitch about it, gave me a camera and gave me a half hour class on how to work it. She then gave me a simple instruction: Go Make Art With This. Take pictures. When you can, write a sentence for each photo. Before long, you’ll be writing again. And until then, you’ll shut the hell up.

Love her for that.

I am by no means good at this. I am by no means a content creator. There are new phones that can do a million better things than I can with a DSLR and there are editing suites that put the ten year old version of Corel that I use to shame. None of that matters.

The camera, more than anything else, taught me how to see, and be in, The Moment.