I have put up a ton of new pictures. Lately they’re my thing. Pictures and video. My things.

Life can change, for good or ill, very suddenly; a concept that we forget about in our day-to-day hum drum world of routines and jobs and deadlines and appointments. We track our schedules on calendars and make lists of to-dos, all for the sake of slicing our lives into stress-free, bite-sized morsels that are easy to pick up, chew and digest. It’s all about maintaining control; it’s all about looking (and feeling) like we’ve got our shit together. “Why can’t it be simple?” we ask ourselves. So we file our papers, pay our bills on time, and make an extra effort to keep the laundry caught up. But? We’re subconsciously waiting for and dreading the inevitable implosion brought upon by chance and good old fashioned human nature. Agent Smith said that we can’t survive in a world in which predictability and satisfaction are the prevailing conditions of existence. I don’t know what logic that fictional badass was basing his assertion upon, but if he’s right then we’re all devoting a lot of time and energy to the pursuit of denying our essential need (desire?) for chaos.

I can see why we work so hard to postpone the inevitable: Change is tough. In many cases it is downright painful. Depending upon our capacity for coping, we create a personal barrier of a thickness that is directly proportional to our fear of being out of control. But it’s not infallible, and unless you’re God you can’t create an all-encompassing forcefield that will defend against every attack. And why should we? The trials and tribulations of life, though impossible to forsee, are the hammer strokes that shape our personalities, adding value to our individual experiences on Earth.

An important truth I have learned: Regret robs you of the present moment. Sure, quitting my job and enrolling in beauty school was probably a bad idea. It was irresponsible and not thought through very well. But! I can sit and type this with confidence and even joy: I am a better person because I screwed up. Taking a chance, giving myself permission to lose control, caused a chain reaction that is still playing itself out. I realized that the business of beauty is actually not for me and I Freaked! Out! All of my preparation and planning and organizing had betrayed me. Now, I could go on and on about how I’m a new and better Nyco, but I won’t. The point is, I didn’t enroll in beauty school because I wanted to catalyze a life-altering epiphany. Oh, hammer of life, how you swing…

We can go ahead and make a rough sketch of what our days, weeks, months, years should look like. We can save money in various accounts that accrue interest and buy IRAs to prevent our grubby little hands from whittling our cash away. We can decide to have kids by a certain age and eat all the right things to influence our everlasting health. We should keep doing all of those things because they’re a good idea. But, on our way to the bank we should take a left when we should have made a right, trusting that we’ll make our way around to it eventually. Lay out on the anvil and take a hit or two once in awhile. And never forget the camera. No matter how hard we try, we just never know when we’ll wish we had it.