Photograph

I want to start by thanking each and every single individual who has shared my blog across his or her various social media channels. It means the world to me that you would share my work and help me reach a broader audience. My whole goal with this blog is to entertain as many as possible and because of you all, I am doing just that, so thank you so much! Y’all are the best!

The idea for this post came to me actually when Melissa and I were recently on the plane flying back home from our vacation out west. I sure as shit was not going to pay the $8 fee or whatever it was to have Wi-Fi up on the plane, what a waste of money – plus! I don’t even have a job, so there was no way that was happening. This left me without my traditional means of entertainment. Additionally, I had recently deleted all the games off my phone, did not bring a book, and had already read the in-flight magazine on the way out there. What-was-I-going-to-do-for-nearly-three-hours!?!   After a few moments of dread and despair, I went to my photos app and thought I would look at all the pictures from the trip to calm my nerves, but instead, I decided to go back, back to the beginning and scroll through each and every single one of my 4,491 pictures. It provided me with an experience that had me laughing, crying, and grinning from ear to ear, making this flight the best I have ever had.

Let me ask you, when was the last time you looked through each and every single picture in chronological order on your phone? Believe it or not, prior to a couple of weeks ago, I can honestly say that it was something I had never done. If you follow me on Instagram then you know I am a BIG fan of the occasional Throwback Thursday post, or my wife’s personal favorite, the Woman Crush Wednesday, but when I go to share one of these, I generally already have a pretty good idea of which picture I want. So, in those moments, I just scroll to the desired photo, completely disregarding any other gems that may have come from that same place and time. Well, not this time! I was going to enjoy each photo one by one.

Wildly enough, the very first picture in my camera roll is of my brother – in pigtails – taken on the day we ALL thought the world was going to end: December 21, 2012. Although this is the first picture in my “All Photos” folder, it really isn’t my first picture. My pictures, the ones I took and screenshot, do not begin till June 28, 2013. I received the pigtailed Chris photo in a text just a few years back (from my cousin), and she obviously took it on the date commemorated in Britney Spears’ award-winning music video for her mega-smash hit, “Till The World Ends.”

As I scrolled from photo to photo, I didn’t really start piecing together what I was truly seeing till near the end of my time doing so. I was just enjoying each picture on an individual basis, but then I started noticing that all these images fell into various chapters of my life. The best way for me to separate each chapter was by where I was working at the time – not because I took a lot of pictures at work – though there were definitely some, but because of who was in these pictures. The majority of my friends are people I have worked with at one point or another, so their debuts in my camera roll helped best define that particular time for me.

My move to California saw many people who had been featured cameos in my life, seeing them only here and there, typically holidays, get promoted to my primetime lineup and, of course, this happened vice versa. Many who were heavily featured in the eleven months leading up to my departure took a backseat role in that they only popped in the handful of times I flew back home or in the form of a beloved screenshot off Snapchat.

Snapchat has proven to be the gift that kept giving throughout all 4,491 pictures. When I arrived in California on May 13, 2014, I instantly ignited my Snapsterpiece phase. When I first moved there I had no real friends. I had my aunt, uncle, and cousins in the neighborhood across from mine, and I had my new California family, but I didn’t have any actual friends. So, to entertain myself, I would go out in the Jacuzzi nearly every night ever, take a selfie, and then proceed to illustrate myself as any number of individuals, ranging from Ronald McDonald to the arch-nemesis of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Shredder. Melissa also took up Snapsterpiecing, as she would send me hoards of equally articulate photos of herself as any given Disney Princess or iconic Britney Spears look, all from the comfort of her couch. While the Snapsterpiece phase for me subsided with the introduction of an actual social life, it still lives on in my photo album. Like everything else, its place in time holds a great value to me because, while I was not able to go out and have a good time with anyone in reality, I was still able to have a good time with Melissa, despite us being more than 1,700 miles away.

Special Note: I really miss that near-perfect Jacuzzi. It was like Heaven on Earth for me.

A prominent theme with less artistic detail than our typical Snapsterpiece, but no less numerical abundance, would be the multitude of screenshots I have where Melissa is mentioning chili in some form or another. I cannot even remember how we originated her faux love for chili, but it has become so commonplace in our lives, that its origin doesn’t really matter. Everyone knows Melissa and chili go hand-in-hand. We are talking about a woman who broke her own record eating thirteen chili dogs – no, it wasn’t a contest – it was just to prove to herself that she could. Any place that has chili on the menu will soon have it on the table in front of her. She eats so much chili that I’m sometimes worried the girl is going to turn into a bowl of chili. This girl hates chili, so naturally, everything I just said was completely false, but looking through my photos you would not know anymore the wiser. She has snapped me more than two dozen chili-affectionate photos, from her eating Snapchat-drawn bowls of chili, to her pining for chili at a place that is without. Why in the world are we spending so much time talking about something that isn’t even real? Who knows? But what I do know is, I cannot think of chili without thinking of Melissa. She will forever be AOL Instant Messenger user ChiliPrincess6969. Double 69 because she got locked out of her original account, ChiliPrincess69, so she had to create the 2.0 version.

March 10, 2015 is one of the most notable days from all 4,491 photos because it was the launch of my California social life. No surprise here, but I went to Disneyland. This was obviously not my first time at Disneyland as my cousin Alyssa and I had been several times prior since my moving out there, and each time Melissa came to visit we would go, but on this day I went with four people I had met at Macy’s Mission Viejo who remain some of my absolute best friends: Nick, Anita, Saara, and Michael. The first three and I are still in a group chat together to this day. Crazy for me to think that our Beyoncé versus Britney battles have been going on now for more than three years, and then obviously, Michael was one of the groomsmen in my wedding. This day I remember as being absolutely perfect, and the incredible photos I have of the five of us enjoying our first of what became many times there together will ensure I never forget how special this particular day was.

Michael had actually been prominently featured in my camera roll prior to this date as he and I were always the models for my favorite Macy’s work game: Fashion Show. There is no better way to know the fit or look of an ensemble till you have tried it on and that was exactly what we did. Fashion Show, though, definitely didn’t originate in Mission Viejo. No, my days as the women’s apparel manager at Macy’s St. Clair Square filled my phone with Fashion Show photos. Back in those days, though, everyone wanted to be a model in one of my shows; it was the “it thing” to do. Apparently, the interest in modeling was not as prominent out west as in Mission Viejo. It was only Michael and I, and then when I moved on to Escondido, the only model outside of myself – Halloween 2015 removed, looking at you California Melissa – was Joseph. Joseph, as many know, was the Best Man in my wedding. So what Fashion Show tells me is that even when it may not be the “it thing” to do, your future best friends will still model along side you, and obviously I loved it as Fashion Show was a staple at all three of my Macy’s.

Valentine’s Day 2016 was the soft beginning of an awakening of sorts for me. Melissa and I had the privilege of attending Britney Spears’s record-breaking show, Britney: Piece of Me, for our third time; only this time, we were there as guests of Britney herself. This dream within a dream came to fruition because I had received a hand-written letter from Britney the previous November inviting me to bring “my incredible energy” (and a guest) to come see her perform live in Vegas. Britney inspired me that evening to seek the change I needed, and within three months, I had achieved everything necessary to improve the state of my life.

All in the month of May 2016, I left Macy’s for Enterprise Rent-a-Car, got engaged (much more on this moment will come this Saturday, May 12, 2018 – the two year anniversary of our magical engagement), and scrapped nearly two years of my writing to completely start over fresh on my future novel about my brother. This was when I felt like I had fully come into my own, and it certainly shows in my photos, as my camera roll exploded following this time. I took as many pictures between May 2016 and June 2017 as I did from June 2013 to May 2016. This I found to be absolutely remarkable. All this happened despite the fact that I was working more than ever. Apparently, I was also playing more than ever, so I guess those eleven-hour days at Enterprise really did bring me quite a bit of good. I was now fully able to maximize my free time with those around me that I loved most.

Sometimes the happiest of moments come not because of something that is personally happening to us, but because of something we did for another, and there is no better example of this for me than on February 24, 2017. If I were to rank the three greatest days of my entire life this will forever make the cut. Melissa and I took Gabby, Garrett, Logan, and Colsen to Disneyland for their first time since they were all in first grade. At the time of our going, they were all in eighth. For those that do not know, Gabby, Garrett, and Logan are my California Dad, Mark’s, inevitable stepchildren, and Colsen is Gabby’s future husband, Logan’s best friend and Garrett’s neighbor across the street. The power of love I have for these four kids can only be found in a Céline Dion song. I know I use the term, “the best,” to describe a lot of things; but really and truly, these four are just that, the best. I have seventy unique pictures and videos from this day, far more than I have from any other single day outside of my wedding. They will probably want to kill me for this, but there is a particular video I have of the four of them bouncing with Tigger at our character breakfast that, even now as I write this, I am incapable of watching without tears streaming down my face. Those sixteen seconds perfectly encompass the absolute perfection of that day. Their beaming smiles and eyes were lit up with magic in a way that only Disney makes possible. I will never, ever forget this day and all those phenomenal photos will ensure it remains near the forefront of my heart and mind.

I mentioned that the only day to populate more pictures than that perfect one at Disney with the kids was mine and Melissa’s wedding (142 photos in all) and, well, as our anniversary is fast approaching, I’ll save those glorious details for another post.

Something I noticed along my journey was that I didn’t delete any of the pictures I had with either of the two individuals I was no longer friends with. One of those friendships just drifted away, no bad blood whatsoever; however, this wasn’t the first time this had happened with this particular person, so the drifting was, in retrospect, inevitable. While the other I ended because it became painfully obvious I no longer had any common ground with this person, and the only Toxic thing I want in my life is the Britney Spears song, so she had to go. I felt that the preservation of all the photos of these two was noteworthy because I have seen it time and time again where, when relationships end – as did with these – people will delete any photographic traces of time spent with that person. I feel the opposite, though, in that these times serve as a reminder of what once was. I enjoyed being friends with these people once, and to omit that history would be a disservice to me, not them. These are my pictures, after all, and that was my life for a period of time, so to pretend it never happened would be a work of fiction, and everyone knows my writing is of the non-fiction variety.

Fortunately, I have nothing but time on my hands and was able to take this journey down memory road through my photos again as I wrote this entry. Outside of my brother, I do not know anyone who has this much free time, but should the opportunity arise for you to take a look at all you have done through photo, I would strongly implore you to do so. Who even knows what you will come across? That’s how a lot of this was for me, as there were so many memories I had nearly forgotten. Beyond that though, these photos reminded me that while I may not have a whole lot going on now – outside of this blog – I do still have a wonderful life full of near-perfect people and for that, I am truly blessed.

Well, I do hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I loved writing it. Feel free to leave a comment below and as always, remember, you are simply the best!