Somewhere in the Middle of Everything

You’d think the hardest part of writing a blog is the actual writing, and well, sometimes it’s just not. Turns out, most of the time, it’s everything that happens before you even open up Microsoft Word.

It’s the backlog of work that is always there, burning through the battery until it’s completely dead and you’re forced to stop and recharge. It’s the photo edits waiting in line, the emails that somehow multiply exponentially, each one with a new thing to plan or fire to put out. Your calendar starts to look less like a plan and more like a “double dog dare” to stick your tongue on a flagpole in the dead of winter. And then you realize that each of the things you want to do still requires the kind of energy and focus as the things you have to do first.

Suddenly, you realize that those things that you want to do have fallen behind, and you need to catch up. You know, like the blog post you haven’t written yet (read: this one), but need to, so you have something concrete to share.

And listen, this isn’t about the post you didn’t write because you had nothing to say. That would honestly be easier. The problem is the opposite. There’s too much to say, and while this blog has been sitting here, not getting written as often as you’d like, everything else has been happening anyway.

There were the concerts that proved that completely different rooms aren’t actually that different at all. Different audiences, different expectations on paper, but once the music starts, it’s the same language.

There was Pittsburgh doing its usual seasonal roulette, bouncing between winter and summer like spring is stuck as the “monkey in the middle.” And then I have to find ways to make good photos with all that going on around me…

And then there are the moments that don’t even feel real until you look back at the photos. The ones you couldn’t have planned if you tried. The kind that show up unannounced, ask if you’re paying attention, and disappear just as quickly.

All of that has been happening, and not all of it fits neatly into a blog post.

There are entire shoots that live off to the side. Personal sessions. Family moments. Things that matter just as much, maybe more, but don’t translate into something you package up and publish. They don’t have a hook, and frankly, they don’t need one. They exist for the people in them, not for an audience. But they still take time, energy, and care.

They still count.

Outside of my business, life is still happening, too. At the risk of boring you with personal stuff, my day job has been packed with end-of-year concerts, events, and commencement ceremonies. My wife is also deep in prep mode for something major at her day job, working long days, nights, and weekends, which means I’m also running point with school pickups, schedules, and making sure everything holds together. I’ve got a porch that needs to be repainted. It’s concert and recital season for my kids. Uptown is gearing up for its heavier summer season, which means rehearsals, charts to write, gigs...

Not a single one of these things is optional.

But stacked together, they don’t leave a lot of space for much, let alone writing a blog. Each day becomes a dense brick of time-blocked tasks, meetings, and events.

And when time and space disappear like that, it’s not just the blog that goes quiet. It’s the part of you that makes sense of everything else. Todoist and Fantastical become your crutch.

The truth is, this post didn’t start with an idea. It started with the absence of one.

I didn’t even have a photo that I wanted to share to help figure out what to write about. It took until I wrote the sentence about the porch project to realize that an image of that was as good an allegory to what this story was shaping up to be as any.

And that process is not new to me. I’ve always let whatever my mind gravitates toward be the thing that kickstarts everything. In this case, it was just sitting down and writing. Is that porch photo going to show up in the next issue of Architectural Digest? Nope. But it showed up here. I had a reason to take it, a place to publish it, and a reason to talk about it.

Some of the best photo sessions work the exact same way. Most of the time, you show up without a concrete plan. You might have a direction or a theme to work toward, but there is never really a script in this line of work. You react. You adjust. You follow what’s happening instead of forcing it into something it isn’t. That’s the reality people actually want in their photos. And somewhere in that space, something real starts to happen. Something you wouldn’t have gotten if you tried to control every variable.

It’s the same instinct, the trust that doing the work will lead you somewhere, even if you can’t see it yet. Sometimes the absence of a plan isn’t a problem to solve. It’s just the beginning of the “choose-your-own-adventure” story.

So, yeah, I decided to write a blog about not having anything to blog about. And I’m okay with that.

This isn’t a perfectly timed update. It’s not a neatly packaged reflection, but I still sat down at my computer and started something. I didn’t know if anything even remotely interesting would come out, but somewhere along the way, something did.

The work hasn’t stopped. The days haven’t gotten longer. Life doesn’t have a pause button, as much as I would sometimes like it to. And these things that I do—writing this blog, raising my kids, capturing memories for my family and my clients, belting Don’t Stop Believin’ to a room full of strangers—they all matter. Maybe not the scraping paint so much, though…

The fact that I get to do these things at all—that’s the real story.

Even when it feels like there’s no time, no space, no bandwidth for it, the “stuff” is still there. You don’t have to rebuild it from scratch. You just have to show up and start.

Even if you don’t know exactly where it’s going.

Especially then.