The following is a page from what I call “Casual Calamity,” which is a personal creative journal that I used to make monthly documenting all of the creations and projects that I was working on. It was a mix of writing, doodles, photography, digital art, (bad) illustrations, prints, and basically anything that piqued my fancy. I stopped making Casual Calamity a few years ago, because (as I’m sure you’ve seen if you’ve been reading any of my past posts here) I suffer from depression and anxiety, which work together to basically fuck my brain. I say “suffer” but there are definitely days where the illnesses teach me a lesson I needed to be taught, so I guess it isn’t all suffering. Just … mostly.

So what you’re seeing below is the first page of the new reboot of Casual Calamity. I get these books printed for my own personal purposes, so I won’t be sharing everything from them, but I will try to put up new content as I create more calamity. Fair warning, though, most of what ends up getting into the books deals with mental illness and how I try to use art to cope and ultimately fail because my brain won’t let me have nice things.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this mindfuck of a journey that we’re gonna embark on together (if I finally stick to my resolution to write here more often).

September 2022
Calamity Reboot V1
Reawakening
Written 9/10/2022

First, a confessional:
I started making Casual Calamity because I have, for as long as I can remember, yearned to create. When I was younger (early 20s), I became enthralled with an English major. His mind worked differently than mine, which it should have since he was 16 years older than me. But the way he could have a deep conversation about art (or, anything really) was what drew me to him. I had lived up to that point in a very vapid, shallow mindset. All I wanted to do was learn how to print, be better at my job, and learn how to be a better photographer/creator. I didn’t think about the history of my craft, or what it took to get me to where we are technologically nor spiritually. I didn’t think further than making a beautiful image. That’s not to say that this goal wasn’t admirable. I don’t know a photographer alive who doesn’t want to make the mundane appear beautiful. That’s the intrinsic value of photography, after all, seeing the world from a different perspective. I have never felt challenged intellectually though. It’s entirely my fault, of course, because I never wanted to put myself out there in a way that was needed to get to a deeper intellectual connection with anyone.

Then, the depression hit. The kind of depression that sucks the spirit right out of you. I was suicidal then. I didn’t want to live in a world where all I felt was pain. The English major retreated from my life, which, I reckon is to be expected. I didn’t want to live a life of pain, I can’t imagine anyone would want to stick around to watch me go through it. But, the absence left me alone with my thoughts, which was the last place I wanted to be. So, I retreated. I retreated from photography, I retreated from thinking, I retreated from being left alone inside my head. I concentrated on nothing but my job. I sacrificed my dreams to be another mediocre (and completely forgettable) employee. I, in essence, joined the capitalist machine with no intention of ever leaving it. I needed to eat and pay bills, after all, and this world does not give us time to sit under a tree and contemplate. Contemplation was for intellectuals and academics, not for people like me, ashamed of my mind. I spent the next 20 years in that cycle. Sometimes coming up for air to shoot some photographs, or to make a doodle, or to try my hand at writing. I never pushed the limits of my capabilities, intellectually nor creatively. I reached the proper level of mediocrity that I felt I deserved and that’s where I stayed, though I never stopped longing for more. “More” just wasn’t something I would allow myself to reach for.

To this day, I don’t attempt to have deep, meaningful conversation with people. At least, not about the things that I once wished to have those types of conversations about.

When I enrolled in school, my goal was to get a piece of paper that matched the efforts I had put in to my photography work over the course of those 20+ years since I picked up my first camera. Then an honors society took notice and offered me a membership (Phi Theta Kappa). Now, let’s be clear. I didn’t stick myself in the shallow end of the pool of mediocrity for the fun of it, I honestly believed (and to some extent still do believe) that I am too stupid for college. On the day that I enrolled at Cuyahoga Community College my intention was that I would rely 100% on the skills and knowledge that I gained in my past experience to get the degree that told the employers that I knew what I was doing, I had no intention of attempting anything further than that.

Then I was approached by the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Scholars Academy. They, too, thought I was deserving of a higher level of education than I believed I was capable of. Studying the Humanities. Interesting. All of those deep conversations that I wanted to have but felt I was too stupid to indulge in are precisely the conversations we are going to have in class. I am, at the time of this writing, two weeks in to my first 16 weeks of being a “scholar,” and so far, though I am thoroughly enjoying class, I am seeing what lack of exercise has done to my brain muscles, so to speak.

So, Calamity is back. My journal of thoughts and discoveries and creative things. And I couldn’t be happier.