Also, as posting date approached, I also realized that despite all my proactive efforts to fend it off, to make sure I wasn’t going to succomb to it, I was absolutely, 100%, sliding into another episode of seasonal anxiety (SAD for those familiar).
By now I should know, I’ve struggled with it for as long as I can remember, and it’s only been getting worse, but every year I feel like I’m prepared and this year it will be manageable – if not OK.
Those North American Continental winters also are no joke. I do enjoy the cold and snow, but only for a week, and only when I decide so, and both in Canada and in the upper Midwest, I have none of that agency, there’s no escaping the long and dreadful half-year when mood gets really low and getting out of bed is an epic battle against my own self, every single day.
So in the end I decided to resurrect this image, from a roll of film I’d shot last year when I was feeling exactly the same: heavy, sticky, drowsy. I’d souped the roll, then forgotten about it for months because I wanted the salt to crystallise and freckle the frames (which was a bit of a fail TBH), and then I’d forgotten about it again.
Some of these images made it my social media, but most were simply wasting away on my hard drive, ready to be forgotten. And this felt right.
I hope you’re not too disappointed… But the truth is that to me, every year, hell is SAD.