Thoughts & Experiences
I don’t yet know what this section is going to look like. I’ll probably share some of my favorite insights I’ve read and saved over the years. I might also write short stories about photographs you can find in my galleries. That is the extent of my thinking on it for now. It’s all fair game as far as I’m concerned.
Have any ideas? Drop me a line.
‘25 Photo Challenge
It’s been a solid 10+ years since I was sincerely practicing photography. Maybe a little bit here or there, but no commitment, no growth, no real effort. I have been busy. I started down a line of more demanding jobs. We got our first dog. My wife and I had two kids. I’ve longed to return for quite some time, and as the saying goes, Better late than never.
To help recreate the habit of practicing photography (a lovely blackhole-level time suck), I signed myself up for a weekly photo challenge for all 52 weeks of 2025. For once, I didn’t overanalyze the challenge; I found the first legit website resulting from my Google search and just went with it.
I’ll be posting the resulting weekly photos in this collection on my galleries page. I know already I won’t enjoy every prompt and by week four I also know they won’t all be good. But making good art is a process. And I’m strapped in to do the work to find the juice once again.
One of my favorite thoughts about starting a new project:
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
Shriveled Lace
Random blog post incoming.
Observe how all things are continually being dissolved and reshaped and broken apart and recombined. Is there any harm in this, or anything to fear? It is the way of nature.
Marcus Aurelius observed, with a clarity that cuts across centuries, that in life, change is the rule, not the exception.
It’s not tragic or dramatic; it just is. Like the way rivers wear down mountains grain by grain, or how the forest floor drinks up a fallen tree, turning it into fuel for the next generation of growth. It seems that to Marcus, this wasn’t just a philosophical idea - it was a fact of nature, as solid and unchanging as the cycle itself.
Consider it: nothing in nature resists change. The leaves that crisp and fall in autumn don’t cling to their branches in defiance. The soil doesn’t lament the passing of the leaves; it transforms them into something useful, something necessary. And yet, when it comes to our own lives, we grip so tightly. Jobs we’ve outgrown, relationships that have shifted, identities that no longer fit - we clutch at them, as though staving off the inevitable could somehow stop it from happening.
Marcus wasn’t writing these thoughts in some peaceful retreat; the dude was ruling an empire, navigating wars, disease, and political backstabbing. And still, he saw no reason to fear this constant breaking down and building up. It’s simply the way of things, he thought, and maybe the best thing we can do is align ourselves with it.
So, what would it mean to live like this? To stop resisting the tide and start asking, What’s next? It’s not about giving up control or shrugging at life’s difficulties - it’s about seeing them differently. The forest doesn’t mourn the fallen tree; it grows something new. Could we? What could we make, or remake, from what’s dissolving around us? Maybe that’s the work of a lifetime - not to stop the flow but to learn to move with it.
Turn the dial to launch
This is an obligation.
After a ten-or-so-year hiatus, I’ve relaunched johnagessner.com. It’s nothing dramatic, I just got busy with having two kids and you know, raising them and stuff. I still am doing that, by the way.
The site has a blog section and while I would potentially like to write more in the future, right now I just really want to get my photo galleries posted. I’m writing this boring-ass blog post to check a box.
Maybe one day this will be interesting. Today, it’s not. Go check out my photos. There might be something worth your time over there.
Cheers.