open areas

You need to soar.

If you have to break away from the pack to do that, then break away. Sometimes traveling with others only makes you follow their path instead of choosing your own. You get your goals and destinations conflated with theirs because you no longer know what is good for the pack versus what is good for you. You have individual needs that may not coincide with everyone else’s. Focus on those needs. Focus on your own goals and destinations. Then think really hard about who you are traveling with and if they are holding you back or leading you astray. 

Then break away.

I want you to soar.

You can’t soar if you are following. You can’t soar if you are traveling with someone who needs to stay close to the ground, who is afraid to reach those heights you seek. Or someone who is afraid of you reaching the heights you seek. 

You have to veer away sometimes. 

It’s hard to break free. But once you do, you will wonder why you didn’t do it it sooner. 

Break free. Veer. Stray. 

Soar.

[The Pictured Word #1]

city of industry

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Doesn’t everyone have old motherboards, processors, heat sinks, etc. laying around their house? And don’t you build little cities out of them?

No? Ok. Carry on.

suspension

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where clouds are made

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I stare at this thing all the time, because the way the clouds of steam rise out of it, especially on cold days, is mesmerizing.  There’s something almost wondrous about the way the white puffs shoot out against the blue sky - it’s even more striking on gray days or at dusk against the sunset. For a long time I felt guilty for finding it so pleasing to look at, because I had no idea what it was pouring into the air.

One day I did some Googling and found out exactly what that place is - all I knew is that it was some kind of incinerator. Turns out that’s not pollution you see there. That’s steam. What I always thought was a smokestack is a steam stack. It belongs to Covanta Energy and here’s what I learned:

Covanta Energy’s facility in Hempstead, New York, opened for business in 1989. The Hempstead facility (honestly, I think it’s in Westbury, not Hempstead), Long Island’s largest waste-to-energy plant, provides environmentally safe municipal solid waste disposal for the nation’s most populous township. It marks the first United States installation of a globally successful mass burn technology.

The Hempstead facility accepts delivery of waste six days a week and processes on a 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week basis. Steam created in the combustion process drives a 72-megawatt turbine generator producing electricity for in-plant use and for sale to the local utility. Three dry scrubber systems control acid gases, as do fabric filters, minimizing the release of particulates before exiting the exhaust stack.

So it converts waste to usable energy, which is pretty neat.

I once overheard a child ask her mother if that’s where clouds are made. The mother said yes because, why not? So now I refer to it as “where clouds are made.”

I took this shot for my 365 group (yes, I’m doing a 365 but it’s a very laid back 365, much like the 52 week project) and I shot it this way on purpose: because these steam clouds are always the background to my winter days.