DAY 1: TAKING THE FIRST STEP
WHAT ARE YOU HOPING FOR IN THE JOURNEY AHEAD THIS MONTH?
As we begin this month of opening up to seeing ourselves with kindness through our cameras, what are you hoping for?
I went to sleep last night with an optimism that was crushed when I went to White Rock U-Lock to catch up on my storage locker payments. Grey fingerprint like swooshes on my black cane matched the cloudy sky above as I hobbled into their front office. Buried in my pocket, my left hand clenched my debit card & 10 $100 dollar bills. That cash, alongside a debit payment should have settled the debt, unlocking my online access so I could pay for my through year’s end. I greeted a lady at the front desk, explaining why I was there. She looked up my account, but it wasn’t there. Eventually she found 2 closed accounts: 1 for a small locker I had from 2008-‘13; & a larger one I’d had since ‘13.
“What do you mean closed?” I asked, my body beginning to shake with a trembling that flowed from my brain down along my spine & into my body like water being released from a damn. She said that my unit had been emptied on May 30, having been auctioned off earlier in the month. With that, my knees gave way as the soft wail of “No, no, no, no…” escaped my lips, melting into a sobbing as I hit the floor, curling into a kind of fetal position, aching all over, eventually hitting my face with my fists for how stupid I was. Tears stained my face when I realized my glasses had fallen off. As I picked them and myself off the floor I saw the left lens had popped out of the now broken frame. I desperately scanned the floor for the lens & soon found it. I then grabbed my debit card from the counter & pushed the cash towards the people on the other side, each piece taking flight & gently falling towards their desk & floor as I walked out. Fighting back more tears, I shouted out how I’d sue them all as I cobbled back to my SUV.
The last few weeks have been a struggle as I continue to battle my high blood sugar. My right arm has also been so stiff that I’ve had trouble picking things up, with pain trying to even grasp a pen to write. Yesterday, I took my blood sugar readings with a regularity my ADHD would be proud of: 17.6 mmol/L at 7am; 25.2 before lunch; 21.8 after it; 26.6 at 5pm; 13.7 at 8pm when I had dinner; then 18.4 at 10pm; & it’s hovered at 18 all day today. As I sit here looking at my phone, staring down at my legs, I wonder why I keep messing up.
I had been in touch over email with the location’s manager, an Abraham (Abe) Escobar, who for some reason I’ve always pictured as being a portly older gentleman with a big smile, a grey moustache, glasses, slightly balding with grey hair left on the sides & back of his head like a young Patrick Stewart. He was aware of my health issues that have had me at the hospital almost daily since mid-January. My account with them fell into trouble when I was tight on funds earlier this year. So, after 2 missed payments, White Rock U-Lock puts a hold on your access to their website payment portal. When I received funds again in April, I pleaded with them to release my online access, which they refused to do (what’s weirder is a demand letter from them sent to me by e-mail said payment could be made online). I clearly noted I was prepared to pay the entire outstanding amount, plus an amount that would carry me forward into next year. My last email to them was in May, the night I was in the hospital after collapsing in front of the police officers due to my blood sugar being over 25 mmol/L. I never got any final notification about my account being closed & my locker being sold. U-Lock has my cell number, my email, and my mailing address. I had received texts from them about paying, but never received any notification or calls that they were going to sell. My last text message from them was February 19, 2024.
I drove to Southpoint Exchange Mall, where I parked & broke down crying. I sent a few short video messages about the situation to a few friends. And I recalled everything I had in the locker: 4 steel shelves full of blank sketchbooks; boxes of unopened Star Wars Lego sets including a Millennium Falcon (which I was saving to build one day with my kid, should I ever be lucky enough to have one); dozens of new canvases of various sizes; an assortment of wood, plastic, and metal pieces saved for future sculptures; some old window frames I intended to use as the surface for future artworks; a tree sculpture made out of metal which I had made in Kent Anderson’s sculpture course (along with my ex-girlfriend’s large metal bird she had made in the same course); an old chair & table I’d used in an art installation; a few dozen election signs from various past elections which I had used in a series of installations in different parks and wanted to play with again one day; various costumes I’d used in performance art; a large Halloween skull; computer parts; tarps; framed photos I’d printed and used in different local art shows; several vintage typewriters I’d used in several installations; several slide projectors; several small monitors for displaying videos in exhibits; as well as styrofoam pieces I’d used in past sculptures (like the giant donut I made one year). I’m probably forgetting a lot, but there was easily over $10,000 worth of items in the locker: the basis for starting & maintaining a studio art career once I finished my degree. All pissed away because of my stroke, my depression, diabetes, and fucked up feet.
What would you love to feel in this experience?
I am desperate to feel positive again. It feels like whenever I get going again something knocks me back down. And having lost so many things this week, things that took me 16 years to collect, feels like I’ve taken a huge punch to my gut. It feels like some vulture swooped in a stole a huge part of my life, a huge part of who I want to be.
Are there certain types of selfies you hope to capture?
I want to continue experimenting with how I look at myself. I find I often get stuck in a sea of negativity. A sea of persistent negative thinking. And that’s reflected in how my selfies and written reflections I end up posting. I keep thinking of all I’ve lost, what was kept? What’s been trashed? Can I get it back?
IT CAN BE POWERFUL TO GIVE VOICE TO WHAT WE'RE NERVOUS OR FEARFUL OF TOO. WHAT FEARS OR WORRIES ARE ON YOUR MIND? By giving them space to be heard and knowing that they might come up again, it can help us begin to diffuse their power over us!
HAVE YOU TAKEN YOUR PHOTO ALREADY? IF NOT...ARE YOU FEELING RESISTANT? IF SO, IT'S TOTALLY OKAY AND LET'S EXPLORE WHY!
You might find that with this or any prompt, you feel resistant. That is totally okay and it can actually be a really good thing as it's a sign that there is change ahead. Your inner critic doesn't want you to change and it works really hard to prevent that. So when we feel that resistant feeling it's usually a sign that we SHOULD do it, no matter what our inner critic says. So let's compassionately and playfully step into our resistance to a prompt, keep going...keep trying. Out past our resistance is our realizations!
Plus, we're on Day 1 of a class, beginning a process of taking a photo every day! Today is about creating that motion in the process and this space it to let yourself acknowledge the resistance and see what happens next!
If I drank, I’d probably be doing that right now. But I don’t. All day since leaving the storage office my mind has desired to stuff my face with donuts from Hillcrest Bakery, chocolate bars from Thrifty Foods and London Drugs reached out towards me calling my name: “Steven, Steven - just one bite! Come on dude!” The image of myself in the front seat of my SUV tearing into a Reese Peanut Butter Cup and devouring all three so quickly passed through my mind, alongside the reading on my blood glucose meter ticking up higher and higher. But I resisted.
I don’t know what to do about the locker. A quick Google search revealed that the White Rock U-Lock earned over $4,000 from its auction, for a debt that would have been no more than $1,500. I’m terribly heartbroken, knowing I have to fight this somehow, but also having so much work to do at my place, my Mom’s and for the last few weeks of my condensed art history course. I’m terrified I’m going to fall into flight mode again, a slippery slope into depression that will probably result in me losing everything if I’m not careful.
This was originally posted on Flickr and Instagram
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