About a week ago, I was driving back from a doctor's appointment when I decided to take my time and stop at any interesting place along the way. I had my camera with me and a desire to take photos of something other than what I usually see in the area that I live. When I had a long wait at a red light, I pulled up Google maps and found a huge park where I could stop and explore a bit.

It already looked big on the map, but once I got there I felt like I had entered some kind of enchanted forest. Perhaps it was the mood I was in, it felt like I was in a bubble and no one else could hear or see me. I could just float around, hearing incomprehensible conversations of passersby as if the sound was muffled by a layer of water. I wondered around, the shutter sound of my camera clicking intermittently, until I had made my way around the park in a wonky circle.

I was losing sunlight rather quickly at the point, so I figured I'd make my way out before it became to dull and dark to take the kind of photos I wanted. I was almost out of the park when I noticed a squirrel running down a tree. Now, one of my favorite things to when taking pictures is to capture a subject in the perfect candid moment. For a lot of animals or insects, that can sometimes simply mean a moment of stillness. So I stood for a while and got some pictures of this squirrel. I looked up from the viewfinder at one point to glance around and I saw what looked like a piece of wood nearby. But this piece of wood wasn't acting like a piece of wood should. It was standing weirdly upright, but complete still and stationary. Perplexed by this optical illusion in the distance, I looked back into the viewfinder and zoomed in.

It wasn't a piece of wood, obviously. It was this strangely beautiful bird... and it was just standing there completely still for most of the time that I watched it. There were a few moments of movement which were almost too quick to be documented - turns of the head, quick leaps forward. It felt like this bird was on show just for me, like it knew that I had come into this park to get a picture of something other than ordinary. 

At first I was excited and also nervous about the prospect that this bird could fly away at any moment, so even though it wasn't a difficult shot to get I struggled because my head was clouded by all these other things that trumped by desire and ability to take the photo. So here's what I did... I chanted to myself, "Be the bird" and then proceeded to get as many shots as I could. Eventually I slowed down a bit and moved around a bit more because I realized that this bird wasn't in a rush to get anywhere. 

By the time I was ready to leave the park, I had plenty of photos to edit, I was in a much better mood and the bird was still standing there. I've been struggling with managing stress recently and part of the reason why I was coming back from a doctor's appointment in the first place is because I have been trying to regain some control over my mind and my body so that I am able to better function. This unplanned stop over at this park, and that bird in particular, helped me to zone out and not focus on the million and one things that I have to do. It's important to take time out and switch off because it can and will catch up to you.

Sometimes you just have to stop, still your mind and "be the bird".

Disclaimer: This post discusses aspects of my personal journey with anxiety and depression. These are my own experiences and are not meant to speak for the experiences of anyone else dealing with anxiety and/or depression.

The first time I started a blog in this type of format, I was sixteen. Thinking back on it now and thinking about the type of person I was eight years ago, I treated my blog as a glorified journal with an extra dose of teen angst for effect. I got a lot of attention from it (well, as much as a very average, anxious, non-famous, high schooler could get). There was a fair amount of interaction from people I saw in my everyday life. I would get approached by other students at my school or messaged on Facebook about how they related to what I was writing and how they wanted me to continue to write. Some of my family members read my stuff as well - the feedback there was mostly praise for my writing skill. So I kept writing as the people around me kept on gently inflating my ego and built my confidence. What became problematic was that I would always write from more or less the same angsty perspective or I would generally write about sad or painful experiences. My writing in high school, even in the form of creative writing in my English class, would mostly be centered on some form of pain and suffering. Death was a common theme, betrayal and separation were, too. To this day, I still struggling immensely with writing anything remotely happy or sentimental - my go-to is blood and tears. I was confronted by my parents at one point about the content I was sharing and the way that I was portraying my life. To be fair to them as concerned parents, I was skewing how people saw my life, but I am not certain if they understand how truly unhappy I was at that point in my life.

High school was hard for me as it is for a lot of teenagers. I struggled with depression and anxiety in the earliest of their forms. I had masochistic tendencies and what I would be so bold as to say was a form of body dysmorphic disorder that led to developing habits that resembled but couldn't be classified or diagnosed as a major eating disorder. With writing, specifically on my blog which gathered a fair amount of attention, I was afforded a sense of purpose and could slowly repair my ever-dwindling self-esteem and self-image. Even though it was an outlet for my frustrations, it still wasn't a healthy way to cope with stress and pain. Pretty soon I had skewed my own perception of my life due to my writing and the similarly-minded voices around me. When my parents spoke to me about presenting a skewed image onto a public platform, I thought they were wrong because I had been convinced that my life was that way - that it was all blood and tears, nothing in between. At the time there was no convincing me that I was doing anything wrong especially when it came to my most effective vice at the time - my writing - although, that encounter with my parents did make me wary of what I posted thereafter.

Wariness turned to anxiety over the years. I posted less and less regularly with my last post being in December, 2014. It doesn't sound like such a long time ago compared to how long it feels. I kind of miss the burning desire to upload a blog post... mostly because that would mean that I had motivation to write, and whenever I had the motivation words came so easily and naturally. When I reread some of my old writing, I get chills because of how effortlessly good it sounds in my ears. I wonder to myself how it had been possible for me to create something like that, and why it feels like I can't do that now. 

I started this blog in 2016 with a different goal than my first blog. I didn't want this to be journal or an easily abused venting space - I have way too many blank notebooks lying around from my shopping sprees in stationery stores that can be filled with my day-to-day ramblings. I wanted this to be a showcase of my art. If my blog is anything to go by (thanks to dated posts), it's clear that hasn't been as successful as I hoped. 2017 was busier and more stressful than I could've imagined, the after effects of which I am still processing and dealing with. Along with stress and busyness, I couldn't ignore the anxiety that I associated with this website. If there is anything that I fear, it is failure. Everything that I hoped to put onto this website - the galleries and this blog - had to be absolutely perfect as if I were expecting that each and every post would have this magical reach and catapult me into fame for my art and writing. So I posted nothing, because I knew that instant success wasn't possible. Hence the title of this post, this blog has been a big source of my anxiety because I have been expecting so much of myself and thereby rendering myself useless and tired and constantly depressed because I have been made unable to create. Hopefully, this will be the end of that.

I still feel vulnerable, incredibly so, every time I put anything on here even if it's a photo of a tree ("But what if it's not the perfect photo of a tree?? Everyone will hate you and ban you from the Internet").  This website is the curation of my own creations - so much of what is here is me, and that is terrifying. Which is why I finally decided to by this domain. If there is anything that will motivate me to be motivated, it will be the fact that I am paying money to have my own domain, so I best make good use of it.

I have hope that there is more left in me, that I have more to offer, to give, to create. I hope you will give me the chance to show you the vastness that I see in our world and beyond it.