I originally had decided, back in the days before life got crazy and we moved across the country again, to dedicate this site as a portfolio of my work, photographic and written.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was tired of blogging. I was really enjoying my photography. I was even hoping to make some money at it.

Then, the big changes came. Jamie’s brother died. We realized we needed to move back out West to help out her dad, and for me to get a first-hand lesson in how to run my own business. Suddenly, being an up-and-coming DC photographer was off the table. Just as suddenly, I had new and interesting things to write about.

I originally started to chronicle the journey at a separate blog. The more I thought about that, the less sense it made. I have my own webspace here, why bother with a free account somewhere else? It’s not like I was posting photos regularly, or like I couldn’t host my photos elswhere and link from here.

So tonight, after a couple of Guinnesses (they do have healing properties, right? I mean, I was drinking it solely for medicinal purposes…) I just cleared out the photoblog, punched in the posts from the temp blog, did a quick redesign on the image header, and here we are.

The title of the blog is fairly self-explanatory. We’re back in the desert, and we don’t know for how long. In the Old Testament, it was 40 years. In the new, it was 40 days. I’d prefer the latter to the former, so I chose that period of time as the blog’s namesake. I also thought naming the blog “40 years” would just make people think I was writing about being over the hill. Which I’m not. Yet.

There’s an interesting parallel to the desert theme. Sure, we’re literally in the land of cholla, saguaro, nopales and the oh-so-famous dry heat, but there’s an inescapable sense that our country is wandering in the desert too. Maybe – no, definitely – all of Western Civilization along with it. As I tend to offer commentary on that sort of thing, it seemed appropriate.

The good news is that for the first time in a very long time, I feel as if the Catholic Church, my oft-unfavorite source of inspiration for all things moral, spiritual, and otherwise, is finally heading out of the desert it’s been in. It’s still not quite to the oasis, but you can see the palm trees from here.

I don’t know how to feel about that. If the Church is doing better, and the world is doing worse, something tells me we’re in for one hell of a bumpy ride.