My two favorite things are traveling and photography. Of course, I found a way to combine them!
I am a photographer, filmmaker, traveler, writer, graphic and web designer, and so much more. As you can probably guess, I keep myself pretty busy. I can’t help but think of new ideas and dive headfirst into them.
I have been a photographer for 15+ years and specialize in documentary-style photography. Throughout those years my interests expanded to filmmaking, graphic design, and web design. Naturally, when I started traveling, my camera came along with me. I fell in love with seeing parts of the world I haven’t seen before and experiencing things different from my normal. So far, I have traveled to 15 countries and 20 US states, and I am always looking for new places to explore. Photography has always made that exploration even more fun and helped me end up in places that I would have least expected. There is something about a camera being in your hand that pushes you to explore that hidden spot, walk that extra mile, and improve your patience when waiting for something amazing.
This is how I came up with the concept of The Everyday Adventure. When you start to think of everything as an adventure, it makes life a little more exciting. I help with everything travel. From before your trip to after, and everything in between! Click my website link below to plan your next journey or just daydream about future trips with me.
so one time i got bit by a brown recluse which is one of the only types of spider in my area that's actually dangerous and at first i didn't know what had happened to me, only that it was nasty. the swelling wasn't going down and the wound started to get ugly. i don't want to like get into the details because that's gross but it got to the point 2 weeks later that i was worried enough to go to the doctor, which i hate doing.
i am not afraid of spiders but other people are so i'd been covering it with this big ole square bandage (i needed more landscape coverage than a simple bandaid) and sat in the university medical waiting room, kicking my heels and playing BOTW. the nurse who admitted me was like, oh, we have got to get Tom to cover this one. she wrote spider bite under my ticket.
i waited in the near-empty building for like an hour and then nurse tom shows up in spiderman scrubs, out of breath. "sorry," he says, "i saw - your slip - and I had," he heaves in a breath, "to run home and. get. these scrubs. i literally. ran. felt like a job. for. spiderman."
i laugh. he puts his hands on his knees, thumbs-ups at me. fishes a pamphlet out from under his clipboard that basically says spiders can be scary but you don't need to be scared, there's very few dangerous spiders in new england. "honestly," he wheezes, "we probably don't need to get you into an exam room. just..." he waves his hand at the pamphlet, "read that."
i look down at my arm. then back at him in his scrubs. and then down at my arm. i like that he made an effort to make a joke, but now it does not feel like a good joke, because they are mistaking my calm for a lack of injury. "can i. like. at least show you the bite?"
he gives me kind of a weird look, which is fair, but then says. "if. i mean, if you have to."
i peel the bandage off. his face goes green.
"oh," he says.
"yeah, man."
"a... spider bit you?" his voice is high and tight and trembling. he backs up a few steps.
"i think a brown recluse," i offer. "i know it's nasty, sorry."
"excuse me for a moment." he looks over to the administering nurse on the other side of the small room. "i need to find someone else to take care of you."
the administering nurse smiles over to us with a degree of pleasure that is almost salivating. for a moment, like a window opening, i am briefly aware of what must be a psychic message floating amongst the in-between. her jaguar teeth all say this is like a party for me and i know exactly what i'm doing.
"oh no, tom," she says, grinning. "i gave her to you specifically."
the chiastic parallels between kanna risking her life to travel to the other side of the world during a war, only for katara to make the same perilous yet inverse journey north two generations later. how the shot with kanna looking on with tears in her eyes as hama is taken by the fire nation, the ship's hull closing as she looks out at her decimated tribe, her best friend with tears in her eyes, is a beat for beat exact callback to katara looking on at aang, the only difference being that aang attempts to smile hopefully for katara before his face, too, ultimately clouds over with despair. the fact that kanna is constantly nagging katara to do her chores, to stop messing around, to follow the rules, to stay put, to listen to her brother. she knows katara, knows her intimately, because she once was her. that brave, daring, hopeful, adventurous girl who wanted nothing more than to escape the confines of her of her monotonous existence, who wanted to travel and find freedom and hope elsewhere.
but katara is now her responsibility, and she knows all too well that a girl like that can be trouble, can be a danger to herself and others. especially if she's a waterbender. kanna saw her people massacred, her best friend taken by the fire nation, her daughter killed sacrificing herself for katara, the girl who carries the hope of her entire people on her shoulders. and she loves katara, she loves her so much, sees so much of herself in her, but it is also her job to rein her in, to keep her indoors, doing domestic busywork like sewing and laundry so she doesn't try to run off, try to run all the way to the other side of the world, so her antics, through her bending mishaps or otherwise, don't cause her to accidentally alert the fire nation and have their entire fragile existence come crumbling down after she and sokka have done so much to maintain it, to protect katara, even when katara feels like she is being smothered and overdisciplined and robbed of a childhood.
katara wants the opportunity to train with a master. of course she does. she considers her waterbending the most important part of her identity, the part of her that brought hope to her tribe and killed her mother in equal measure. she's the only person left who holds the key to their cultural artform, this crucial piece of their heritage. and of course kanna would love it if katara could hone her craft, but her first priority is always keeping katara alive, and if that means she can't become a bending master, then so be it.
raising a teenager is hard, really hard. they don't like being told that ordering them around and telling them to stay in the borders you've drawn for them is "for their own good." the only reason kanna doesn't have the same problem with sokka is because he doesn't actually consider himself a teenager (although he very much is), and he not only follows her rules but enforces them. they are on the same page; safety is the priority, katara is the priority. but katara hates how restrictive their rules are, hates how sullen and strict and serious they are. how hopeless they are, how resigned they are to leading lives of misery in the fraught safety they've created for themselves. she wants to see the world, to have fun, to have friends, to help others instead of being the one constantly being protected and sheltered.
of course, kanna and sokka are not hopeless and depressed and numb by nature; they have been hollowed out into shells of themselves by the war, by the promises they've made to keep katara safe. sokka grows so much by traveling the world, absorbs so much new knowledge so quickly, makes new friends and lovers, gains new perspectives, reaches his full, incredible potential by being dragged out of the comfort zone he clings to in the pilot. and kanna has already undergone her bildungsroman, lifetimes ago. she knows what it is like, what it means to experience the adventure katara desires. but she never told her. she never once mentioned to katara that the south pole is not all she knows, that she too once longed to leave the place that was stifling her, suppressing her freedom. she is afraid to tempt katara, to be anything other than the strict authority from which she once left everything she ever knew behind to escape.
until the avatar returns. until the legend she used to tell katara before their world became too hopeless, of the old days when the avatar kept balance and the world was not at war, is made real again. when katara, who found aang, who believed in him from the beginning, brings the avatar back, through her desperation and her rage and her indomitable hope for a life that can be bigger and better than kanna and sokka's dour little pocket of resignation and grief.
kanna has always believed in katara, has always known that there would come a time when katara was to bring back hope to their tribe. so now, trusting sokka, katara's sworn protector, to stay by her side and do right by her, she ushers them on their journey. katara, her little waterbender, hero of the southern water tribe, and spitting image of kanna.