There’s a moment, somewhere between the shutter click and the whiskey glass hitting the table, where you realize you’ve stumbled into your own skin. It’s not clean, not polished, not fit for polite dinner parties. It’s raw, cracked, patched together with duct tape and bad jokes, but damn it, it’s yours.

That’s what happened to me. I don’t know exactly when it started, maybe in the haze of writing those Legacy in the Lens entries, staring down the ghosts of my past and the bastard offspring of the future. Something cracked open. The polite veneer peeled away and underneath was this scarred, sarcastic bastard with a pen in one hand and a camera in the other. A voice I didn’t recognize at first but somehow felt like home.

Maybe it’s no surprise. I grew up marinating in the acid humor of George Carlin, watching Hunter S. Thompson fire off wild-eyed wisdom like a lunatic preacher on a mescaline bender. And my father. God rest him, had that same cutting humor, the kind of wit that could slice through the noise like a chainsaw through butter. It’s in the blood.

Now, here I am, standing at the crossroads of words and images, realizing I’ve found my stride. Writing doesn’t feel like work anymore. It feels like breathing, ragged, necessary, and sometimes full of smoke. I don’t care about fitting in the boxes anymore. The world doesn’t need another sanitized blogger writing about “finding themselves” over artisanal coffee in some urban loft. No, the world needs people willing to grab the torch, even if their hands get burned.

In this current climate, we don’t have the crazy old bastards manning the lighthouses anymore. The keepers have gone quiet, and the fog is rolling in heavy. I’m not saying I’m the next Thompson, hell no! That man was a singular force of nature, a lightning storm wrapped in human skin. But somebody’s got to light the beacons when Gondor calls for aid.

So here I am. Open. Brutal. Honest. A camera on my shoulder and words dripping with gasoline, ready to ignite. It feels right. It feels like the only way forward. And if the world isn’t ready for it, well, that’s their problem.

This is my voice. And I intend to use it.