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Friendship And The Life I Left Behind
When I was younger, like so many others, I thought that best friends were people who knew me better than anyone else in the world and with whom I shared everything. That was certainly true of me, my best friend and I were like siblings! As we grew up, things started to change. We both had jobs and responsibilities now. There were no longer any more sleepovers or wild adventures to be had; it seemed that our friendship wasn’t meant to last forever after all! The memories of the life I left behind come to me in waves, like whispers in the night. Although the time has passed and the…
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FDNY Engine 6
November 2022
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November 2022 Selfies
Thomas Slatin’s November 2022 Selfies
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Dark Horse: How I Learned To Embrace My Unconventional Nickname
When I was younger, my nickname was Dark Horse. For most of my life, I hated it. It didn’t reflect the person I wanted to be seen as, and it wasn’t even accurate—while we were growing up, I was anything but the dark horse. I recently had an epiphany about why my friends gave me that nickname in the first place: they saw things in me that others refused to acknowledge—my will, my inner strength, and my potential. A dark horse is someone who excels in an unexpected field. In the world of horse racing, a dark horse is any horse that’s not being considered a favorite to win the…
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An Old Friend’s Question: Would I Ever Return To Firefighting?
An old friend called me and asked, “would you ever return to firefighting?” To which I replied, “that all depends on what you have in mind”. He clarified that he wanted me to come back and fight fires with him again. He was referring to the way things used to be, and how we had a lot of fun together. I told him, “the way things used to be weren’t the way things are now, and perhaps they never will be.” “I just wanted to know”, he said, asking me again, “would you ever consider coming back to fighting fires?” I thought about it for a moment, and then I…
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Now Is The Time To Let Go
Most of us live for cheap thrills. Whether it’s diving into a plate of nachos or watching an action movie with our friends, it’s easy to get sucked into the allure of fun that doesn’t really matter to our lives in the long run. But at some point, cheap thrills fade away and we need to start thinking about the bigger picture. You can’t make up for lost time or replace what is lost. Whether it be a relationship, an ambition, a skill, an opportunity or a moment in time, you’ll never get it back. The highs don’t stay high for long and the lows don’t stay low forever. The…
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I Have So Many Thoughts, But Have Lost My Breath To Say The Words I Need To Speak
November 10, 2022 I have so many thoughts, but have lost my breath to say the words I need to speak. I’m left with only the pressured space between my ears to push them out through my mouth and into the open air of the world around me. My mind is an unstoppable machine, constantly churning out ideas which spill over the sides of my cranium onto every inch of surrounding my brain matter. But, I can’t find it in myself to give these things form and substance through articulation of thought and word. It’s hard enough being a loner, and recently all of my life’s problems seem to be…
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Thomas Slatin Quote About Isolation
I grew up in a world that didn’t understand me, and in some ways, it still doesn’t. Throughout my childhood, I was always reading, and always looking for answers in the books I loved so much. It seems that I was isolated to the point that I might as well have lived in the mouth of a whale with my notebooks and a candle. Thomas Slatin
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The Back Alley
Laconia, New Hampshire, United States November 2022
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Electric Company
Laconia, New Hampshire, United States November 2022
