Thanksgiving

2014 has been an interesting year, and I hope you all forgive me for a post with no picture (maybe?)

I'm sitting at my computer, drinking a White Christmas Lager, editing some photos from a shoot today (for the sake of honesty and proving that I'm not an alcoholic, I wrote this at 7 PM the night before Thanksgiving), and I'm looking back on what has been a really groundbreaking year.

I have been doing photography for three years now, and this year, not only has the amount of work I've been doing picked up, but I found a renewed passion for it as well.

Life is amazing. My cat and I have been navigating Los Angeles beautifully well, my parents are both in my life and constant rocks of support. The weather is just stunning here (the rest of the US is allowed to hate us, we don't mind), and I'm able to pursue something that I love whole-heartedly.

When I get back from a shoot, I feel happy and complete, like I'm doing exactly what I was put on this earth to do. I have no questions about if I am doing the right thing, or if I'm even good at it, or any of that. I just know, and I am so thankful for that as well. So I challenge you, as an early New Year's resolution, to find that thing that settles you, and chase after it with all you've got.

As is tradition with my family, we say what we are grateful every year around the table at Thanksgiving. Although I won't be with them until Christmas, here is my list, in no particular order:

• A roof over my head
• The men and women who serve/d our country, and the people who support them
• My wonderful, amazing family (by blood and not)
• Two of the most supportive parents in the world
• Being given the opportunity, through an interesting chain of events, to begin a new path
• Really bad puns
• Photography and art in general, as a way to cope, express, celebrate, grieve, live
• All of you guys.

Happy Thanksgiving. Be safe and be good to yourselves.