New Year’s Eve. Last day of 2024. I woke up with bedhead hair that would have made my father proud, which is a specific kind of tribute.
He passed away at sixty. The same age I turned this year, which is the age I started 50 at 60, which is not a coincidence so much as a reason. I’ve thought about him a lot this year. I think about what he might have done with the years he didn’t get. He’d be in his eighties now. Every morning when I catch myself in the mirror with the hair going every direction, I think: there he is.
The Morning Walk
I went out to find a good place to fly the drone over the river. This required some bumbling — Coolidge Park, Renaissance Park, across the foot bridge, back up to the Northshore area — arriving everywhere about thirty minutes after the best light had already happened. The sun was painting the clouds on the drive over and by the time I was set up it was already flattening. Scout the night before. I know this. I keep not doing it.
What I did find, walking the riverside, was the other side of Chattanooga that doesn’t make the tourism brochure. Under the bridge, in the walkway that runs beneath the interstate, there were people sleeping, people on bikes going nowhere in particular, a man in a gray cape moving slowly through the early morning. I watched from a safe distance and thought about going down to talk to them. I didn’t.
That’s the thing about traveling with expensive camera equipment by yourself in an unfamiliar city. There’s a version of this project where you put the gear in the car, go back down, and have the conversation. I made the practical choice instead. I’m noting it because the practical choice and the right choice are sometimes different things, and a project about stories should probably lean toward the right one more often.
TZ from Michigan
I did talk to the valet attendant at the Edwin Hotel on the way back up. His name was TZ, originally from Michigan, six months in Chattanooga and already sold on the place. He said he can’t complain about waking up without having to shovel a driveway. He said he feels blessed to be here.
That took about ninety seconds. No gear, no setup, just a question and someone who was happy to answer it. That’s the conversation I should be having more of. Ask ten people, one says yes, and that one conversation is worth all the walk-bys.
I said this to the camera afterward and I meant it: curiosity is going to be the focus going forward. Not chasing shots, not checking states off a list. More questions, more conversations, more stories that aren’t mine.
The Word
I’d come to Chattanooga with twenty-five candidate words for the year and spent the morning journaling them down to seven, which I wrote on the back of an itinerary printout. Seven words with descriptions. I spent the drive time thinking through each one.
The word I landed on for 2025 was shift.
I should mention — because I’m editing this about a year later — that by the time I’m putting this episode together, I’m already into 2026 with a brand new word. The 2026 word is transformation, applied one area of life per month, systematically. There’s a backstory to that I’ll get into at some point. But the 2024 reflection produced shift, which felt right for a year that had already changed so many things I thought were settled.
Thirty-six New Year’s Eves spent setting up lighting events in Palm Beach and Jupiter Island and various ballrooms across South Florida. Stress, time pressure, load-ins that ran to midnight. This year I was standing on a footbridge over the Tennessee River watching the sun come up, talking to a valet attendant from Michigan, looking for a place to fly a drone.
That’s a shift.
Chattanooga
I’ll put it on the list of places I’d actually live. The bridges, the river, the mountain behind the city, the Northshore neighborhood with its walkways and condos and million-dollar views north toward the hills. Good for exploring the Smokies, good for the fall color I clearly missed by coming in December, good for light-streak photography at night from the bridge walkways if you set up a tripod and wait.
The aquarium is next time. The Civil War museum got some time. The tapas at the Westin top floor got some time. Good meals, good light, good reflection on a year I’m still processing.
Gatlinburg for New Year’s Eve next. Fireworks. Drive starts now.
