When it all began...

 Grabbing pictures from my phone archives I began thinking about when I started on my downward spiral...

In 2016, when I was working for transit, I took what they called a student staff job.  

I felt pulled into it, almost like I had to apply to it.  I felt like the interview was made so that I would get the job.  My predecessor seemed like she wanted to get out as fast as she could.  Within a few weeks, I realized that I could be stepping into a bad situation, so I went to the full time person in charge of the full person I was directly working for and attempted to resign.  

I was talked out of it, and I learned the position pretty well taking my analytic thinking and being able to use it professionally for the first time.  Once my predecessor had left due to graduation I was on my own, except for my direct supervisor.  I was about to find out the hard way why he had so many interpersonal conflicts with other full time staff at Transit.  

Starting pretty immediately, I had to hear daily attacks on my predecessor.  I also heard the occasional misogynistic crack at women he interacted with including his boss.  During this period, I also had whatever was going on in the back left side of my head begin.  It felt like a vice grip had begun to cause a very slight burning/aching on the left side of my body starting in the neck and moving all the way down to my lower back and down my whole arm.  This has continued, and even somewhat intensified to this day.  

I had some prior interactions with this person who was supervising me, he had been my dispatch partner in 2007, which was overall a positive experience.  A couple of years later I had a far less positive interaction when I was struggling.  He was trying to tell me how to live without really knowing much about me or my needs. Then a serious boundary that I didn't even know I had was crossed.  He started insisting that I take certain prescriptions that I already had really bad experiences with, when I mentioned that I was told that I was making it up.  Bear in mind that this person was a failed computer software person, not any type of medical professional.  

About two years later I decided to give school another go, when I reapplied, somehow he got access to my reapplication and rewrote my petition for reinstatement without my permission.  Long story short, I worked too much and by mid semester I fell very ill with a two week long flu which crippled my energy for the next six months.  I wound up getting an incomplete for a class, which factored in as a failing grade (unfair to people who need extensions) I had to write a pretty serious petition to be reinstated.  This time I got denied until he somehow got access to my academic records without permission, as he had access to them through the web based system called SPIRE.  I took a FERPA class when they gave me access to this in my new position and learned that that was a serious violation.  

I overlooked these flagrant violations of the rules, and quite frankly my boundaries because I assumed as I was told, that he meant well.  (Narcissists almost always have to mention how they are actually helping you out and mention that they had just cause to cross your boundaries.)  

At some point between May and June of that year, I had a roommate with a serious set of mental issues that I moved in with during the year prior when I had a housing crisis.  He just stopped paying his half of the rent and was staying up all night playing video games.  The big corporation which owned the complex was understandably not very flexible and began eviction proceedings against the both of us within 14 days.  I was either on the hook for the whole place's rent where I would be paying myself into poverty and overwork just to house someone I didn't really even want to live with in the first place.  At first, the leasing office was not being even a little flexible. When the Sherriff showed up with an official summons.  I was essentially going to have a month or so to find a new place or risk being homeless for a while.  With an eviction for non payment in a neoliberal capitalist housing context that would have been an issue.  I'd even heard that it causes issues with section 8.  Long story short, I found a free legal service through a coworker who had some legal issues with a partner several years back, and then the leasing office was much more willing to work with me during my last few months at this place.  I was actively looking for a new place and another coworker actually came through for me.  It turned out that my supervisor actually knew the person who owned the house.  It was an interesting situation, but ideal for the time.  

As the months wore on and my housing crisis relieved, this one above came into the picture.  My supervisor had me doing much of the office renovations along with him, without being payed to do it.  

I felt something of an instinctual urge to get outside more and take pictures for posting.  I started an Instagram on a whim that year starting with the two dogwoods picture at the beginning.   

Having been in the valley all of those years, and never visited Mt Sugarloaf all those years, I went and hiked up it on a whim.  I began to get a subtle feeling that I needed to escape from something, perhaps everything.  I had my first thoughts of suicide, especially after my ex roommate started texting me for money threatening me in various ways.  He was trying to claim that I owed him for utilities until he found someone else to room with.  I just paid rather than having to take time off and potentially deal with going to court to fight the claim of a verbal contract.  

One of my escapes was training.  I demonstrated to my trainee that you could indeed parallel park a 60 foot articulated bus with three pullups using careful technique.  I scheduled a bunch of summer training to escape from constantly being in the office all the time.  

I started out the year with doing mostly training, which was my forte there.  I was making Joe, who wanted to become "The Master Trainer" pretty jealous that I would steal his fire.  I remember he started a war with the service department while I was staff, where I heard this line.  

Training became less efficient when he was a mainstay of the department.  I was irritated when I had to fix some of the problems he made.  

I was treated to a pink sprinkled donut, because my trainee thought that the jacket made me look like a cop, and that flavour of donut is the one we both pictured as the stereotypical cop donut.  

At some point I missed something and made a mistake and was vituperated for it.  It was more than just acknowledgment of the mistake and a drama free description of it, but a constant harping on it that affected my want to continue working at this position.  I didn't really want to do it in the first place, but I felt roped in, then I was promptly abused for a mistake that I knew was likely to happen.  Winter and my descent into it, slow me down annually and I'll never be able to perform like I did during the summer months.  I start to lose serious energy sometime around the last week of October and the first week of September.  At that point I really began to feel isolated from the mainstream of transit and it was taking even more out of me than just my normal seasonal cycle alone.  I stopped drinking alcohol almost altogether around this time because I was starting to feel lousy with even just one drink.  Something was rapidly changing in my body.  

I was still hearing constant attacks on my predecessor, often attributed to her gender.  I had to listen to a one sided story about a years old beef with the Safety and Training Coordinator, one of the many people he had a childish conflict with.  I also got to hear his side of the story as to why transit's entire maintenance department was not his biggest fan.  I got the other side of the story from a mechanic who is not to be named, which told me everything I needed to know.  He stepped on boundaries and was potentially trying to absorb various duties to attempt to become their boss.  As I began to interact with all of the bureaucrats that he though liked him, I found out that he simply annoyed them to the point of exhaustion where they would just do what he wanted to get him to go away.  His MO about being a key access person for transit was the power to pretty much unlock any door in the university with a click of a button.  His ego was super inflated when he was permitted to drive a retired Umass police cruiser to another police department with all of the emergency lights intact.  He said that he planned on violating numerous traffic laws.  I got falsely accused of being an alcoholic by him when all he wanted to do is talk about drinking and how to hide drinking in various places.  

I was ever thankful for the person who was working the front desk at the time, because she kept me sane in an environment where I just wanted to run away.  I strongly considered ghosting my employment altogether into the year to follow.  

I was super irritated about being put in the middle of the battle of him putting his vehicles in holding on the training course.  I was surprised when Joe gave me one of his 500 hour training T-keys that he fabricated, because I was constantly dealing with his complaints about the vehicles being on the training course where the SATcO buses were stacked during the summer.  I was thinking that this was an attempt to further isolate me from the rest of transit by turning everyone he could against me.  

I really started to want to spend less time at transit and more time going for walks in nature or even around campus.  I was strongly considering the University Without Walls program by mid June the next year.  

My bird Buddy, at the time.  

One of my many training sessions.  I was being observed in 2016 by a future student staff who should never have been given the position.  It was around this time that I was told by an outgoing student staffer, that he was looking up pretty much every woman at transit and getting their numbers out of the directory to text them about dates.  He was also unpopular at transit because he was posting all kinds of alt right bullshit on social media.  Infowars was one of his favorite right wing conspiracy theory garbage websites.  It was also around now that Donald Trump had emerged victorious in the Republican primary.  Eventually, this person went on to use a shared office to make another staff person uncomfortable with the interactions he had with another staffer.  He also kept making a couple of other of his subordinates feel quite uncomfortable when he was showing up and giving them private unsolicited lessons about their trips.  He also shucked a trip on someone who signed up for training and sent them out to do it as an "Open Designated Trainer"  without any of said instruction that he would show up to give the women he harassed.  The person failed miserably on this complicated trip and might have had a bit of a meltdown.  He was then completely blackballed by the department as a result.  If I had to guess he was probably mildly autistic spectrum, and had some sort of learning disorder that wasn't diagnosed.  Anna Disagreed because she read it somewhere in a textbook, which obviously outweighs having close to 16 years of experience training some of the most diverse cast of characters, often times with many neurotypes.  I guess one year of Anna playing savior through a program where rich suburban kids take a "gap year" and volunteer in a city school where she bitched and whined, often on social media, and to anyone she wanted to make listen, about how unfair it was that she actually had to apply effort and experience discomfort when dealing with students with special needs because they didn't behave as she expected, qualifies as more experience?  Two years later Anna prevented me from leaving transit by actually physically walking into my path on an April night after a 10 hour day so that she could complain to me about this thing that happened two years before I met her.  Everything coming together at this time was telling me that this was something dangerous and toxic that was developing.  When Trump won the general election despite warnings from pretty much everyone who had interacted with him, or had dealings with him, it was like a cloak of darkness had spread over everything.  Everyone suddenly became much much more angry than they were before, people were more rude and disrespectful.  

Standing in my usual position to prepare for a potential Trooper Heller test where he would just fail people for "looking like you weren't in, or looking like you were touching the line."  

I went away to the city of Boston numerous times as an escape to try to reground and center myself.  Getting away from the area where I was feeling quite isolated, helped me feel like I was real again.  

A picture I took while sitting at the Public Garden pond.  

I liked taking long long walks to ease my tension.  

I revisited the city of my birth a few times to try to get back some older memories that I could escape into when the present tense was just too much to bear.  

It was at this point where I was looking for some sort of a harmless, transcendent escape.  I didn't believe in any sort of god and had no interest in organized religion, still.  I wanted to pick and choose according to what I felt and observed.  I wanted to not have any sort of interaction with others, for the most part while I was trying to be okay in the present.  

I remember almost falling over during the first day of school in the fall of 2016 because something was off with my left side.  

A sunset picture taken on the fourth of July of 2016.  

I did make sure that I learned the new road test course to fall back to training in an emergency if I had to leave my position.  

Joe managed just fine with all of these SATcO buses, but somehow his entitlement made it impossible for him to want to work with a few plow trucks being held along the North side where there was plenty of room to deal with them.  Also, why would you let your trainee get into a situation where they would hit something?  They should be immediately instructed that if they thought that they couldn't make something or loose sight of something, that they should stop and get out to check their clearance when in doubt.  

Joe was a giant pain in the ass at this point.  

The new line where the troopers used to measure your vehicle and set the maneuvers.  

I took a picture of this double rainbow just outside of my office, as I would look for any reason to escape.  

It was nice to have a ton of qualifications to be able to escape the office with an excuse whenever I could.  

I took long walks in the woods just to deal with the stress and wind down so I could sleep.  

Sleeping became hard, as I began to not be able to turn off.  

I felt like this flower that managed to bloom unappreciated in the middle of a crack in the pavement.  

I loved taking trips to get out of the area, if only for a little while.  

I felt like everyone was getting a crash course on narcissistic personality disorder, as the new occupant of the white house was an obvious case of it.  It was pretty easy to see that the person I was working for was also an obvious case of this along with the sociopathic tendencies that everyone who had bad dealings with him also experienced.  

I was trying to avoid having to come in at the same time, often trying to work after hours just to avoid being actively miserable.  I distrusted everything.  Up was down, left was right.  

Goofy moments like this provided the only levity I needed to not be pushed into a full blown meltdown.  It would take several more years of constantly high level of stress to cause the autistic burnout that led to me losing the ability to mask and control meltdowns.  

This is a good description of my near literal perception of the world.  It literally began to look like this stark, dim world.  A dystopian hellscape.  

A light moment, when I showed off my trailer alley docking skills to a trainee.  

I was thinking even more that I wanted to get a degree so that I could get the hell out of that office and not wind up trapped there forever.  

The Old Chapel restorations when it was newly completed.  

I focused a bit of my developing photography on this part of the campus.  

I did a late night trip to feel like I was part of the team again.  It was one of the better memories from that fall.  

Ironic that I visited a Buddhist temple in the woods of Leverett where I would later join Anna to attend a Quaker meeting, just two years later.  

An amazing sight to see in person.  I actually share Buddhists views on suffering, particularly wanting causing suffering.  

A walking stick that showed up on my painting. I had to take a picture of this to prove to myself that I was hallucinating under stress.  

Beginning to refine my photography a it more.  Once I got a better camera(s), this scene got even better!  

A capture of the autumn color in the valley atop Sugarloaf.  

It wasn't the most spectacular fall color due to the mild drought that year.  

A white oak with a showy scarlet color.  

I wondered just how long I could hang in there.  

The walks were helping a little, but the next day would still bring pain.  I was also beginning to feel winded from exertion, which has only gotten worse with time.  

A new friend.  

A view outside the office as fall turned to winter.  

The sunset earlier as I felt like a prisoner trapped inside.  

My only company.  

My view from Blanchard hall at Mount Holyoke as they were breaking ground for a new dining facility.  

I remember taking a break from my work to go snap some pictures while I was waiting for the person I was transporting in the van to be done with her class there.  

Some peace in the middle of a dark, uncertain time.  

Their campus lodging.  

Freshly fallen snow over lower lake.  

A lightened up and squared version which was all that you could post on Instagram back then.  

Buddy in front of my ceramic tree that has been around for ages on New Years Eve.  It was a rainy new years eve that year casting 2016 off to bring in 2017.  

That year many people who were entertainers I liked died.  This would begin something of a feeling of loss and the idea that things will never be the same again.  

I always liked spending time in the city, there was something about nobody knowing who you were, but having a bunch of diverse people around you who didn't look at you like you have ten heads.  

There were no harborside fireworks that year to ring in 2017, marking what I thought would be the end to something that I always loved.  

I have some fond memories of this training session, which was one of my first back after the year started.  

This wonderful picture was the first one I took with my new Samsung Galaxy S7. 

It was so cold out here that I remember cracking a joke that I should have gone with the Galaxy Note 7 which had experienced numerous battery failures causing them to catch fire.  #polarvortex 

I was really looking to escape to something that would give me an outlet for my own creative vision.  My staff job didn't allow for much creativity or any sort of real discretion as to how I did it.  The person whom I was working with micromanaged me to death, because he always had specific ways that worked for him and liked to universalize his own.  

That February there was a really bad blizzard and I decided that I would risk life and limb to go in because it would be a morning of peace and quiet.  By the time I got there, all of the buses had been pulled due to the anomalous rate of 4 inches per hour.  

I got this rare moment of peace and quiet as I was walking back from the Hangar to Transit, where I would spend the night rather than drive in for a morning shift the next day.  

By about this point I was being attacked daily, often in a subtle, passive aggressive way.  I could not stop hearing about the mistake that I made and was hearing about it every single day.  I began making more mistakes as a result.  

This resonated with me at the time, as I was feeling like I wasn't being treated like this.  I already mentioned my learning issues, but because I wasn't formally diagnosed, I didn't say anything about being on the spectrum.  I would have just been denied and gaslit, just as Joe and Anna did.  

The side door to the newly renovated South College at Umass.  It was the joining section between the old building and the new addition.  

I remember taking this walk after dinner and before I had Utilities and Washcrew, which was the nightly shift that cleaned, fueled and parked the buses that were used during the day.  

I ran into my then, dispatch partner in this wonderful lounge space in the newly renovated South College building that parked in until my shift.  I was looking for some public study spaces so that I would know where to find them when I was a student again.  This dispatch partner is the one Anna spent about a year trying to ruin his reputation at both of his workplaces.  I look at the archives of our text conversations these days and ask myself if I was simply being used for this purpose?  I had yet to meet her at this point as she wouldn't join transit until sometime later this year.  

A beautiful sight as I went walking back to the garage or U-Crew.  The sun was setting on the western horizon towards the Mullins center.  I began to stop to take notice of these small things at this time, because they were literally the only thing that made life even a little bearable.  It was around this time where I started thinking about how I would end my life if it continued to get any less bearable.  

This was from a weekend walk where I tried to center myself by sitting in the very quiet Clark Memorial up the top of the East Ridge on campus near the Van Meter dorm.  

I took a series of pictures with one word captions.  

I was also struck by how if you look at this bike rack sitting in front of the student union, it looked like it went on forever, into optical infinity!  

These make a sound in my head that I would describe as similar to a xylophone.  

Buddy, my budgie keeping me calm through the whole thing.  

The "Golden" T-key that Joe made for all of the trainers that hit 500 hours.  It turns out that the reason he did this, was less for actual goodness, but to contrast what he thought were lazy training supervisors for not providing incentives to train other than the money and the job itself.  He became entitled when the first training sups he worked under held summer and winter training events for the larger classes.  This sort of thing never existed for most of my hours and certainly wasn't sustainable.  His motivation for doing all of that training?  To beat my hours.  He kept reminding me of that the whole time that I was staff.  Somehow I didn't catch on that he was a narcissist because I had a worse one breathing down my neck at that point.  

Since getting outside during the winter was important, I decided to continue going on my hikes.  The snow and cold kept most of the people away, and you definitely could not drive up there since the road wasn't plowed and the gates were locked.  

This was taken at the end of the day as I was walking back to Transit after cutting work that day because I had a constant series of anxiety attacks.  For whatever reason, everything had caught up to me at that point.  I finally realized that I was dealing with someone who was a pathological narcissist, and that the best way to deal with them is to have as few dealings with them as possible.  I went back well after he left for the day so that I could work my assigned U Crew.  

I remember taking this field trip were I actually had an Instagram fan who was ironically in the sorority that we were taking.  I sort of like having people I can talk to or have admire my work without the pressure of actually meeting them in real life.  This trip was quite the adventure.  

This picture was taken after I got back from a STEM student event mostly targeted at grad students.  They were showing off their projects and research to the public, and interacting with the audience in Herter Hall.  I remember catching all kinds of guff for doing this instead of working.  Work only earns a small amount of money that is gone once it is spent, knowledge is priceless and lasts for ever.  

I felt like this dirty pile of snow was somehow symbolic of my condition at the time.  This was taken right outside f the fuel bay during U-Crew.  

I loved taking this picture at the temporary timecheck stop in Mount Holyoke College.  I was escaping the office and it was one of those really good driving days.  

This was on a weekend trip to the Buddhist temple in Leverett again.  

I noticed this very photogenic sunset in Northampton that evening.  

I got this picture as I was planning my hike on Easter Sunday.  

I was sitting here in the old Share Coffee location when I was planning the day hike through the Holyoke Range.  

The very next day was actually Easter, where I decided that I was going to go on a very long hike.  

The temperature shot up to 86 degrees F (30C) on that day!  I didn't carry enough water that day, sadly.  

I walked the entire seven sisters trail from Bare Mountain, to Skinner State park in the unseasonable head, getting a little dizzy a little more than halfway.  I ran into a couple of other hikers who stayed with me and drove me back to my truck after stopping for some Gatorade at the gas station to replenish electrolytes.  

I was very sore for bendy training the next day.  

I saw this quite vibrant cherry tree over where I parked my truck with the morning sun giving it some quite vivid lighting.  

My overall mood at the time.  I was trying to pretend that I was a student to get used to the idea.  

I took a week off towards the end of April to get away from the area and rest up.  I restored this vintage receiver that I had collected parts to build over the course of ten years.  I finally found the correct feet for it and a dial pointer.  The first thing I replaced was the speaker selector/power switch which caused me a bit of frustration seven years before this, and I finally decided to pick it up on a whim.  

I stopped at this Dunkin Donuts that was right across the rotary from another Dunkin Donuts as seen in the mirror, after dropping my folks off at Logan Airport.  

Another project I worked on was this headphone amplifier which I tested on a breadboard on a rainy night.  

After picking up my folks at the airport on a Friday Night, I drove back the next morning to attend the annual bus Roadeo at transit.  

I didn't do that bad this year, but not as good as the year before.  I had a strong feeling of anxiety as I was at a place where I wasn't as happy as I used to be.  I think that this is about when I was sure that I was going to quit my staff job.  

On a rough day, I got out and snapped this picture of the tulips at the main gateway to the campus.  The cop car photobombed on the right.  

I really liked this lighting near South College on my way back.  

I took this picture on a quick walk during employee appreciation day 2017 when I went out for a walk around the training course.  

I caught a picture of this pink poodle while I helped the service workers load the propane grill onto the back of the flatbed so that they could return it to the rental center.  

An agricultural student brought this pumpkin in at the beginning of May.  

Draper Hall, which was one of the original buildings on the ring road that used to be the main part of the campus.  

I actually had a really bad day on this day and just went to the top of both Bare mountain and Sugarloaf later and just sat in still silence to try to keep calm.  

The next day was commencement, which was a day that I used to not work because I had a stressful experience in 2007.  A few years before that, I had been assigned VIP platform party buses as an experienced driver, so this year I was asked to staff and guide the three buses!  

I drove around in this white car and lead the two buses that picked up right at the campus center hotel driving up onto the sidewalks.  

Here is the lineup of the platform party buses waiting for the ceremony to end and drive them back to the hotel with a police escort.  I like that the UMPD motorcycle license plates had holders around the plates that said "smile, I could be behind you!"  

I took a weekend hike where I took this reflective picture off of one of the windows in the summit house.  

The view, Umass looks small from here!  

I saw this majestic sunset against Sugarloaf reflecting off of the now full Connecticut River.  

The next day, I was bamboozled and quickly husked off to coffee to confront me about the issues I was having.  I got forced to go to counseling for employees because I wasn't performing up to expectations. This is what I warned them about a year before.  I was struggling to fully come back from winter, and I was dealing with someone who was being legitimately abusive in the office. My life was literally a living hell.  

I took this picture on my way back.  I found and scheduled a doctor to begin my five years of frustration of trying to figure out what the hell was causing the pain in the back left side of my head.  I can remember walking around campus in frustration.  

I was heavily into taking my pictures as a refuge to feel like I was getting good at something.  

I began to take a bunch of pictures for Google Guides, including most buildings on campus.  There are actually quite a few pictures from this period that you'd see my picture in the area if you Googled a location.  

I caught this wonderful sunset over Northampton as I was coming out of Local Burger.  

At the beginning of the summer, I went with Joe and Andy to the stadium to work on his idea of an additional cone lesson before the standard lessons.  I wasn't the biggest fan of these new conework exercises.  Andy and I figured out how to do serpentine in a forty foot bus in three standard parking spaces for five cones.  

I parked here on Pleasant St in Northampton when I went to Local Burger and the new Ice Cream place.  

I went to Sail Boston, which is a tall ships on the harbor event that happens once in a while.  There have only been a few in my lifetime, three if memory serves.  1992, 2000, and this year, 2017.  

I caught this preserved piece of an old shipping railroad heading to the Charlestown Navy Shipyard.  I felt it would look good in black and white.  

The Navy yard in Charlestown.  

I love compass medallions.  

Flags are actually fun to take pictures of, this one came out great and pops out!  

Cassin Young in the shipyard, I took a tour of it in 2008.  

A picture from one of my usual spots near the aquarium on the Long Wharf.  

Harbor Towers, Boston.  A pair of Brutalist high rises that were epoxy coated to protect the concrete from salt air which can attack the alkalinity of the concrete which protects the steel rebar holding the building up.  

Boston Harbor Hotel looking photogenic with a tall ship in the dock.  

A look at Southie.  

The Sail Boston flag in the dome.  

More black and white from the shipyard.  

An old warehouse.  

Summer training keeping me sane.  

Andy taking a picture of me standing waiting for the bus to come through the maneuver.  

A sunset in Northampton.  

A view of transit from E-Lab II at Umass.  They were building this building when I was a trainee at transit.  

A cloudy scene on the east ridge of campus.  

A rock sculpture in the Durfee conservatory garden.  

The old part of Umass at the base of the east ridge.  

The Franklin Dining Commons permaculture garden.  

A relaxing sunset atop Mount Sugarloaf.  I was getting to know the park rangers at this point.  

Joe held a transit training event at his house.  This was before I knew that he was an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian.  

At least there were people other than just Joe and I there.  

I actually took a day and drove to Mount Holyoke College to get some good pictures of their photogenic campus.  

The pond in their secret garden had a bit of algae because of all of the warm humid rain.  

Lower Lake with 1837 hall overlooking it.  

One of the first buildings you see when you approach the front gate of the college where Emily Dickinson rode in on her horse back in the day.  

A little bit of sun peeking on a cloudy, rainy day.  This was the day I went to the doctors in South Deerfield to have a ton of blood drawn.  They wanted to see if I had Lyme Disease.  Sugarloaf was right around the corner, so I might as well stop there.  

I remember taking this trip in July to Fitchburg state and Umass Lowell to bring some inner city High School kids from Springfield to different colleges.  They were staying in Lewis Hall in Northeast at Umass.  

The library on a part of the Umass Lowell campus.  

My bus parking for the day.  

A trainee thought that I should take a picture at the main bus stop at Blanchard Hall, Mount Holyoke.  

It was at this point that they began turning the main intersection of North and East Pleasant to campus into a roundabout.  They pretty much got it done in the month of August.  

I caught this wonderful sunset with its rays appearing to radiate from the Newman Catholic Center at Umass.  

I always loved to check out the graffiti wall on the retaining wall stairs to Brett and Wheeler in Lower Central Residential.  

A picture of the sunset with the moon on my way back from the roundabout construction that I would walk to just about every day after work.  

On this day, I found out that my maternal grandmother who died last October (of 2021) had multiple strokes.  I visited her in the rehab the next day.  

A peaceful sight atop the mountain.  

The full moon from the eastern overlook on the side of Mount Sugarloaf.  

I noticed the striking color of the flowers on Mount Sugarloaf in the twilight.  

I finally stopped to look at this space that I walked by many times, but never really took a closer look at.  It is the courtyard in the middle of the first floor of the Library.  

The Roundabout coming along!  

A striking view of Old Chapel in the sunset.  

The rest of the sunset from up on the East Ridge of campus.  

A view of the campus pond on the way back to my truck on a late August evening.  

Chapel in the twilight.  

Another angle.  I liked to try to relax myself considerably after work so that I could sleep at night.  

Sugarloaf the day after.  Beautiful sunset with classic New England weather.  

More vivid flowers at the base of the summit house growing amongst the Sugarloaf Arkose Conglomerate Sandstone rocks.  It's basically a reddish natural concrete, specific to that set of hills.  

The roundabout almost ready for a last week of August soft opening.  We actually met the Amherst Town Engineer when we went from transit to investigate the possible opening.  The engineer admitted that he loved roundabouts so much that he drew all of the intersections in town on the back of napkins.  

Curbing all in, ready for asphalt the next day.  It was around this time that I had my only training session with Anna while she was a trainee.  The only real things I remember that she said that she was a University Without Wall transfer because Clark "made her attempt to kill herself by drowning"  She was also talking about supposedly helping me with UWW.  I thought that was a little weird.  The session was a little frustrating, but besides the very forward, unsolicited need to tell me details about attempting suicide when I first met you in a professional context, was otherwise unmemorable.  

The last day without students, fall of 2017.  

Just after I was done, I walked to town to get some coffee after driving parent, Freshman move in shuttles all morning.  I remember feeling a little tired and dizzy.  It was a warm an humid day in the mid 80s F.  

That night I drove the "Mall Madness" shuttle.  This is an event for all of the first year students held at the Hampshire mall after hours so that they could stock their dorms and Get free stuff.  

A mirror aviator selfie taken on top of the Sugarloaf Arkose.  

After working the first week, I got the dog ready for our new annual vacation to the Salisbury beach house.  

The boardwalk at Salisbury all colorful and photogenic.  

Even though the beach was packed, it was good for me to get here for a reset before I made a final announcement to quit my staff job that was literally killing me with stress.  

This was from the Umass Student farm, which was the first trip on my permanent field trip with the sustainable farming class.  I felt a spark of something and a release from joining the class and helping work in the fields, learning about the work of farming.  

A sunset on a fateful ride home.  

The sunset on the night after a rough night where the engine on my truck that I just got quit on my way home after a long day.  

The gas station where it was towed to to be checked out.  I had to get AAA with the 200 mile tow, then wait the couple of weeks with it sitting at transit to get the tow back to eastern MA so that the people who sold it to me could pop a new engine in.  This was the second time I had a vehicle catastrophically die this year after the transmission on my Trailblazer quit on the offramp of 495.  Some unneeded stress in a year where I could use it the least.  Also, I was having much trouble with this job, so this put the final nail in the coffin.  

I had a loan vehicle for a while so that I could go places and not have to sleep at the garage every couple of nights and pay for an Uber to get home once and a while.  I also got to take a walk to Sugarloaf to clear my head.  

This is the first picture liked by annabell778, which was Anna's Instagram.  It took me a few minutes to figure out who she was, because of all that I was going through.  I started to notice that she was liking NEARLY every picture I posted.  

I think it was the farming pictures I was posting at the time from that class I was driving and joining.  I made good friends with this school bus.  

On this fine early October day, I turned in my key to the office and officially resigned the staff position fully.  I took this walk to ease and back me off of an anxiety attack.  I began to feel the weight lifting off of my shoulders.  Despite the fact that I needed more money, I had to stop to save what was left of my sanity.  I also got a couple more years at transit because I did step down.  I remember seeing this space fully for the first time and wondering if there was something that could transform it into a welcoming space, sort of like a park.  

My truck was under repair and almost done at this point.  This was taken using my polarized sunglasses pictured in the aviator selfie above.  

This was right before one of the more stressful trips.  I went to the Farm School in Athol, where they had a site that the doors couldn't make a clearance due to an illegal modification.  

Overall I liked the place and noticed this adorable barn kitty.  I posted it on Instagram and it attracted Anna's attention where she knew her name.  I guess the person she was with at the time went there.  This is before I knew how insecure she was to the point of always needing to be in a relationship to feel happy, or at least less angry with the world.  But there was a light conversation while I was on the trip about the Farm School.  If you know someone who wants to become a farmer, their programs are actually great.  

A sunset reflecting off of the new chiller plant near the transit parking lot.  

A different field trip, that I would also drive a year later to the trout hatchery on the side of 32 in Palmer.  You couldn't get to it the same way you could with a car because of a de rated bridge in Thorndike.  

An autumn view that I took facing east from Mount Sugarloaf.  I had my truck back at this point.  

Halloween at Umass.  I changed the color temperature of the exposure to give it a spooky look.  

This was a nice field trip with a couple of other bus drivers.  We sat out our wait time in Northampton.  

This was taken from Brookfield farm where I felt like I was connecting with the land looking at Long Mountain and mount Norwottuck.  I remembered that the manager seemed quite stressed as I gazed over this kale field.  

It was in this spot where I got the call from a therapist in Northampton, which was the first time that I had one for quite a few years.  I also had a little trouble with the same doors and clearance here.  This is also where I felt the winter feeling for the first time that year.  I then went with the group to pick beets until it became dark.  

Waiting to drive an early eve campus shuttle to make a little extra money.  I actually like campus shuttle for some reason, when most people disliked it and sometimes called it "shittle"  

A decent sunset!  

A later trip to Maple Valley farms, where I got some fresh ground angus to take for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  

Fungi Alley, a chill and relaxing place hidden in plain sight on 47 in Hadley.  

This was a picture that I took after my first therapy session on Rocky Hill Road.  

A hike right before I drove home on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2017.  

I visited Boston for the holiday season kickoff in city hall plaza, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  

A later picture, but I put some lights up that weekend.  

A hike just after I got back.  

The sustainable farming class's final trip to Just Roots, which was connected to the Greenfield Community Farm.  

It was originally an old poorhouse, where they would send indigent people to work on the farm.  This was not optional, but they would give you a place to live.  I began to have odd feelings about how we treat the homeless these days an if it was better or worse these days given how cold and isolating their experience is.  I doubt being worked to death on a farm that you had no choice to be and work at was much better though.  What if there were places people could go to voluntarily like this?  

A nice view towards the end of the sunset.  We were picking celeriac that day and my hands smelled nice.  

As the holidays approached, I found this tinsel star tree top that looked like vintage 70s stars.  I should have bought it, because my star needs light bulbs.  

This was the scene outside of the Amherst VFW, where we held the holiday party.  I was always part of the decorating party because I provided the lights.  This is the rail outside with the gently fallen snow.  

Laying out the lights before hanging them.  

Finished hanging the lights, then taking a picture in reverse from the picture frame.  

A side perspective at the tables.  

The decorating committee.  

My cousin.  I didn't know how we were related at the time, it would take a year before we hashed it out, but we share a last name.  Anna is actually behind me with her then partner who she didn't seem all that happy with that night or the time I met them at the campus center a few months later.  She spent a bit of time flirting with me that night.  My cousin here came as a package with another person who I really also felt like she was family.  She helped comfort me when things got rough with Anna.  I think she took this picture.  

Here is a picture of my vintage looking tree with a blue electric window candle like my maternal grandfather used to put in every window in their old house on Mountain Road in Burlington.  

An interesting pattern made on the training course at night from the lights that illuminated the course overlapping with the street lights.  

The first day where the students went home for the holiday break after fall of 2017 finals.  I notices how quiet it was after a stressful, eventful semester.  I was finally feeling a little better.  

There was an ice storm on December 26th that year.  We went lights hunting after having pizza at Melrose House of Pizza.  These are mine.  

I felt a little like Hills House that year.  I took this picture on the 28th right before I went back to Boston for the New Year.  

The Faneuil Hall tree in Boston.  The right way to light a tree.  

Boston Common lights.  

Ice sculpture in Copley Square.  

The Pru with the next year illuminated.  

I loved this vivid blue lighting in Copley.  

Amazing lighting.  

I sat here on this brutally cold evening reflecting on the chaotic year with a little clarity.  

I thought to myself that it was going to be an interesting year coming up, I thought something about a new relationship would come out of nowhere.  Little did I actually know.  

The first full day of 2018, I went out and took this picture then I watched the movie Crossroads about a kid who learns to play the blues on guitar.  I would find Rick Beato this year who would get me back into music from the ground up as an isolation project two years later during the pandemic.  I think I started taking all of these pictures to serve as my memory, because it was hard to remain present when I was being managed by a narcissist.  It was the first full year of Trump, and things were getting crazy.  I woke up each day incredulous about what he was doing every day pretty much.  I was looking for every escape that I could.  I heard my office mate say sexist and racist things and nobody dared call him out.  His social media name is actually the nickname for the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, intentionally because he likes the attention.  I got to hear about his ex wife that divorced him the same year I was born, 1983.  He was still angry and bitter about the "dragon lady."  I heard about him talk about our boss, who was a prominent figure at transit as though he had her wrapped around his finger.  I heard about him supposedly making a pact with his neighbors, that if anyone invaded their houses, he would shoot them, and help bury the bodies.  He was obsessed with guns, I hate them.  I wish they had never been invented.  This person was just the first of three who would enter my life and leave it in a worse place than they found it.  First my officemate, then Anna, then Joe.  

Stay tuned for My next five posts detailing what I dealt with from Anna over the course of 2018 - 2019.  I still can't believe some of the stuff I dealt with.