Dear Diary #2.1

I think another key thing about progress or forward movement is that the most important pet is to go a little further each time you move. I think one of the things that’s hard not to do is to analyze the nature of movement. Like things aren’t moving at a desired speed. That is not fast enough. Or maybe there’s no feedback from the effort - a cause and no effect. You do something and there’s no apparent response. It’s easy to give up in despair or fear that whatever it is you did didn’t work. And then you feel all crappy or get down or depressed. It’s dif to work in isolation. Or maybe your expectations are out of line from the actual situation. When that happens it creates a breeding ground for anxiety and self-defeating thought patterns.

I think there should be only one question at the end of the day that needs to be answered: did I go any further than where I started. The answer is binary. No need for meta analysis and reflection. Well maybe something along the line of “can I go a little further tomorrow than I did today?”  That’s a personal challenge and goal. But even then if you have two questions at the end of the day — am
I further along than when I started? And did I take a bigger step today than I did yesterday . If the answer to both is yes then great. If not then the default should switch to just answering the first one. Eventually the momentum will build and larger steps will be taken and turns will appear and before you know it you’ll be getting somewhere.

Dear Diary... #2

So I'm pretty sure the only people reading this are spambots which I like. After I removed all previous content (at least I think I did) a year or so ago with the intent of starting over I instantly lost motivation. Partially, I think, because from the time I left Seattle I've morphed and grown (and shrunk) and changed and the need for an alter-ego (just who the hell was Ogalthorpe?) just kind of faded away. Kind of like what happens to an imaginary friend when we leave childhood. Anyway I like that no one is listening so now I can use this as a kind of diary which I will fiercely sporadically use and probably abandon after like three entries.

In the last couple of years I've taken the time to look back at choices and behaviors and patterns and see how they affect what I'm doing right now. How they form the decisions and choices I make. How I interact with people. A whole bunch of shit like that. What I found was that I'm fairly wedged into my comfort zone. I have internalized a great deal of fear and that informs just about everything I do. Steven Pressfield called it Resistance. My uncle would call it laziness. But if I can call it fear then that gives me something to beat a stick at. It provides a paradigm for understanding why I've been so goddamn slow to move in any one direction. If only I had started this ten years ago I'd be so.much.farther.along by now. That applies to a photography career, love life, playing the guitar, so.many.things! I suppose if there was a roadmap to this kind of stuff the journey wouldn't be worth a damn. Some people like the answers to be in the back of the book so they don't really have to try. For me I just never really had to try that hard so I never really did. Now I'm on the verge of 50 and trying to figure out what the other 40% of my life is going to look at. I'm sure nobody is going to come along and discover me because I haven't really done anything worth discovering. It's not like I have a novel stuck in my desk drawer. I have a few pages here and there. A couple of pictures, that is. But no theme no "body of work". I wish I did. I wish I had a driving force. Maybe even a little compulsion to kickstart these things. Now here I am spraying my resume at job postings like I'm some kind of flower shooting pollen at anything it will stick to. And though it's difficult to articulate what I want, I really feel that's what I don't want. I don't want to be an engineer again. At least not the kind I was. I don't want to lay down my creative life to trade making assloads of paperwork for money. Sure it would jumpstart all the other parts of my life that have been on hold like new clothes, a place of my own, travel, adult relationships (well it may be too late for that but you get the idea). (BTW I'm writing to myself as the unknown third person so when I say you I'm flagrantly fucking up the grammar). But regardless it is definitely time to move in some kind of direction.

So as someone who prefers somewhat of a clear path over hacking through brambles, I have to break down the journey into pieces. I'm not a complex (complicated in a cautionary way, yes) person and I'm not so good at strategy. So I think the first few steps of the process (maybe even all the steps) can be the following:

1. Show up
   
   Whatever it is you want to do or might want to do, just show up to it. This is the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step thing.
   
2. Keep going
   
   That's the only way your going to get someplace. Keep going until you figure out if you're going in a good direction. If you're not then stop and pivot. If you're not sure then keep going until you know for sure (or mostly for sure).

So, yeah, that's the thing for me. Show up, take a step or two, then keep going. You kind of really hope it's stepping in the right direction.  Especially when you're burning days and each one becomes more valuable than the one before. But fear of not going in the right direction is kind of scary and sometimes the fear becomes a monster and it makes you not go or not start or whatever. It's best to just put all that meta-analysis in a duffle bag and shove it under your seat.

So now that I've written this I can get back to what I was supposed to be doing that ignored to write this. Heh, and who the hell says perpetual motion machines are the stuff of shysters. 

Dear Diary... #1

I've been struggling lately with what kind of work I want to do. A portrait photographer I see my work as essentially the same as those who have come before me: artistic reproduction of people and (usually) just their faces. By working diligently I have proven myself capable of doing the same thing others have done and are currently doing. I can mimic so many well known photographers both living and dead. By doing so I've simply proven myself a good copyist. I suppose (and I'm sure others will say) this is part of the apprenticeship process.

But I want something more. Something different. Right now I don't know what that something is exactly. Lately I've been fooling around with a scanner and photoshop manipulation of scanned items (see my instagram if you're bored. I don't really have control of these images in the sense that when I start with a scan I have no idea how it will transform and end up. I just start manipulating and see where it takes me. For some reason I think this is different than pre-conceiving an idea and trying faithfully execute it. Maybe how I'm working is like how many others work. I have no idea. But for some reason (for my own work) I feel it's more important to come up with a semi-finished idea in my head first and then try to make it. Maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself. No idea, really.

But back to the idea of wanting something more. I don't know what the more could be. Maybe a moving picture. Perhaps I will happen upon a manipulation I like and apply it to photos. I've had a notion of somehow mixing a photo with some real-life components. Like gluing some of the clothing or accessories a subject is wearing onto an image to create a kind of semi-3D kind of look. Video? I've been putting it off forever and it will probably keep waiting. Maybe nothing will come of any of this thinking. But there is something slowly chewing on a morsel of the back part of my brain. It's telling me of an essence of a notion of a... something. I want to find out what it could be but may have to be satisfied with not being satisfied by figuring it out.

[dictated but not read]