2,000th Post

“Don't worry about the pressure or the responsibility. Just live in it, have fun, and when everything seems to be going right, just stay humble and remember your family.”

Today I posted the 2,000th photo on the Queenscapes Instagram page.

If you have been following Queenscapes since the hashtag started back in 2014, you may or may not have realized that the idea came about as a way for me to connect intimately with my two young sons, Roman and Saul, then ages 9 & 8 respectively, while we discovered our hometown.

The objective was to explore every neighborhood with both of them and to learn as much as we could, and share our findings on social media each day. In the very beginning, we did just that. While they were possibly too young to be aware of exactly what I was trying to accomplish, I made sure we had fun while we did it.

Eventually, Queenscapes gained some media attention, and helped me earn a bunch of freelance gigs. Within a year, it became more than that, and with a lot of help from the Queens community, we were able to pull off some really amazing events in Queens, real community building endeavors.

Before I knew it though, the fun I was having in the beginning with my two sons and this passion project turned into work. Work turned into deadlines that turned into increasing pressure of completing tasks. Today I deal with the stresses of stalled commitments.

More importantly though, I have done less exploring with my sons. One of those sons, is the boy pictured above, Roman Stephen Vazquez, now age 13.

So, I while I’ve used numerous posts lately to mark certain milestones and reflect on how far Queenscapes has come, today I remember my first photos uploaded on Instagram, the first photos I took with my boys as we explored Queens.

Words and photos by Adolfo Steve Vazquez