Long Time Gone

Over the Edge

It’s 1:13 in the morning.  I’m waiting patiently for some photos to copy from my camera and it occurs to me just how long it has been since I bothered to write in this blog.  As always, the reasons for such an occurrence are many.  First among these is that my internet was out for almost two weeks.  My good friends at AT&T U-verse were unable to repair my suddenly failing service for an exceptionally long period of time so I found myself without television or internet for the better part of 14 days.  In that time, my mind turned to other things.  To put it briefly, I rediscovered my bookshelf.  Then I discovered the library’s bookshelf of materials downloadable for the Kindle instantly.  Since that particular milestone I’ve been a firm consumer of the written word rather than a creator thereof.  On one hand I look at this as a positive.  To write well, one must read well, the old sages say.  On the other hand, in order to do anything well one must first DO it, say other equally correct sages.  It is with this duplicity of advice in mind that I find myself sitting down to write only because I’m waiting for 2500 images to copy from the camera.  Oh such is the woe to he who tries to do time-lapse photography.  This entry promises to be a meandering one so hang on for whatever dear life you find most dear.

The same sages that wax philosophical about writing also have plenty to say about how to live your life.  The standard advice says to do what you love and lately I’ve realized that what I actually do for a living is vaguely related to what I love but not particularly closely related to it.  Luckily, however, I have several loves, so there’s room for many, many possibilities.

What I really love most, and at a deeply fundamental level, is solving a good puzzle.  I like to take a situation and figure out how to get the most from it, dissecting the proverbial pig and putting it back together with oinker intact, to coin a phrase.  That’s what really gives me joy in this world.  The more complicated or complex the puzzle the better I like it.  Work services this need in a way since it provides an endless series of puzzles.  Every email that wanders into my inbox is some new mystery to be unraveled.  Well, pause and rewind momentarily.  I must take issue with my own use of the word ‘new.’  In reality, the vast majority of issues that come across my desk require not so much investigation as recollection.  I’ve been in the same job for … almost longer than I can remember.  Nine years?  Whatever the actual exact number, it’s a LONG time for a technical job.  There’s very little that I haven’t heard before and even less that’s really and truly novel rather than some simple variation of a previous situation.  Work is usually painfully dull and only interesting or fulfilling because I have the capacity to remember so much rather than coming up with anything new.  When I should chance to be so bold as to try to create anything new I’m instantly and mercilessly punished with twice as much time spent catching up on the banal items I was forced to omit in order to actually do something novel.  Eight hours of development is paid for by 16 hours crap, as the saying goes.

So it is at roughly this point that photography and writing enter the picture.  Over the years I’ve acquired a certain knack for both of these activities, though I’m sure some would take issue with my results.  These are both pastimes that HAVE no right answers.  Every time I take pictures I take my best guess at what is most aesthetically pleasing or what will inspire viewers the most and every single time I am utterly wrong.  This is a puzzle about which I have no clue and it engages me.  No mere exercise of recollection this.  Art is varied, complex and often beyond reason.  Or, at least, beyond the current reason that I possess.  That makes it all the more attractive and interesting.  I do NOT have the right answer.  I’m forced to go spelunking for it each time I put my eye to the lens or my pen to the paper.  That, my dear readers, is satisfaction.  Plumbing the great unknown depths of a world unknown.  And that is why you find me spending my weekends writing or taking photos rather than programming a computer.  I refuse to spend my free time in pursuits so clearly deterministic.  Give me the seething quantum uncertainty of the creative process any day.

Sodden Teabags of the Soul

Sodden Teabags of the Soul

Some days one just sits down to write.  I have a list of topics that I very well COULD write about but for whatever reason they just don’t appeal at the moment.  So it’s Saturday.  I have this little internal upwelling in my chest that is either the nascent rumblings of a heart attack or the strange and giddy need to put something down on “paper” (or rather the most easily available electronic approximation thereof).

As I said before, it’s Saturday and another weekend stretches out before us.  Since I’m an American that means two things:

1. There are dozens of options available to me from the arts to zoology.  The world is figuratively at my fingertips.  Lots and lots to do today.  I could be lazy and be entertained or I could absolutely push myself to the physical and psychological limit and make this weekend a real gasser.  Damn it’s good to be affluent and American.
2. Despite all this I’m almost sociologically required to be dissatisfied with whatever the choices are.  As Americans we’re required to want more, more, more or at the least different, different, different.  I’m in the Midwest in February so long observation of the other people with whom I associate impels me to look to the south and say, “Boy!  Sure which I was on the beach in Florida right now!”  If I allow such silliness to creep into my head it does tend to have a deleterious effect on the perceived efficacy of the 174 things I have right here in town to entertain me this weekend.

This does beg the question of what the hell AM I going to do this weekend?  There are any number of ticketed events I could wander out to but the problem is that I’m not especially keen to buy tickets to anything.  I’m currently on a cheap binge so the thought of buying tickets to something for $25 each plus the almost compulsory dinner out before makes me knead my tongue with my teeth in a manner intended to keep the gnome of parsimony in my head distracted long enough for me to whip out my Visa.   The more economical options, while neither worse nor better, have the aspects of doing something outside when it’s 30 degrees to recommend against them.  Cleary this is a maelstrom of over analysis that requires a second party to participate in it.  As I write this Laura’s still slumbering peacefully away so she will no doubt soon rise with vigor and enthusiasm to break the impasse in my head.

Shifting gears most wildly, the above bit of blather brings my mind to another point on which I’d intended to write but never quite gotten around to.  In previous entries some of my situations have inspired a level of sympathy from my readers that was quite unintended.  I’ve often written and been quite perplexed when the response is roughly akin to, “Oh that’s terrible, hope it gets better soon.”  In these situations I can’t help but blink quizzically a few times while the words, “um, ok, it wasn’t actually –bad- in the first place, but OK…” roll lazily through my head.

In our society we value highly the sympathetic character in others.  We want others to understand our pain and appreciate it but sometimes I think this can be taken to an extreme, especially in cases where there really isn’t any pain, but merely some internal quandary to be untangled.  I often find myself writing things in a negative vein, expressing some conflict which I view as a puzzle to be teased out.  It’s been my observation that many people view this internal puzzling as an appropriate target for sympathetic responses but personally I find these puzzlings very satisfying and if they were to be unavailable I would doubtless find myself going in search of them like a Pooh bear in search of that golden sustenance so painfully extracted from the recalcitrant honey bee.  Oh bother.

And with that I close.  The tie-breaker in the decision on the day’s activities has arisen so I make my way to determine the fate of the day with her.  We shall see what the day brings.