ONE WINTER DAY IN SANTA FE, I WALKED along Rodeo Road, camera in hand, seeking inspiration. I was also on the verge of tears. I was depressed—haunted by a future that seemed to be slipping from my grasp.
Last fall, after quitting my job at Pasatiempo, the weekly magazine of the Santa Fe New Mexican where I’d covered art and culture full-time for a decade, I was determined to find myself. I wanted to explore creative impulses of my own. But on this day—out of money, coffee, and groceries—I still wasn’t ready to return to work. I was at a crossroads, and the right direction remained elusive.
That had always been my problem, I reflected. There was a calling out there with my name on it, always at the edge of my seeing but ever indistinct. As a kid, I wanted to be a dog, then Indiana Jones, then a filmmaker. I made a go at painting in the late 1980s and early ’90s, but I dropped out of Massachusetts College of Art and Design in my second semester. I tried acting, completing
