on unplugging.

I've recently been feeling the need to unplug from all things internet. It's not that I'm an active poster or absolutely addicted but i'm starting to feel like i need to escape into my own, pure thoughts for a while.

I just downed a glass of mediocre wine.Thoughts are feeling looser now.

I've been teetering on the edge of wanting to give up networking for a bit - three days, a week, two weeks, a month and just work flat out. Photograph instead of share. But maybe sharing is part of how my creativity functions - can i really train myself to be creative in a way i'm not used to being creative? I wonder about how not being connected will affect me.I just need some space.

You know when things just point you in a certain direction? The other day I downloaded a TED talk by Sherry Turkle called "Connected, but alone?" where she discusses the whole us using social networking as a method of escaping ever having to be truly alone - having nobody to listen to our every thought (or at least the ones we want to put out there on the interwebs). I didn't get the watch the whole thing as it turns out I have this thing called a class that eats away at all my TED viewing time. The very important thing to notice is that talk spoke to me in a way that I'd never heard that perspective before - possibly because I've never really listened all that hard.

So, that was point one and then, later, while I was having my contemplative stroll I, blasting the 'new' Florence album, when All This And Heaven started playing and we just *connected* and suddenly in that space I was in the lyrics and I found some common ground and now I find myself waiting for that third sign.

Things come in threes and then I'll quit the habit for a while.

Give myself a break.

rekindling old romances.

i've been trying to live with the principle "always carry your camera with you". it's become a challenge. mostly, i think, it is because my camera hates me or at least my nikon hates me.

it maybe be that we're just trying to readjust and get back into the swing of things but i feel it is rebelling. i make threats like, "maybe i'll buy a canon next, huh?" and threaten to smash it against the wall. please, nobody report me for camera abuse? i'm just trying to help it understand me and it is like talking to a blank wall. frustration kicks in and i snap back at it.

cold hearted little snippets of insensitivity and abuse. i sneer and hiss and it just sits there.

i'm not sure how possible it is that all it is doing is waiting for me to love i it again. my love comes easily enough i like to think.

.....

i've been ill - the horrible sort of cold that crawls into your lungs and your sinuses and sits there. The kind that draws the life right out of you. sometimes i wonder if my body is breathing properly. does it remember how to?

.....

needless to say, i haven't been carrying my camera around with me which is awful. i know. i see the photographs i don't take - every single one flashes by me in strings of hundreds of images. and i let them.

we'll grow used to each other again. eventually.

and now you know.

I really abuse this space. It's only function really is to be that odd space on the internet i post things to inconsistently when i feel like the things in my brain just shouldn't be in my brain anymore.

For example:

This merry evening I was just chilling on my bed. Chilling is a word I use these days instead of things like "procrastinating" and "wasting so much damn time". Anyway, I was chilling and talking to myself when I read a twitter trending topic about Michael Jackson and one thing led to another and suddenly I was having a conversation with myself about his son "Pillow". It went on for a while.

And then I interrupted myself to say, "Actually, the kid's name is Blanket."

I'm such a bitch when I interrupt people.


Including myself.

loneliness breeds patience.

Sometimes I think odd things like “what if I went to a finishing school?” I mostly think that when I’m putting on red lipstick and it smudges. I doubt a finishing school could teach me these things but I wonder if people would like me more if I was finished off. There are lots of things in my life that aren’t finished, sort of open ended situations that hang; friends I haven’t said good bye to but have moved away, tragic loves I need to bury, people I no longer love the way I used to.

And it is ok. I don’t mind these things being frazzled at the ends and in my own way I feel it is better that way - easier to climb into the gap if you haven’t started shoveling dirt into it yet. Sometimes the dirt just shovels itself in and that is ok too.

I was reading something about content being the new happy. Maybe too many things are just ‘ok’ in my life but awhile back nothing was ‘ok’ and I feel better with things like they are now than what they were. I would do almost anything to not go back to before. Before was just really horrid and empty and after that even content can be seen as happiness. You need to make happiness. I’ve only recently really discovered this.

Sometimes I get really quiet and people wonder if I’m ok. I guess this happens when you always pretended that you being loud and you being ok are the same thing. If you lie to people through your body language and they can’t figure you out that isn’t their fault.

Then again, lots of things are nobody’s fault. I don’t believe in blame anymore.

ch-ch-ch-ch-CHANGES,

So, I haven't blogged in ages. But this is about to change and I am starting my own personal count down to the brand spanking revived blog! So, friends and foes, in exactly 25 days I plan on having this baby up and running again like a mad woman.

Say good luck to me and enjoy your spring/autumn until I return!

25!

adventures in photography v1.2

On 28 February I started a bit of a grand adventure. Only, it wasn’t all that grand and mostly I was depressed and wanted to find a medium to get myself out of my artistic slump. Part of me is still in that slump but lots of me wants to show you the photos which have been developed (nearly and month later). There are quite a few I like. There are also quite a few that, according to the negatives, have been developed completely wrong.

Obviously I will have those redone by somebody who is not Qphoto. The Q in Qphoto stands for “quick”. When developing photos you don’t need quick. Luckily my hands are too stiff to go on a long tangent. Aren’t you lucky tonight?

So, here they are: my brave mistakes and observations through the lens of a crappy disposable camera. Also, see how many film faults you can find.

Do note my love for low horizon lines. And fish.

bleach bath!

today i changed my hair.

i took out books on analogue photography and i only have five exposures left on my disposable at which point i will go find myself some black and white film and go a bit nuts.

i have a world call card so i can phone my wife for her birthday.

i have learned about anger and patience and that violence hurts like hell the next morning.

i have learned that cell phones are expensive and that i will have to use a keypad until monday.

i have learned that strength is not in whether or not you break down - everybody breaks down - but about how you pick yourself up. strength is in recovery.

and never, ever take your friends for granted - never. they are the greatest people ever. love them.

and you are going to have to wait a while to see what i did to my hair, lovers.