Today’s our wedding anniversary. We celebrated by getting out of town and exploring Laguna Beach this past weekend. Four years married now, and Ten years since the first time we kissed. A decade gone by and I’m still crazy for her and driven crazy by her. She’s still my favorite person, and I still get caught up in her beauty just the same as the first time I ever saw her. I can also say with great pride, that I still know how to crack her up on a dance floor, largely with the same set of moves all these years later.
Might not have seemed it at the time, but getting married was the easy part. Staying married, well that’s where it gets tricky. Marriage might just be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Hard to know if that’s because I’ve had an easy life, or because marriage is just plain hard work. Maybe it’s both. But in any case, it’s been my experience that the hard things we choose to do willingly, are always the most rewarding in the end.
I tried to pick out just one photo from each year of our story together. It was a challenge to say the least. Been so many bright spots along the way. Plenty of ties for first place. A lot of these photos didn’t even exist on Six Foot Giraffe to begin with, and that just felt like a bit of a crime to me. So here they are, not just safe and sound in my heart and mind anymore, but here too, for when the years start to get too far away from us. Happy Four to us.
We sipped drinks and floated around the pool all day. Shuffled along the dirt roads and lazily chased the sinking sun. Once the sunset painted the desert pink, it was time to pour another drink and fire up the grill. It was a lazy 3-day getaway in Yucca Valley.
Married three years, together almost nine. This is how we celebrated. Just like this desert climate, our time together has seen extreme highs and extreme lows, and time is the only thing that ever balances it all out.
10 years ago on this day I made my first post on Six Foot Giraffe. A doodle of a giraffe standing on a rocket blasting off through the stars. A bit of low-hanging fruit symbolizing the launch of my student portfolio site. I was twenty years old, and had no idea or expectation that my little website and modest doodles would end up largely shaping the course of my life and identity.
The past 10 years of Six Foot Giraffe have largely been a chronicle of my twenties. My achievements, failures, adventures, loves, and losses. It’s all here. Some written out in plain english, and others requiring a bit of reading between the lines. Memories the years might have stolen from me had I never stopped to reflect and share.
It’s also been my main outlet to fulfill my thirst to create. A place to make good art, bad art, and everything in-between. Somewhere to satisfy curiosities. It’s been fun and luminating for me to see how I’ve grown and changed artistically over the years.
What I’ve been doing here over the past 10 years has brought me joy, clarity and on occasion even resonates with others enough to inspire. Looking ahead, I have no doubt that this space will continue to grow and evolve. In to what, I can’t say. I do know that I’m just as in love with making art as I’ve ever been. I know that I’ll never stop.
To those who have supported and encouraged me all along the way, thank you. So much.
Happy Ten.
Celebrating five years of marriage. We had fun at dinner, comfortable in our typical way of joking and being weirdos together. Exactly how we like it. But a drink or two after this photo, we got to talking about how challenging our marriage has been. Now this isn’t news to either of us, not at all, but I wanted to write and preserve that truth here, and keep it as a reminder to myself that photographs aren’t undisputed evidence of everything being all sunshine and rainbows, all the time. My photos, or anyone else’s. It’s an easy thing to forget. Things inevitably get hard, and our response as partners to those hard times decide whether we sink, or whether we swim.