First day of school. My one and only agenda item for today. 😂

Note to self: next time I decide to go outside and do a photoshoot in the ruralest parts of rural Montana, bring mosquito spray! I’m still itching all over.

In about 5 hours, I’m going to conduct my first photoshoot. I’m taking photos of my friend’s daughter and boyfriend, two kids I’ve known for years, and I’m both nervous and excited. I told my friend I was nervous, and she said, “I am betting that you are going to be very good at this,” and if that doesn’t instill a man with confidence, I don’t know what will.

I’m resurrecting an old tag after almost 4 years (!!!) because I wanted to note (to myself mostly) that I’ve added webmentions to my site, as well as proper Bridgy support. I think that means that my site is genuinely IndyWebbified, something I’ve been wanting to do for years. In essence, I have a Github Action that sends any new post to Bridgy, which then publishes my posts to Mastodon and Bluesky. Once I receive any reaction from Mastodon or Bluesky, Bridgy detects it and sends a POST to my webmention endpoint, which my new Cloudflare Worker picks up, verifies, and commits back to my Github repo. Cloudflare Pages detects the new push from Github, and then rebuilds and redeploys my site back to the web. All of this is really cool, and now that it’s setup, it’s time for me to go back into hibernation…

Nah, just kidding. Life’s been busy, but this brief return to my blog has made me miss this little home of mine, and I’m hoping to do some more writing again. I’ve no idea what that means exactly, but hey, let’s find out together.

Phoebe Bridgers dropped her new album “Lost Weekend” today, and I’m in love. I’ve had “Lost Boys” on repeat since June, and I love the acoustic version, too:

So good.

We can almost see the mountains again.

Last week, I planted marigolds and yesterday, the first sprouts emerged. Today, I counted two more. New life is beautiful.

14 years ago today I hopped on a plane in California and moved to Montana.

I came to finish a novel, and within a year, I finished it. For a while, I told others I was only going to stay for a year. I believed it. A year turned to two turned to 10 turned to 14. I built a life here, filled countless notebooks, finished another novel and started a few more, became an IT Director, then coached football, basketball, and track, I’m now teaching two classes somehow, I fell in love, grieved, got depressed too many times, recovered, and in 3 weeks, I turn 40. I now burn candles every Friday to remember those I’ve lost, and I bought myself a nice mechanical watch to help me readjust my relationship with time. I miss San Diego, and far too many times I’ve felt like I was wasting my life here in Montana.

But I’m still here, and I’m still trying to figure it out.