Today I turn 31. My 30th rotation around the sun didn't go exactly as I thought it would. Granted I didn't have any grand plans to travel the world, move somewhere new, or do anything that would have been largely impacted by a global pandemic, but it still feels like I would have done something. Something other than primarily interact with people online and work from home full time. I don't know what I expected from 30, but it definitely wasn't what I got.

I want to start off by acknowledging just how fortunate I am, relatively. I still have my job, which I think pays well enough to meet my needs, and explore new hobbies, as well as spend more on my parents for Christmas than I ever have before. I have had the luck of not being infected by the corona virus, nor have I had to deal with the hardships of knowing anyone that has been infected either. I have lots of caring friends and am still close with my parents. This is all to say, by a lot of metrics, things are going pretty well. But that's not really what I'm writing this post about. Despite surviving the pandemic thus far, enduring a time of wildly open racism and inequality, keeping my job through a huge economic downturn, weathering the worst winter storm I've seen in Texas, and a host of other things we've all probably forgotten thanks to the breakneck speed of the news cycle over the past 366 days (2020 was a leap year after all), the thing I am most proud of surviving in my 30th trip around our star, is depression.

Depression is caused by a lot of factors. Mine was probably a mix of chemical and environmental. I hadn't been taking anything for my under active thyroid for a while. Feel free to check the link for what that can do to you. It also probably didn't help that the US seemed to be spiraling, however fortunate I was personally. What definitely didn't help was my living situation. A few years ago I moved into an apartment that at the time seemed great. It wasn't the fanciest or the newest, but it was all the space I needed, and at a more than reasonable price. Last year however, my car was broken into at a bar, and then weeks later my apartment was also burglarized. Combine that with the fact that there had been a homicide directly in front my unit in the parking lot, and I no longer felt safe. I was able to cope for a while, but I knew I had to move. But when I was finally able to get into a new place, I was still haunted by the trauma. I still felt anxious all the time. I was getting worse. It was a challenge to be productive. Focusing during work was getting more difficult. Staying in bed until 1PM on a Saturday was becoming more frequent. I hadn't been working on any projects at home. Things were getting worse, not better, but I wasn't entirely sure why.

Even before the pandemic hit, a lot of the content I consumed was online. I have a host of YouTube content creators I follow, and have a fairly well curated Reddit feed so I can cut the more toxic communities out of my line of sight. I have also nearly entirely stopped using social media in the last couple of years. I can't remember what the last thing I posted on Facebook was, and my Instagram account has been feeling the neglect for some time now. I really do think this has also helped in the long run, but it was primarily two pieces of content that really woke me up. I read this piece by Kevin Love, which I discovered while browsing /r/NBA on Reddit. I have to say, I am not, nor have I ever been, a Cavs fan, but I can say that I look up to Kevin now. This was a tough piece to read, specifically because it resonated with me so much. This man, who by all the typical standards our society places on people, specifically men, is wildly successful and was also going through something that sounded all too familiar. How could this happen to him? Isn't his life great? Why does he feel like things are so hard? It took a while for me to figure out that success has nothing to do with it. That anyone can be hit by the weight of depression. I think it was in part by the way that Jon Smith of Funhaus described his struggles in a video last year. While Jon's diagnosis of bipolar depression was different than mine, the way he described his depressed states was more relatable to me than Kevin Love's. Not because Kevin is so traditionally successful, but because Jon's life shares more parallels to mine. He wasn't working on personal projects, he was falling behind in aspects of his life, he was generally enjoying things less. Suddenly I had the perspective I needed to see what was happening to me. I am successful. I do have depression. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. And I was starting to feel like something had to be done. Needed to be done. Because I didn't want to just keep existing like this.

Let me answer the next question you probably have - I was never suicidal - which does make me better off than some. There is a long list of reasons why I want to continue living. But like I said, I was just existing, on auto pilot, and I didn't want to be anymore. It was already hard enough to keep track of time with the lock downs and quarantines changing routines so much, but throw how bad I felt into the mix and things just got worse. Existing is no way to live. But I was fairly high functioning. My work wasn't really affected until way later in the year, and I don't think any of my friends really knew until I told them. Depression can be weird like that. You might never know. But I had reached a breaking point. I had a panic attack one day while working. I'm not even sure what triggered it. I called my endocrinologist, my GP, and emailed a therapist I found through online research. I immediately had blood work done for my thyroid, a general physical, and started therapy not long after. It was incredibly difficult to get started, but I'm so glad I did.

The key was forcing myself to be accountable for these small actions. I immediately told one of my best friends about how I felt and what I planned to do. I knew I couldn't totally count on myself to be accountable, and this way I wasn't alone either. And it worked. I was able to get all of these things scheduled and done. I felt immediately better after my first session with my therapist. Not cured. That would be impossible, and probably not the right way to think about something like depression anyway. But I felt a weight starting to lift. I had more support now. Someone who wanted to help me feel better, and could help give me the tools to do so. Over the next several weeks I told her about everything going on, and we decided on additional medication to help me through this. It's been a little over 2 months now, and I feel so much better. Really. I've told more people about what I'm going through and it's helped even more. Being open about your mental health is liberating, and well, healthy. We still live in a world where having an issue of any kind with your mental health carries stigmas with it. But speaking openly about it and finding people with similar experiences to you can only help.

All of this is just because I wanted to share my experience as a man facing depression, and a person of color facing depression. If I can have the same impact as Kevin or Jon - people I admire - on even a small scale, then I want to do it. Even if this gets largely dismissed or glossed over on an internet overly saturated with all kinds of content, that's ok. Hopefully one person will read this and realize that the way you feel can be improved. That you're not just tired, or having a bad week, or still not over something. And that's ok. And it's ok to get help.

I have started working on projects again. I fixed multiple errors on my cloud hosting server that I have been dealing with for over a year. A whole year. It works now - I'm excited. I re-built my computer. I built a mechanical keyboard - and despite my wallet's protests, I'm going to do it again. I am more present and active with my friends, even if that's largely online still. I've still got work to do, but I feel better all the time.

At this point I have no idea what 31 is going to bring, and with hindsight from last year I know that I shouldn't expect anything specific. I'm going to just do the best I can to take care of myself, and know that I won't be going at it alone.

Thanks for reading.

-Sean

It's no surprise that this has been a rough year for most people. But even in the midst of all the insane news stories, emergence and persistence of a worldwide pandemic, and toxic vitriol some people have turned into primary personality traits, sometimes beautiful things happened too. Melina and I were able to make a trip to Colorado (Aspen and Snowmass to be specific) to surprise our friend Lauren when Joe popped the question. Joe had let us in on the plan weeks in advance, so we had plenty of time to safely plan a trip to make some magic happen. The four of us have collectively been friends for near a decade. I've known Melina for over 10 years, and she introduced me to her best friend Lauren after they met in college. What a surprise it was when Lauren then introduced her boyfriend Joe 7 years ago, when it turns out he was my old childhood friend that I hadn't seen in years. So of course when we learned that Joe was going to propose, we knew we had to be there.

We ended up driving 40 hours over 3 days for this surprise, which ended up being worth every minute. Melina and I ended up getting an Airbnb in Snowmass, Colorado, which is about 15 minutes away from Aspen. We thought this would be a good option, as it would reduce our chances of being seen by Lauren, but was still close enough to not have to drive too far to get to Weller Lake trail where Joe had planned the big moment.

We had basically just enough time the day of to take in a walk down to the mall to find a breakfast spot and recharge before heading out for the hike.

Lauren and Joe had been going on weekend trips, so it wasn't too overtly suspicious when Joe took Lauren to Aspen from Fort Collins for the weekend. Ever since they moved to Colorado they have been taking advantage of all the beautiful hiking opportunities available as well, and at this time of year the aspen trees change color and make for amazing scenery.

Despite the brief nature of the trip, it was really refreshing to get out for just a little bit and enjoy ourselves. We did have a bit of a hard time with the hike however since we weren't yet acclimated to the altitude, but we did just barely manage to get up the trail to the lake before Lauren and Joe. But I mean, really, just barely. They actually almost walked up on us as I was talking to another couple at the top of the trail!

And just like that, it started happening!

After enough time had passed for Lauren to say yes, we popped out from behind the rock we were hiding behind (literally) and shouted SURPRISE! The trip was officially a success and we were able to capture some amazing pictures of the moment. Thankfully, Lauren had no idea we were coming, and was very impressed with her new fiance's ability to put this all together.

Of course Melina is set to be the Maid of Honor, and Joe asked me to be one of his groomsmen, which I am thrilled about. We were so excited to be able to be part of this special day, and of course celebrated with pizza afterwards. The wedding is set in 2022 after Lauren finishes vet school, so keep an eye out in the future for more updates!

Images in this post taken with a mix of cameras. I used my Canon 5D III, Fuji X100F, and Galaxy S20+

Honestly I was pretty surprised I was able to pick up the domain seanedmunds.com, but I'm pretty glad I did. I haven't been using my Squarespace site, and the domain associated with it, halfaperture.com. I've been doing less paid photography work and it just doesn't make sense to keep it around any more. That being said, I still like photography quite a lot, and wanted to keep a place where I could showcase my work, other than social media. This new site is what comes of that need. I set it up using a self hosted solution called Koken. It allows the use of templates, similarly to Squarespace, which makes for easy edits so I don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about updating HTML, CSS, or any other code to keep a good looking site. From here on out, halfaperture.com will be directed here as I make this my new home for photography.

Keeping that in mind, this new change corresponds with my good friend Melina releasing her newly published book Paper Cups. We did some promo shots which I have happily displayed on the new site, both on the home page and in the portraits album with her name on it. As always, we got some really great shots, and her new house has some really amazing natural light to shoot in. You can get her new book in paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon now.

I, personally, have been spending a lot more time working on personal projects at home related to IT and my job, practicing systems administration. This site happens to be a product of this practice as well. Full disclosure, the rest of this will be a little on the nerdy side.

A while ago when Toys R Us was going out of business, I was able to buy one of their Dell servers for just $400. This allowed me to start getting practice with virtual server environments at home, specifically VMWare ESXi. Most of the servers I'm running are Linux - Ubuntu 18.04 to be exact. I migrated a lot of the stuff that was previously running on a Windows desktop to different virtual servers and ended up learning a lot. I started running my web server and reverse proxy using NGINX. The free version of their web server software lets you host any number of websites assuming you have the domains and hardware for it, and allows for what's called a reverse proxy, as I mentioned before. This means that I can have as many sites and services behind ports 80/443 as I need without having to open up more ports and risk my network security. NGINX allows for what are called server blocks, which lets you point web requests to certain sites based on domain names. This is how I can service seanedmunds.com and halfaperture.com at the same location as I host other, not publicly accessible pages. I also setup Let's Encrypt auto renewing SSL certificates to keep the site safe for people browsing and for myself in administration. I also currently have the sites configured to redirect unsecured HTTP traffic to the HTTPS version with valid certificates. All in all, this means that I can eliminate the need for Squarespace, although I am sacrificing some reliability, as I do not have any real server infrastructure or business class internet. I did however learn some good job related skills and will end up saving around $20-30 a month in various fees.

I hope to keep updates coming here for both interesting personal projects and more photography stuff. I have plenty of film that needs to get developed and scanned, and may feature the process or the cameras I shoot with. Keep an eye out here for more.

-Sean