Do you ever find yourself committing to so many plans and goals when you were feeling energized, but now that you are in the middle of those well-intentioned ideas, you regret your previous overplanning self? After just coming out of a period where this was 110% me (maybe I’m at 70% now), I’ve been attempting to be more selective—intentionally taking a moment to weigh out the impact of my individual decisions.
I often find myself falling into the trap of saying too many “yeses” on the front end of my schedule, and then when I find myself in the thick of it, I wonder, “Where did all of my time go?” The small, easy “yesses” are too simple to say “yes” on their own, right? That’s what is so difficult about all of these little asks! I will start with a “Yes.” here, a “Sure, yeah.” there, and then next the classic Midwestern, “Yeah, No, Forsure.” and by the end of the day, I’ve got a pile of tasks that leaves me with very little energy to pursue the things I want to be intentional about. Things like spending more time with my wife, getting outside more to enjoy nature, and finally getting around to redoing this website I have been talking about for months. I guess this whole text blurb is a roundabout way to say that through my intentionality in creating space, I finally got around to redoing this website!
A teacher helps a student with classwork in their school in the Dominican Republic.
Part of my hope for the new website was to clarify my hopes as a photographer. In the last few years, I have had the incredible opportunity to capture stories through photos of different organizations and individuals' impact on their communities. It was an honor to be a photographic illustrator to the stories of so many people working so closely with their neighbors to cultivate significant change in their area. From teachers providing free and quality education to kids in the Dominican Republic to the case workers in Cambodia and Thailand working tirelessly to liberate people from human trafficking, it’s about bringing awareness to the problems and the hurt but also to platform the good that is happening—to showcase the full spectrum of humanity and not simple caricatures of our limited individual perceptions.
Children walk home from a day of classes in Cambodia.