Photographs and Memories...

02-10-2025

©2026 BTMT-TJ

Some photos stay with us not because we return to them often, but because deleting them feels like a second kind of loss.

They live quietly in forgotten folders, old albums, or the back of a drawer. We rarely open them. Still, we know exactly where they are. Letting them go would mean admitting that what they hold has fully passed, and that can feel heavier than simply leaving them untouched.

These images are more than pictures. They are proof that a moment once existed. Evidence that we laughed that way, stood beside that person, believed in something that felt real at the time. They remind us of who we were before life reshaped us, before experience refined our edges.

Even as everything else changes, those frozen seconds keep their warmth. They carry the atmosphere of days we cannot return to, and sometimes it feels kinder to preserve them than to confront what their absence would confirm. Keeping them allows the past to remain acknowledged rather than erased.

Some photos ache to look at. They stir memories we thought had settled, emotions we believed we had already carried to completion. Still, they remain. Not out of longing, but out of respect. Like old letters kept in a box, untouched yet treasured. It is not about reopening the story. It is about honoring that it existed.

Perhaps one day we will look at them again. Perhaps we will not. Even so, there is comfort in knowing they are there. Somewhere, a younger version of us is still smiling, still hopeful, still reaching toward a future they believed in.

We keep these images because they remind us that we once showed up fully. That time moved forward, yet some moments were meaningful enough to save. Not to relive them, but to remember that they were real, and so were we.

-TJ

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I said goodbye to you quietly

02-06-2026

©2026 BTMT-TJ

I said goodbye to you quietly. There was no letter written, no speech rehearsed, no dramatic moment to mark the end. It was the kind of goodbye that happens without ceremony, the kind two people understand without ever agreeing on the words. It lived in the pause, in the space where nothing more could be said.

I believed that goodbye would bring peace, and in some ways it did. Still, questions linger. I catch myself wondering who I would be to you now. I wonder how you would read the words I write today, what you would think of the ideas that occupy my mind, how time might have reshaped the way you saw me if our lives had not drifted apart. Those thoughts arrive uninvited, carrying a tenderness that surprises me.

I said goodbye to you, yet the mind has a habit of wandering into alternate versions of reality. There are moments when I imagine a life where you remained, where we continued alongside each other. Those imagined paths feel vivid, almost reachable. Still, no amount of wondering changes what is true. You are no longer here, and the story we shared has reached its ending.

What I miss may not be you as you truly were. It may be the version of you shaped by memory and longing, softened by distance, edited by time. The person I revisit in my thoughts may never have existed in quite that way. Perhaps what I miss is the idea of you, the comfort of what I believed we were, rather than the reality we lived.

I said goodbye to you, though letting go has not been simple. You occupied so much space in my life that moving forward without you feels disorienting. Your presence was threaded through ordinary moments, habits, and places. Without it, something feels unfinished, as though a sentence ended too soon.

Even so, I know that reopening that door would not bring healing. Growth has carried us in different directions. There is no blame in that, only change. I understand that seeing you again would stir memories I have worked hard to steady. The pain would return alongside the nostalgia, and I would lose my footing all over again.

The past cannot be revisited without cost. What was cannot be restored, and distance has become a form of care.

I said goodbye to you, and I am learning to release the question of what might have been. The answer never changes. What has ended has ended for a reason. Some things are meant to remain in the past.

Acceptance is a practice. I am learning to stop searching for you in familiar streets, in strangers’ faces, in echoes of old conversations. I am learning to let your absence be real, rather than filling it with imagined returns. This time, the letting go is intentional.

Thank you for what we shared, for the moments that felt light and the ones that hurt. Thank you for being present when I needed connection. Thank you for the ways you made me feel seen, even briefly. Gratitude can exist alongside pain. Both shaped who I am now.

This goodbye is not dramatic. It is honest.

I release you, and I release the story of what could have been.

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Love should never demand that you change in order to be worthy of it.

02-06-2026

©2026 BTMT-TJ

I once believed that love should arrive without requirements. That it should be unconditional in the purest sense, asking nothing of us and leaving us exactly as we are. To be loved, in that view, meant being accepted fully and immediately, without edits or adjustments, without having to become anything other than who we already were.

That belief is not wrong. Love should never demand that you change in order to be worthy of it. It should not become transactional or conditional, keeping score of effort or sacrifice. Love should welcome you in all of your states, in your confidence and in your doubt, in your tenderness and in your shame.

Still, there is another truth that took me much longer to understand. Love, when it is allowed to deepen, has a way of inviting change.

Not the kind of change that erases you or reshapes you into something unrecognizable. Rather, the kind that asks you to stay present with yourself instead of turning away. Love may ask you to feel what you have learned to avoid. It may want to see the parts of you that have lived in the dark for a long time. It may ask you to trust again, even while knowing that trust always carries the risk of being hurt.

We are often taught to expect love to arrive complete and effortless, as though it should bloom fully formed and remain untouched by time or struggle. What we hear less often is that love grows, and growth rarely leaves us unchanged. When love matures, it asks something quiet yet demanding of us. It asks whether we are willing to grow alongside it.

I used to think love was the answer to everything. Now I see it more as an invitation, even a challenge. Love asks difficult questions without raising its voice. Can you remain present when it would be easier to disappear? Can you speak honestly when silence once protected you? Can you allow yourself to be influenced, shaped, and expanded by connection?

True love does not force transformation. It does not break you down or insist that you become someone else. Still, it creates a space where staying exactly the same begins to feel uncomfortable. Not because you are lacking, but because there is more available to you. More depth. More awareness. More capacity to give and receive.

Love does not require you to abandon who you are. It does, however, leave its mark. It changes how you listen. It changes how you speak. It changes how you stay when things become difficult. These shifts do not erase you. They refine you.

Perhaps this is what it truly means to be loved. Not to be preserved in stillness, frozen in a single version of yourself, but to be met so fully and honestly that change becomes possible. To be changed without being lost.

 

Is It Already Too Late?

 

When you were born, you could have been anybody. So quick and malleable, your parents could look at your face and see a future president. They tried to mold you as you grew, but they could only work with what they had. And when their tools stopped working, they slowly handed off to you, asking, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" There's a certain art to becoming who you are. 

A teenage personality is a delicate medium, its emotions are almost too heavy to handle. You have to keep yourself together, and tease out the good parts without stretching yourself too thin. You can never stop moving for too long, or focus on just one side of your personality, or you'll fall out of balance, and never stand on your own two feet. 

You can't ignore your flaws-you see them so clearly-but you can't just fix them either, and force yourself to change. And you need to make it look effortless, even if you keep getting burned. But the toughest thing to master is the sense that your personality is hardening over time. That the fire that kept you flexible all these years is dimming, and you're becoming set in your ways. 

You can still recall the heat of youth, that once kept you warm on a dingy couch, or a night in the wilderness, or a wandering summer. At any given time you remained untouchable, because you were 'not yourself today.' You knew that you weren't just you, you were also the person you will one day become, finding comfort in the lines, "I am not I. I am the one walking beside me...who stays calm and silent while I talk, and forgives, gently, when I hate, who walks where I am not, who will remain standing when I die." 

But now it's hard to deny that you are anyone but yourself; you are who you are, for better or for worse. For all your wondering what kind of person you were going to become, somewhere you forgot that question actually has an answer, and that 'one day' will soon arrive, if it hasn't already. Now you wonder if you can change, even if you wanted to. 

If you have enough fire in the belly to surprise yourself. Or if you're too tough and cynical to stretch without shattering. Of course, maybe who you are is just fine, and dreaming of being someone else would only keep you from being your best self. Or maybe that doesn't really matter.

Maybe it's already too late...

 

The Bass Player

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AUTHENTIC LIFE - Notes From a Pandemic

 

Self-Centered - Notes From a Pandemic

 

CHALLENGES - Notes From a Pandemic

 

What Path Are You On?

 

 4:21 a.m.
It is possible to take a path that will lead you nowhere — well, nowhere you want to be in life.

This path you accidentally take is a result of the small decisions you make every day. They are decisions you make all the time that don't always seem very important, and in many cases you are not even aware them. These thoughts often come disguised as excuses or things you tell yourself on repeat or decisions you don’t see as life-changing when in fact they are very significant.

Long ago I shelved everything inside of me and walked down the path of mediocrity for many years. I woke up every day feeling like I wasn’t the right person. It felt weird. All of my hopes remained hopes and any opportunities to embrace who I was or what I wanted were ignored.

In light of breaking free of this temporary, semi-isolated, existence we all find ourselves in at this moment, do you really want to continue to accidentally walk down the path of mediocrity and be separated from where you want to be in life?

Instead how about you try to keep going when you don’t feel like it, be the best you can be to the people that matter and remember quality is subjective, examine every part of your life and remove the things that cause atrophy, and do the small things well.

We are not born mediocre. We make little decisions day by day that lead us down the path we call “unsuccessful”. So remember, if they are decisions we make, that means we are in control and we can get on the right path.

 

TJ

COVID-19 and LOVE

Wouldn’t it be great to see people stop being so self-centered with all the hoarding and stockpiling right now and reach out to friends and family who might need help instead? Also, do we really need more fear mongering, and that includes all the empty shelf posts on social media? The news is doing a great job selling fear, hysteria, and division while laughing all the way to the bank on sponsor $$$$$$$$. Could everyone take a breath, practice good hygiene (it amazes me we have to teach it to adults), help those in need (infirm, elderly, disabled), and love one another.
TJ

©TJACKSON2020

3:00 a.m. Challenge

About 3:00am this morning these thoughts were running through my head. I scribbled some notes and then stared at the ceiling for 3 more hours. -

When we least expect it, life sends us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change. When the challenge arises there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or complain about not being ready to face it yet. The challenge will come.

Life does does not stop nor move backward for anyone. The moment we are challenged is the proper time for us to decide whether or not we will accept the change life is going to require us to make.

The alternative to facing the challenge head-on will most often negatively impact our life in ways that will be even more difficult to overcome.

Meet your challenges head-on. It is always the best way to move forward in life.

©2020KJackson

Focus on What You Have

 

This just hit me, but I hope it helps someone dealing with loss:

 

It might seem easier to focus

on the future you’ve lost

instead of the one you can’t see,

but to get through,

you’re going to have to move. 

 

~me

 

KJ

Living Life...

While you're in it, life seems epic. Fiery, tenuous, and unpredictable. But once you have some distance from it, everything seems to shrink, until it's almost out of focus.

When you look back over your life, or try to put it down on paper, You can see more of it now than ever before. And yet it seems somehow diminished. Humble. Almost old-fashioned. So you begin scanning your life, looking for something interesting or beautiful. You see an ordinary house, with an ordinary yard, on an ordinary street. It looks smaller than you remember. You once had wild dreams and obstacles and risks looming all around you, but now they look smaller too.

You remember giants and goddesses and villains, but all you see is ordinary people assembled in their tiny classrooms and work-spaces, each of us moving around in little steps, like tokens on a game board. No matter how many times you rolled the dice, it was always these little moves, here and there. Do a little work. Take a little rest. Make a little friend. Throw a little party. Feel a little boredom. Have a little rebellion. There are so many of these token moments that were supposed to represent some other thing. You keep adding them all up, as if there was something you forgot to count, some stash of glory that fell off the back of a truck.

You may love the life you have for everything it is, and even though you know it isn't groundbreaking; you wouldn't change a thing. Maybe when you first started building the life you wanted, you left plenty of room for what might happen, and somehow lost track of what was happening.

Or maybe you were never 'in it' to begin with. Maybe you knew even then that this wasn't the world you expected. A world so low and common you tried to keep your distance, floating somewhere above it, where nobody else could look down on this life you built.

Nobody else but you.

kj 

Learning to Love Yourself

1. Treat other people with kindness and respect. Choosing to bring joy to other people’s lives will increase your happiness and self-respect. Also, often when we treat other people well, they start to treat us in the same way, too.

2. Learn to let go of what happened in the past. You deserve a new start and a fresh beginning. We’ve all messed up and experienced bad things. So, don’t allow these memories to rob you of your future. You’re not just a victim of your past. Acknowledge and work through any negative emotions – then put them behind you and start to live again.

3. Work on forgiving yourself. Related to point 2, don’t punish yourself for past failings and regrets. Instead, see them as a lesson, and a chance to learn and grow. Don’t ridicule, demean or devalue yourself. That was then – this is now … You are different - so move on.

4. Keep a journal where you write your thoughts and feelings. When you’re feeling positive, try to appreciate those emotions. When you’re feeling negative, try to show some self-compassion, and seek to be gentle and kind to yourself. You need to work on validating and affirming yourself – not treating yourself like your worst enemy.

5. Be persistent as you work on accepting yourself. A key part of love is unconditional acceptance. Work on loving who you are right now. Only then will you be able to work on changing – because you’re able to accept who you are at the core.

6. Trust yourself. You’re not here to please others. Learn to trust your intuition.

7. Practice saying “no”. It’s okay to say “no” without feeling guilty. You have the right to decide what you’ll do with your life.

8. Practice receiving and accepting love from others. Know you’re worthy of love – and other people really mean it when they say that you matter, and they love and care for you.

KJ