Many years ago, I got a message from a friend who had just gotten her first digital camera. She said she’d long admired my photography and thought of me as a photographer, but she couldn’t think of herself as a “real photographer” because she was using a digital camera and digital tools. She acknowledged the mental acrobatics because she also knew I was using a digital camera and digital tools, and yet she still thought of me as a “real photographer.” Imposter syndrome at its worst.

I got my first 35mm point-and-shoot Kodak shell camera when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. My dad, also a photographer, helped me learn to load and unload film. He showed me how to take it in and fill out a developer drop at the local market. Then he sat with me through my first few batches of photos and told me how to improve the framing, line of sight, depth of field, rule of thirds, and so on. Because I was using a point-and-shoot, there was no way to adjust for light or speed, but he helped me understand how to find the best lighting available and how to get ahead of a moving target to lessen blur.

I took that camera everywhere, but I was also a kid, and film was $2.50 a roll, then another $3–4 to develop. So, I was limited in my practice by my babysitting budget. Aside from the times he let me play with his cameras, I didn’t get to use a manual 35mm until college. Even then, I took one semester of photography prior to dropping out.

My dad was a solid Canon fan, but he also used a Pentax and a Minolta. In fact, the only time he let me shoot with the Pentax was during my divorce, when I was heartbroken and barely able to get out of bed while recovering at his house in Cedar City. He came in one morning and told me to get up. I was going to use the Pentax, and we were going for a drive to find something beautiful to capture on film.

I rallied. We loaded the van with snacks and set out toward the mountains.

We found a spot up in the pass with patches of snow and a half-frozen brook. As he always did, he gasped and pulled over. “The light is just right. Hurry.”

We spilled out of the van, grabbed camera bags, and trudged through the snow to a little picnic area. He reminded me to take all the photos we needed from a distance before we made tracks in the snow below us. Then he pulled the Pentax out and let me hold it.

I never knew why it was his favorite. He rarely used it, preferring his Canon or Minolta. But whenever I asked to use the Pentax, he handed me a different camera instead. So I gathered he was trying to perk me up from heartbreak by bribing me with the camera I always wanted to try.

He stood off to my side as I lined up my shot. He talked the whole time about light, framing, and holding my breath for the perfect click. Then he said, “The perfect shot comes between your heartbeats. Even the beating of your heart can move your hand and take the shot from you. Just like with a gun—it’s the same with a camera. They are both tools that operate between heartbeats. Choose your frame. You will always see beauty differently than I see beauty. We can be looking at exactly the same thing and your eye will see something my eye can’t see. Trust your eye, not mine. When you trust your eye, take the shot between heartbeats.”

And I did.

With my father’s camera, we played in the snow and took photos until we ran out of film. Then we talked about heartbreak and healing all the way home.

When I bought my first professional digital camera at age twenty-six, my dad and I came to some hard words—not because I had gone digital, but because I had chosen a Nikon. He took offense to the brand I’d picked, like I’d somehow thumbed my nose at all he’d taught me by not choosing a Canon digital camera. The choice was simple, though, because Nikon had the best resolution at the time and the easiest post-edit tools to use and manage. The body was compact, included a flip-out video screen, and was state of the art for its day.

That year I took more than 14,000 digital images on my BlissQuest drive around the country—the equivalent of 583 rolls of film. I learned by having immediate access to the image so I could study what worked and what didn’t, adjust my shutter speed and aperture, and get real-time results to understand what I was doing wrong or right. Traditionally, I would have had to try to remember or write down the settings I’d used on a 35mm and then wait to have the film developed to see whether I’d gotten the result I wanted—usually I hadn’t.

My dad was so skeptical about the technology that we had a shoot-off. We drove out to Dixie National Park in southern Utah, where the red sandstone cliffs and brush made amazing images no matter what you were shooting with. We stopped at several locations, drew a box in the dirt, and took turns standing inside it and photographing the landscapes with our cameras: his trusty Canon 35mm and my digital Nikon. I wasn’t even using a DSLR at the time. On the way back to his house, we stopped at the one-hour developer shop, then went out for milkshakes while we waited for his film to develop.

Once we got home and placed the images side by side—his prints against my laptop screen—he sat back, blown away.

We talked for hours about the pros and cons of the learning curve, understanding the work that goes into the craft, the importance of documenting life, and the power of having a tool that lessens the time it takes to master an art form—if mastery is even achievable. We talked until the middle of the night.

The next morning over breakfast, he said, “You always had an eye for the shot. The scene was always something you just understood. But after taking thousands of photos, you’ve sharpened that in about half the time it would have taken others because of the immediate feedback loop and the lower cost of not purchasing film or development. People wanting to take photos are limited by cost and turnaround time. Now they’ll master scenes and shots so much faster.”

He nodded over his bacon and finished, “I hope film cameras don’t go away. I hope film lives on in its own craft and beauty—but I can see so much power and beauty in this new tool and how it makes this expensive craft more affordable and accessible that I hope it doesn’t go away either. Art is in the eye of the beholder—whether they’re clicking the shutter or staring at the finished portrait on the wall.”
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In a recent visit to my father in hospice, he rallied enough to get up and move around. I’d brought my DSLR camera hoping to show him, but I realized the body would be too heavy for his frail arms to hold, even without the lens. So I ran down to the store and grabbed a disposable Kodak point-and-shoot because it was lighter and more nostalgic.

He was able to walk outside with us into the sunlight. He can’t remember now that I’m his daughter, or even what my name is, but when I put the camera in his hands, he adjusted his posture, aimed at a flower, tilted to adjust for the light, and held his breath as he always did just before a shutter click. Then he turned to me and said—to the daughter he can’t remember—“I lined the shot to go from here… then topped it here.” He motioned to the frame he’d snapped, and then he smiled.

It was a moment captured between heartbeats.

I left the camera with him at the hospice center so he could take the remaining photos if the mood struck him. Then I wept the thirteen-hour drive home.

Twenty years ago, when those early digital camera conversations took place, cameras in phones weren’t really a thing yet. Once Apple launched the iPhone camera and the technology rapidly evolved, everyone could take professional-level photos. And it’s been wonderful.

Then, as post-edit tools improved, filters and modifications also made the art of photography more accessible, easier to use, cheaper, and more efficient.

There was a brief social outcry about all the developer booths that would disappear, the jobs that would be lost, the film studios that would go out of business, and all the professional photographers who would supposedly be pushed out of work by these new tools that made photographers out of everyone with a phone. People wouldn’t have to pay to learn, pay a professional to take images, or pay for marketing shots—they could do it themselves for cheap or free. Digital tools, presets, pre-made filters, and in-app modification functions made it possible for anyone with a smartphone to cut out multiple middlemen, services, and costs to get the image they wanted.

Legacy film companies filed for bankruptcy, unable to change with the times fast enough. Servicing a 35mm now can be a challenge because there are fewer shops with people who know how to repair or clean analog cameras properly.

Is the 35mm craft dead? No. I still see people with old cameras often, but it’s a costly hobby to learn and maintain. Do I still love film? Absolutely. While it’s harder now to tell the difference between a 35mm image and a digital image, there are still quality print differences. And storage longevity for film is entirely different.

But back to my friend who got her first digital camera and couldn’t think of herself as a “real photographer.” I think my answer was something along the lines of: You are still the one pointing the camera. You are still the one taking the shot. If you’re using filters or post-image tools, you are still the one making those decisions and shaping the photo to your creative vision. Your art is not defined by how others think art should be. It’s defined by your process.

What I hope she took from it was what I took from my father’s teachings about photography—the art of writing with light.

Making art happens between your heartbeats.

It’s the choice, or series of choices, that defines your intent and vision. The tool is only a tool. According to my father, that tool could be a Kodak, a Pentax, or a loaded gun. The machinery and objects, the light and the aperture, are all subject to the decisions you capture in the shutter click. Art to other people is what they personally take or feel from the experience. Art is two-sided: the creator and the experiencer.

Dad and I had a lot of long, rambling existential conversations about that topic over the decades. Sometimes we’d start a conversation about it, then it would drop off and pick up five years later when we both had more lived experience to bring to it. As life and art often do.

Art will persist somehow, some way. Inspiration cannot be stopped. It’s the viral spread of emotional need—to create, to make, to express. Inspiration does not care if it has a platform or followers. It simply must be. Art doesn’t care whether the image is digital or film, ink or written in blood.

The creator cares. The experiencer cares.
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That caring is the space between heartbeats.

You can learn more about my father, Craig, and the W.C. Nielson Heritage Program at Elder Glade Publishing. 

The last year has been a tragic pile of shit for many Americans, immigrants, and humanity in general. With failures of leadership on epic, stunning display from the top down in every sector—it’s obvious the United States has lost respectability on a global scale, as well as any actual and perceived power we imagined we possessed. The US government has also lost the respect of its own populace, which was tenuous and limited to begin with.

There’s a lot of humanitarian tragedy to grieve. There’s a lot of injustice to rage against. There’s a lot of cleanup and rebuilding that needs to happen—but cannot be accomplished until a dozer is taken to the rotten core and the corrupt are toppled from their perches.

Vote. Flip your seats. Call your representatives. Send letters. March. Yes, these are all powerful tools and they help. Cancel any services or accounts that support the regime. Delete any platforms that use your human data and capital to validate their agendas. Every little bit helps.
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There is also another thing you can do. You can create. You can build. People might ask why I haven’t been my usual loud-mouthed-I-told-you-so-self on social platforms… it’s because I’ve been building something. 

Artists and innovators have always been the North Star of our social evolution. Sure, religions and belief systems have been instrumental—but who designed those basilicas? Who painted those murals? Who decorated those houses of worship in the name of love, but also under the influence of INSPIRATION. Who wrote the hymnals, the literature for study, and built the instruments of congregation? Artists were/are the carriers of ideas, the cartographers of how human energy flows along belief channels. Don’t believe me? The art and inspirational works of nearly every system of divinity worship have been articulated through artistry in a form of “influencer power.” The power of inspiration creates iconography, builds masterpieces, sparks human development into new territory.

Creativity and Inspiration are double-edged swords, they destroy AND they create. Sometimes with the same ink stroke. The artist is the one who decides which it will be, this has always been the case.

A poorly designed chapel seats no congregation. An uninspired mural attracts no worship. A faulty innovation prohibits scientific advancement.

But an inspiring performance by a competent symphony can enlist an army of newly awakened righteous believers. A human is capable of being paralyzed by Scheherazade’s solo, heart strings melted by the violinist’s mastery. That human can never be what they were before hearing that piece for the first time. They are forever altered.
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Religions have always known this, which is why they enlist artists for their community cohesion and inspirational storytelling and centuries old marketing campaigns of massive amounts of artistic output to solidify—even codify their belief system into an institutional power. Artists are often inspired by religion so it’s not a difficult creation process for them anyway. Would-be dictators have always known, the media is the influence, the story is malleable. This is why they take over media outlets, write their own narratives, and steal art from the oppressed. They also know that coopting the power of art, the momentum of inspiration from creatives will move their causes forward faster, with more authority and certainty. 

Creators have always been the vehicles of belief systems, of inspiration, of innovative breakthroughs in social structure, law, commerce, technology, mathematics, sciences, and yes, obviously the fine arts. They are all the same inspirational power of human creative ingenuity. I’ve been writing about this with the Muses for years.

We are at a social tipping point in our country’s journey. We’ll never be what we were before, and that’s actually a painfully earned, beautiful gift. The truth that we are now free to re-design, re-think, re-imagine the way we wish to move forward is a Franken-result of what has been taken without permission, without consent. It absolutely sucks, and you should feel free to grieve it.

But creators are resilient. And we are all creators, every one of us. We are creatives who’ve been buried under the weight of collective horror for too long. Trapped in deals with devils for too long. Forced to collaborate with unfit entities for too long.

So here we are; all the gloves removed, all the stop gaps, the perceptions, the “nice” and “cooperative” consents and rule of law are being torched, along with enshrined constitutional protections.

This leaves what, exactly? Fear? Terror? Uncertainty? All those things designed to freeze innovation, to block creativity and put people into a place of survival? Indeed. A place of easy control and compliance.

So—beat them at their own game. Cut the hamstrings of their global takeover agenda. Create. Inspire. Innovate. Build. Use their tools against them if you must. How, you ask?

By connecting with your own creative inspiration. Make art. Build systems. Design processes. Test theories and move through new scientific breakthroughs. Tune your cello and get back to practice. Support a local theater group. Buy coffee from a non-brand mom and pop. Author your books.

Getting back to writing is the whole point of the slow winter. I’ve decided to take on a couple of memoir projects this year. I’m also digging back into the Tangle of Mermaids manuscript once the rain begins. There’s just something about the rain and winter that sets the writing mood to cruise control.

There’s a small gap between now and then where I’m trying to get settled into the season; stocking my wood pile, prepping my writing space, filling the coffee cabinet, etc.

In the meantime, much of my focus has been on ‘Seasons; A Family Recipe Journal’, and ‘Heart of the Forest; A Gratitude Workbook’. Getting those two projects on the shelf then moving into deeper creative waters to dig into the novels… and a couple of very heartfelt, human-focused ghostwriting projects.

I haven’t blown Hollywood off, it’s just, I need a break from it. Maybe by Spring I’ll be open to adaptations discussions again. I keep putting off emails and taking space from meetings. Not ready to go back into that just yet. There’s a lot to be said about watching what’s been happening there as the world is melting down, the entertainment industry is fracturing in odd ways. Let it. It will become whatever it’s going to be.
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In the meantime, there are novels to write. There is mulled wine on the stove and piles of mundane contracts to review. May your creative season begin with a whisper and end with a bang. 

I’ve been feeling the need to revisit some gratitude exercises recently. Back to the basics, as it were. When I spoke with various people about their current mindsets, emotional burnout, and general overload it became apparent as I talked with them about my plans to dig into a few abundance and gratitude prompts that they were, as I am, TIRED. Exhausted. Overloaded. Under water. So, I made this workbook simple… overly so. Easy. Full of images and color. Simple prompts, easy to complete. Childlike in its playfulness.

If you are not feeling yourself. If you feel like life is kickin’ your ass at the moment. If you’re tired of focusing on the struggle bus… take a quick easy peasy soft and squeezy pretty little gratitude workbook and set aside a few minutes to remind yourself when things felt good—then call those times back into your experience.

Only available on Amazon at the moment.
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Cherish your blessings. 

My fallow year started last winter into early spring. I didn’t realize what was happening at the time because burnout was still creeping up like a sneaky bitch and I was fixated on wrapping up my last contract discussions in Hollywood while planning next steps. Also, the world was on fire and my country began its grim decline into fascism—so I was distracted, as many were.

When my fallow season hit, I was totally unprepared to be knocked off my feet. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I know well that we cannot be in full bloom, a riotous profusion of output energy at all times indefinitely. There must also be a harvest. There must also be a dormancy to regenerate.
There is always a reset.

We live in a world that extolls the virtues of busy work, productivity and success. We don’t talk about the dormant periods required to maintain healthy individual seasons.

Ironically, though I wasn’t prepared for it, I am finding myself leaning into it with relief and gratitude as it has been long overdue.

Prior to getting involved with the Hollywood machinery, and before I was running a consulting firm—I used every winter to reboot, rest, read, create, write and hum along at a slower, more thoughtful and deeply feeling speed. I charged my batteries. I wrote a novel each winter. I sculpted, cooked, and puttered in my studio. Come spring I always emerged charged and ready to build, brimming with energy and creative projects ready for market.

Four years ago that all changed. My hibernation and regeneration window was co-opted by necessary business developments, emergency client meetings, “progress”, and growth.

​I don’t lament it at all. It was entirely necessary and I’m grateful I had the chance to build as much as I was able and put out the volume of content for Hollywood and my consulting clients that I did. But my friends and community worried out loud, “How long can you keep up this pace?”

There was ultimately a cost. Sometimes it was weeks on end of 120-hour weeks. Some weeks I worked from bed because I was also battling health issues stemming from the crush of deadlines and pressure. I was constantly in a battle to deliver on promises despite the fact so many contract providers failed their terms to me or didn’t show up—so I was picking up a lot of slack and continuing on to make those deliverables to customers and executives.

The important part was that I kept showing up, meeting all my obligations.

But my house was in disarray, the garden was rotting on the vine, and my finances were collapsing. The to-do list was stacking up. I was slowly drowning and the people who could help opted out.
I simply couldn’t do it all, or do it alone—and I was burning at every end to make it work.

It was always going to fall short, there simply wasn’t enough resource to go all the way in all the departments. There was neither enough bandwidth or money. There was not enough buy-in from the people who had the power to make the decisions—and I was the one holding the bag.

Early this year as the United States began its decline from first world country to backwater joke, I decided it was too much to try to push through all that noise and still hold onto all the reins all the time. For every step I made last year, each time I moved in ANY direction—someone or something else blazed in to knock that pathway out from under my feet. Each decision, each plan sabotaged by industry professionals, fickle minds and relationships, fragile egos, poor administrative decisions and executive orders, and even natural disasters.

I stopped being able to trust that any choice I made or step I took wouldn’t be interfered with, intentionally or unintentionally.

I couldn’t keep up with the chaos in all directions, so I began the process of closing down my consulting firm, and wrangling my energies toward writing and creativity. My house and property were teetering on foreclosure. I was losing contracts to the chaos of poor government leadership anyway. Companies feared hiring me because they didn’t know what other bullshit trainwreck decision the administration was going to make that would impact their bottom line and they didn’t want to be locked in a contract with me that they couldn’t fulfill. Both in consulting and in publishing and entertainment. The grant I was headed for was also cancelled before I could use it to stabilize my consulting firm. Money just dried up everywhere as panic set into both of the industries I was working in.

It was looking pretty bleak, not just for me, but for millions of other B2B providers.

I have not had a winter in four years and it shows. I look and feel rundown. My body shows the wear and tear, and my spirit feels it. My home is a mess and that is reflected in my appearance. The land has gone wild. Yes, I’m still in the woods. Yes, I’m still on my land for now. I have just enough energy and resources to tuck in and sustain a full hibernation cycle to close out that last bit of transformation and reset.

Don’t worry. There is a plan. I am not crawling in a hole to give up. I am simply acknowledging the much-needed personal season of my human psyche and physical form. This is self-care in the most necessary way. Four years without a hibernation has been costly in nearly every facet of my life.

I’ll get into the value of a fallow year later, but for now. Please be assured, I’m well. I’m provided for and the current plan is to not produce or be productive or build until the seed within begins to unfurl. Then, the new plan will go live. In the meantime, I’ll be sharing on my website what I do to regenerate. I will not be posting on a schedule or following pressure to produce. I will only be posting as I’m energized to do so, and sharing my process to re-invigorate, re-inspired, re-home myself in order to refurbish my creative fields and forests and prepare for a new spring. Follow along if you wish.

​I wish you a peaceful autumn.
 

Back at the blogging. Probably irregularly.

Four years ago I started into a Hollywood adaptation adventure with my novels. During that time I made a bargain not to be, how should I say, too much of my vocal self while deals were being discussed regarding my works. As in toning down the political and spiritual statements that could often be found on my blogs. I kept trying to blog a little here or there but without any meaty substance, there just wasn’t much to truly say. Sort of sums up Hollywood in general.

After rerouting my page a few times and closing up old posts, I was a very good girl. But my planning is shifting, and the world is burning. Time to fire up the old yammer as I’ve got plenty to say about the state of the world, the entertainment industry, and about creativity. Specifically, the very desperate need we have of creativity and human story it at this moment in time, soon to be history. And we will need to decide which side of that history we wish to be on as creators, storytellers, and individuals.

Plugging back in, I also realize so much of what I was prior to four years ago is not really on point with what is happening. So, my old posts are archived for later and a fresh slate is being laid out.
This last year has been one of the hardest years of my life (just one), which I’ll get to eventually, but for now it’s to say that I don’t for a second think I’m the only one who took it in the teeth. I’m probably in very good company with other folks experiencing loss, perceived failure, breakdowns, and a good hard look at the bottom of the proverbial barrel. Transformation does not often come without the discomfort of hard choices and a string of losses.

It’s humbling. It’s also, forgive me for saying, a relief. Maybe it doesn’t feel like it in the moment, but there will be a sense of release.

There’s relief in knowing the direction you need to take, and then watching everything in your life collapse that you’ve been struggling to uphold which no longer serves the right goal or purpose. There’s freedom in starting over with fewer encumbrances. Keep what works, let go of the rest. Breathe. Reboot. Aim for the goal.

Easier said then done, I’ll admit. There’s a lot of crying. There are several trips to Goodwill. There are a lot of relationship closures, and a sense of losing community. There are those moments when you’re vacillating between the decisions—and in a blink you just know. You know what needs to be done and everything afterward becomes crystalline. It will only be as difficult as you believe it’s going to be.

So I closed down my consulting firm, and I’ve redirected my energy fully back to publishing. The world doesn’t need more financial auditors. It doesn’t need more business developers with project management and fiscal planning backgrounds. What it really needs right now. What I need right now is story. Humane mapping. Connection to the most noble and honorable, the most loving and supportive parts of my species. I’m not going to find that auditing conglomerate loan packages, or helping businesses sort out their staffing issues.

I need story. I need to get back to my books and worlds. And if I need it, there’s a good chance others need it as well. So here I am, reconfiguring my life to accommodate this shift.

It might look messy, but that’s all part of chewing your way out of any tangle.

Anywhoo, here we go to kicking off a fresh reboot. I’m in the take a breath, evaluate and plan phase. Sitting in some life rubble at the moment, but that will clear up eventually.
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In the meantime, welcome to my little forest corner of musings.