The Lived Collective

Film is new to me.

Honestly, having any creative outlet is new to me at 30 years old. My sister was always the creative one in our family, a trait I sill honor and see in her as we grow up together. I think she’s the reason I always kept my eye open for some art form that could make sense to me. She is effortless at the arts in a way most find unnerving. Meanwhile, I am a reminder that most of us are painfully ordinary, if not worse, when it comes to the arts. Art always seemed like a peaceful place she could go when life was unpredictable or unkind, and I envied that when I was younger. My “retreat” came at the expense of my own body, I learned to push my physical body to its absolute limits as often as possible, and honest framing would call this grasping at control. As I got older and life became increasingly difficult for me to process and cope with, I continued headfirst down the destructive path of using physical exertion to find peace. Just when you think your body has nothing left to give at mile 65 of an ultramarathon, everything quiets down, it becomes just you alone (finally) and the quiet resolve to keep moving. To this day I find the concept of the “runners high” foreign. I never resonated with that feeling, what I was after was much further down that trail: peace and control.

Running, however, was not the beginning for me. I have been to some of the most remote places in the world and scaled some pretty grand mountains in the process. I have skied off of volcanos in South American and traversed mountains in New Zealand. I have climbed big walls in Spain and crossed the Northern Patagonia Ice Cap. I have waited for weather windows in Alaska and sunbathed in the heat of the day in Australia. To say I made it my life’s mission to put myself in the way of challenge and beauty would be a dramatic understatement.

How did I get here, you might be asking at this point? It is a beautifully honest question, one I reflect on almost daily.

I don’t run ultramarathons anymore, I haven’t put on a pair of skis in over three years, and I haven’t set trad climbing gear to a route in even longer than that. And at this point if you’re feeling sorry for me or a little depressed by this turn of events, I hope you stay a little longer…

Life. God. Bad Choices. Bad people. Good people. A few good choices.

There are stories, tragedies in their own right that have led me here. There are also beautiful stores too. I’m not sure this is the place for those stories. Just know that our lives are a combination of all the seasons we have lived and you don’t get your summer without your winter. I don’t curse the things I’ve lost because the things that grew in their place have been more beautiful that I could have imagined. Regret finds no foothold in my heart, and I pray that becomes true for you too. There is only forward with the knowledge you have now and a heart twice the size it was before.

I guess what I am trying to say is “Welcome”. I am confident you have a story that is far more wavy lines than straight ones. A life full of “yeses” that should have been “nos” and a few “nos” that should have been “yeses”. Relationships that would have been best left never starting. Or maybe you’re in the middle of trying to figure out what season you’re even in; I have been there too.

Maybe next time you meet me here we can chat more about where film falls into all of this. Until then, put your phone down, take a step back or several, and look around at the beautiful world we share; I dare you not to take the photo, instead just stop and see. Be present, be bored, be there for your people. Find your life again, reclaim it from the onslaught of social media, curated content, and AI slop.

Perhaps in the valiant attempt to reclaim your life, you’ll stumble upon your art.