On April 23, 2017, I went to see a long water stream connected to the Chattahoochee river with my father, turtles, and brother, Jamie. Father and Jamie had gone there a few days before, but without me and my turtles. I thought about not going with them the second time they wanted to go, but I made the final decision of going with them, which would later change my life, in a good way. I thought about not going because of my social anxiety. Going outside made me uncomfortable as there were people around. I didn't really worry much about people judging me anymore, but I still had the symptoms as I had yet to receive medication to treat the disorder. I would nervous-blush, shake, cover my mouth with one of my hands, have teary eyes, and wear a hoodie to cover myself from people at any place I went. But, fortunately, I went to the river so special to me. I took pictures of my turtles, Maxxlonia and Spikes, with my Nikon camera. I posted the pictures on each of their Instagram accounts, @maxxloniatheturtle and @spikestheturtle, from day to day. It was Maxxlonia's Instagram account that I valued more though. The first Instagram post from the photoshoot had Maxxlonia looking at the camera with a side of her little turtle head along with what appeared to be a smile, even though turtles don't smile, as they obviously do not have facial expressions like humans.
I wanted the pictures of Maxxlonia to be part of a photo album titled 'PRISM' after Katy Perry's 2013 studio album 'PRISM' since the music from the album fit with my photo album's theme. The photo album was very special to me because of the pictures and the messages it sent out to the thousands of people on Instagram throughout the years that I got to post my pictures from the photo album. All my 'PRISM' photo album pictures were posted on Instagram, and taken on my camera from April 2017 to July 2020. It was my first professional photo album as I did themes on Instagram before that could have each had their own photo album, but I considered them unprofessional because most of them were not taken with a professional camera and all of them were not organized the way I wanted, so I archived all of my older Instagram posts.
I didn't delete them since I wanted to still see all of my old posts from time to time, for the nostalgia and to see what I was like back then. I created Maxxlonia's Instagram account in August 2015 along with Spikes'. I wanted to share pictures of my precious pets to people out there on social media.
The photo album consists of 86 pictures that revolves around inspirational, motivational, and poetic sayings. All of the captions on Maxxlonia's Instagram since Fall 2018 were written by me, especially the poems. Before that, I used quotes by famous writers that I had found on a website from April 2017 to September 2018. I wanted to try something new, especially as I was running out of quotes to use for my captions. I had written some poetry before, in school, and in my Google Keep notes back in 2017, especially through my song-writing. My song-writing was the inspiration for my first couple of poetic captions. I didn't want to just have a caption for each post, but I also wanted to have some fun with poetry.
There were two places in which the photos from the photo album had be taken. Two different water streams, but connected to the famous river of the state of Georgia. The two places were about 20 minutes apart, if you walked, which was my way of getting to either places as my father had no car. The reason why I went to two places for the photo album's shoot is because the first place I had gone to ended up being flooded by the time I had arrived from Missouri to Georgia in April 2018. For months, I couldn't find another similar place to go to, which worried me because I wanted to take more pictures of Maxxlonia for the photo album, at least until Summer 2019, so that the photo album lasted two years with its photos. Mainly because of my fascination with numbers, so two years of photo-shooting for the photo album would be great, so if I decided to do another photo album, the photo album would come to existence at least two years after the previous one. So, it would be like this: PRISM (2017), Untitled (2019), and so on. Thankfully, I found another place in August 2018 that had a water stream and sand, with trees around, which was what I needed for my photos. I took plenty of pictures at the second place until 2020.
I only took pictures of my male turtle, Spikes, at the first place in 2017. I never planned to make a photos album for him as it would take away the fun from them. It would be too similar to Maxxlonia's photo album, and more work for me to do. Plus, Spikes barely stood still for the camera. He was always moving around, making it hard to take photos. At one point, I almost lost him at the first place. Father and I were ready to go until I couldn't find Spikes anywhere. I had both of my turtles by some items we had brought so that I could walk around and enjoy my own time at the water stream, but Spikes was never to be trusted. We found him hiding under some leaves that lead to the forest behind us. I was already starting to panic as we couldn't find him anywhere, but he appeared. My father jokingly said that Spikes wanted to escape us and go back to his home, the nature. I found the joke funny, and talked to Spikes a little as if he would understand me and said that he was silly.
YOU ARE READING
Youthful Blossom
Non-FictionAn autobiography book about my mental health challenges during my adolescence, where major life-changing events occurred, in the United States. Read to find out what happened!
