I don’t come from a family of photographers. I don’t come from a family of writers, or journalists. I’m not good at many things. I’m very bad at school and most of the time I have the work ethic of something kicked under the fridge in the heat of rushed breakfast. Somewhere along the line, I loaned someone the money for a cruddy little camera in a backyard garage sale, and instead of getting my five dollars back, I probably got my only shot at a decent career. I don’t know what it is exactly I want as a career because my goals are held together with chewing gum and the mild buzz of an unhealthy hatred of who I am. All this aside, I do know one thing: I love taking photos of people and I want to do it for the rest of my life.

It started off as something to show off to my friends. I was tugging around a little point-and-shoot Kodak and grabbing the quick moments of what turned out to be the end of our lives as we knew them. Had I known the later memories of youth and innocence were worth more than a lifetime of success as an adult I would have printed and stored those cheap blurry and imperfect snapshots; cherished them for as long as I could. What few remain are taken for granted like many of the precious things in life.

But those are photos for another story. Higher education, draining as it may be, has given me the opportunity to be a photojournalist: a storyteller with a few extra steps. It’s a different kind of occupation and it takes a lot from a person. Time and again have I dragged some poor friend to a gig and wasted efforts to immerse them into my world; try as I may, I always end up holding their head under the surface for just a minute too long.

What follows is a series of published and unpublished portraits of various context — ranging from painstakingly journalistic photography to blurry, hideously beautiful snapshots. The one thing they all have in common is that they are an inside look into the beautiful and greedy world I call home. It is beautiful because it is mine, and greedy because it might possibly never let me share it in its entirety.

With that goes the last shred of normalcy. Since the last photo, I have begun a forced hiatus, as has the rest of earth. Home has become a cage when it once was just a bed. A tumbling sense of chaos begins to settle in at around the second week or so, leaving me with an uncomfortable complacency. Like the first bad trip in high school, there may be nothing left to do but strap in and watch as your body begins to squirm and function of its own accord. In the immortalized words of the good Doctor Thompson, “no sympathy for the devil… buy the ticket, take the ride.” The terrible ride…

Until the next gig, here’s to hoping I come out of this one alive.