New Roll / Life Stuff (Patreon)

Hi!

First, film: Here's the zipped folder with everything and here's the Flickr gallery with everything to view individually. This roll is Kodak Portra 800, primarily shot with very long lenses (the high ISO allowed me to get away with 85mm up to 300mm lenses while hand-holding). There's some good shots, I think.

If you want to keep reading, here's the life stuff: the relentless attacks on my people, the continued apparent collapse of the US into gleefully hateful fascism, the specific trauma I've suffered in the past year, and a general sense of complete exhaustion have overtaken me. I stepped down from my day job at Motor1. I simply haven't been able to function as both a full-time writer and a human being in the ways I'd like to.

It used to be that writing helped reinvigorate me, but I haven't really enjoyed cars in a while, if I'm entirely honest. Getting the Accord stolen really took the last of the wind out of my sails. I'm also very tired of being a niche, but very visible, public figure. I'm just not quite stable enough mentally to handle all of it as gracefully as I want to.

I love the Motor1 team and the opportunity was the best one I'll probably ever get in my life. I wrote a lot of stories I am incredibly proud of, and I worked with great editors and writers. This four-year career has taken me wild places and this job was genuinely the peak of what I could hope to achieve. I'm extremely sad I can't do it anymore.

I have some money saved for survival, so I have no immediate plans for what's next. I have some artistic ideas but frankly I have no idea if I have the mental health to actually create any of them. My main goal is just to get my anxiety and depression under control before they seriously impact my health further.

I will still be updating here, perhaps more than I even was before, as part of trying to heal for me will be walking (this week I walked twenty miles in three days just so I could stop having panic attacks for a bit; it helped a lot). I will be shooting photos as I walk as always, and I like posting here, so it's pretty easy for me.

Whatever money I make here I'll almost certainly just turn around and spend on film and developing said film. A massive thank you as always for your support, because I really want to keep shooting film through this period, and this will allow me to.

Thanks, and please everyone stay safe and sane in these miserable times,

Vicki