ROLEY

Author: Kris Roley

  • ZPM Diary, Sept 25th 2022

    I’d like to tell you that this was an eventful week here at RHQ, but I insisted that it be as quiet as possible. After working for a year straight at my day job, I took a vacation this week and mainly took it easy.

    Of course, by easy, I mean: end my Squarespace site and move back to WordPress and find something simple. Two years ago when I got laid off, I poured everything into trying to hang my own shingle, not having learned what happened during the Great Recession when I tried the first time. Take note friends, If the general population does not have discretionary income, they are not going to spend it on you. The past two and a half years have been brutal, and it’s taken quite a chunk out of my mental health. While I’m not giving up on the dream, I’m scaling it way back to the point where I can allow myself to have fun again.

    While cleaning my Mac, I deleted what I thought was an alias to my digital assets folder. That folder has all the stuff I use to make the podcast, the videos the photography. It wasn’t an alias. It was the actual folder. Luckily I had a backup, but the frustration of fixing my own screwup is something I could have done without. Took the opportunity to create new projects.

    My laundry room shelves REALLY needed the Spark Joy treatment. I’m lying. My entire laundry room became the room in the house no one wants to admit exists. It’s clean, let us never speak of this again.

    Insulin is not a new thing in this house, but it is a new thing to me. Fighting with insurance over insulin is also a new thing, but of all the new things that have happened this week, I didn’t expect to have my blood sugar go from 360 to 87 in 2 hours. If you don’t know what that feels like, I don’t recommend finding out.

    I’ve cleaned this house from stem to stern. I’ve cleaned places in this house I had not known existed previously.

    Now, I need to create a new template for the podcast in line with where I want to be now, and get back to creating, period. Photos, writing, podcast, videos, the whole thing. One thing at a time, and we’re going to start with this site. There’s some TikTok audio I heard once that said ”I’ve decided that I’m my niche, welcome to the shitshow.”

    Welcome, indeed.

  • Photos: Heavy Machinery

    After a long break, Kimmers and I headed down to the Charles Kuralt turnoff on the way to Knotts Island. She wanted to get the birds, but I had no idea what I wanted to capture. They’ve been doing some road work (How can you tell you crossed into North Carolina? Paved Roads.), and they parked their heavy equipment at the turnoff. So, I decided to mess around with the BIG YELLOW THING.

  • Music: Genesis — The Duke Suite

    From the 1980 Album Duke, Genesis originally wanted to have this all as one track on the album but decided against it. They didn’t want to create another Supper’s Ready 20-plus minute track. (Guys, I have Echoes and 2112 on Line 1, they’d like to have a word…)

    When it came to touring for Duke, we got lucky. They play Behind The Lines, Duchess, Guide Vocal, Turn It On Again, Duke’s Travels, and Duke’s End in order. I adore this album, and I have a deep connection with Duke’s End: I used it as the outro for my show for years. Travels/End is one of the best pieces of music ever, in my opinion. It’s tracks like this that made Phil Collins a drum hero of mine and the reason I ever got behind a kit. I wanted to learn to play the great Genesis songs.

    Enjoy.

  • The Midnight — Heroes

    One of my favorite bands released a new album today.  Quoting from Wikipedia:

    The Midnight is an American synthwave band composed of Atlanta-based singer-songwriter Tyler Lyle and Los Angeles-based Danish-born producer, songwriter, and singer Tim McEwan.

    I’m nearly obsessed with this band.  Not in the Pink Floyd/Rush kind of way, but in the “this is what 1984-86 sounded like in my head” kind of way.

    Yes, I’m old.  Don’t hate.

  • Framing Matters

    Any photographer—any storyteller—will tell you that how you frame something can tell a quite a different story from reality.  For example, here’s a wide shot of Independence Hall from Biden’s speech.

    Here’s the photo that’s circulating over on Right Wing Media.  Notice a difference?

    This photo is a close and cropped shot to exclude the blue panels on either side, and it’s been Photoshopped to make the red backdrop behind him darker and more sinister.   Biden’s body language is meant to portray something evil, but since this photo has clearly been, uh, selectively edited, I find myself wondering if Biden actually did this.

    Don’t believe everything you see.  Question Everything.

  • Judge Rules Business Doesn’t Have To Cover PrEP

    Buzzfeed:

    Hotze’s attorneys argued that he believed PrEp “facilitates and encourages homosexual behavior, intravenous drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman,” and that providing such preventive medicine would make him complicit in that behavior

    O’Connor agreed with that argument and found the Department of Health and Human Services had failed, under the provisions of the RFRA, to show it had a compelling governmental interest to substantially burden Braidwood’s religious beliefs, and that this was the least restrictive means for doing so.

    In response to government arguments that there was no factual support for Hotze’s beliefs that PrEP facilitates anti-Christian behaviors, O’Connor ruled the courts were required only to test the sincerity of these beliefs, not their correctness.

    This guy is old enough to have lived through the 1980’s.  I certainly remember that time.  I also remember Ryan White, and he didn’t end up with AIDS because of a behavior or a lifestyle. He got a tainted blood transfusion.  Magic Johnson wasn’t gay either, although you could make the argument that his was a behavioral issue.   Two examples that illustrate the point Mr. Hotze and Judge O’Connor would like you to forget: HIV / AIDS is not limited to the LGBT+ community.  It’s people who needed blood transfusions, it’s promiscuity without protection, it’s addicts who share needles, and most importantly, it’s people who used to do those things, straightened up, and might be attending your church today.  

    PrEP saves lives.  As with all things Christofascists, the cruelty is the point.  

  • Thoughts On Apple Day

    Apple will host a reveal party at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino for the first time in a couple of years for the first time in a couple of years for the first time in a couple of years.  I have to tell you that I’m going to miss the very well-produced videos that Apple has done throughout the pandemic, and I hope they continue those in some capacity.

    Despite being a happy Apple customer, I am getting less and less interested in these occasional product reveals.  It might be because there are no longer any surprises, no more ‘one more thing,’ but I suspect it’s that the designs are largely the same with only slight adjustments to ensure you need to buy one more thing.  A new case, a new dongle, a new charging cable.  I suppose that is the one thing we can expect from any Apple product reveal:  We’re going to have to adapt, and that usually means our wallets.  I’m not bitter about it, that’s just a fact of life when you’re in the Apple ecosphere.

    I’m less and less interested because I am not an Apple Fanboy, nor am I an Android enthusiast.  I am a cheerleader for using the tool that gets the job done.  I don’t care what it is.  If you can do what you need to do with the device you have, mazel tov.

    I’m gonna need a new reason, a new product, and a new thing to be as excited as I used to be.

    UPDATE:  Apparently they changed their mind, and this is a video presentation like the past two years.

    UPDATE 2:  There are only two features that caught my attention: First, Action Mode on the iPhone 14.  Built-in stabilization is something I’ve been looking for.  It’s the reason I folded and bought a Go Pro.  Aside from that, there’s no reason for me to trade my iPhone 12.  Second: the new oval cutout on the iPhone 14 Pro.  It’s pretty, but it’s a gimmick.  I don’t need that.  Sorry Tim, I have a blue iPhone 12, and I’m not giving it up yet. 

  • Rethinking The News

    From Wajahat Ali’s Twitter:

    Right-wing take over of Politico and CNN, plus mainstream outlets like CBS News and others actively courting Trumpers and pulling their punches for sake of GOP “access” reveals everything terrible about mainstream media and its normalization of fascism. It’s going to get worse.

    …

    Last year, a producer told me how low the bar had become for conservative voices on TV. They had to 1) Accept Biden won the election and 2) Not support white supremacy or be overtly white supremacist. It was very difficult to find these voices.

    Mainstream media outlets like those listed above aren’t moving rightward, but they are normalizing “bothsides-ism”.  That’s the problem; there aren’t both sides to be had here if you’re a sane person.  Anyone who insists that there are both sides to this issue either doesn’t get it or is paid not to.

  • I’m Not That Fancy

    So, here’s a little bit of a switch. As some of you may be aware, I’ve been a Squarespace customer for almost a decade. I like them, and their customer service has been excellent. However, over the course of the pandemic I’ve been thinking about what it is I actually *need* for a site, and that feeling has intensified over the last few weeks. I’ve also been giving thought to the anxiety I give myself trying to make my multimedia talents a thing, and I just don’t need to do that. I need to have fun doing this stuff, and this hasn’t been fun for a while.

    So I’m scaling back. I have made the switch back to a WordPress site, and the first decision I had to make was to whether or not to go look for a fancy theme or not. I don’t need some magazine theme or a portfolio theme, and I don’t need something that has my face plastered all over it like my last Squarespace site did. I need the content to be front and center; more steak than sizzle. This theme does that. It also serves as a platform for me to relearn some of the WordPress development things that I lost over the past ten years or so.

    This new experiment—and let’s be clear, this is me playing mad scientist for the first time in a dozen years or so— is meant to do one thing: force me to look at a blank background until I get annoyed enough to fill it with something. I make no promises, but if you’ve been with me for a while, you know this. Of course, you know where the door is if you’ve had enough.

    I haven’t.

     

  • Lesner Bridge, July 9th, 2022

    Cloudy Day at Lesner. I happen to think those are great days for taking a camera around. Enjoy.

  • Rt 12, Pea Island Road, Dec 15th 2021

    About This Photo:

    iPhone 12 4.2mm f/1.6 1/6135

    The drive to Rodanthe, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is my favorite drive, and this road is the most barren and beautiful stretch of it. If you’ve ever heard of this road, it’s likely because it’s been flooded out after a hurricane.

    On the left side about fifty yards beyond the dunes, is The Atlantic Ocean. On the right, between 25 and fifty yards beyond the light poles, is the Ablemarle Sound. This is a narrow and salty piece of land, and it’s one of my happy places.

  • The Sole Inhabitant, Dec 15th 2021

    About This Photo:

    iPhone 12 4.2mm f /1.6 1/7813

    As we walked back from the beach, this gentleman was walking towards it to do just what I had done, take pictures. I’m just about at the road, when I turn back and see this shot. It just looked so…I don’t know. Stark may not be the right word, but a lone figure in that cutaway was irresistible.

  • Footbridge, Corolla NC, Dec 15th 2021

    About This Photo:

    iPhone 12 1.55mm f/2.4 1/978

    This is the historic footbridge at Whalehead Resort in Corolla, NC. This is on the northern end of the Outer Banks, and it’s as simple as taking a left at the first major light once you cross the bridge. In almost 40 years of going down to OBX, I’d never taken that left.

    This is a gem I didn’t expect to find. Amazing.

  • Bodie Island Light, OBX, Dec 15th 2021

    About This Photo:

    iPhone 12, 4.2mm f/1.6 1/7299

    Bodie Island Light is at the Northern End of Rt 12. While most people think of Hatteras Light when they think of OBX, I find Bodie Island more photogenic. Especially on an overcast day like this. Just beautiful.

  • A Manifesto for Doing It Right In The Next Year

    I suppose it’s incredibly passé for writers — especially on Medium — to write some kind of year looking forward post, so here I am with mine. You’re welcome.

    It occurs to me that I should frame this particular year looking forward in the style of this new theme, for a lack of a better way to put it. So, I intend to put to bed the last couple of years of doing it wrong, and chart a path forward into doing it right. The simple fact of the matter is if we want a world that’s doing it right, then it starts with the self.

    I think I heard that in a song once.

    The following items, in no particular order, are the things I wish to change, start, or carry with me into the new year.

    The Personal

    Everything starts with kindness

    If you assume that this is the third part of a trilogy starting with my article “We’re Doing It Wrong”, then you may remember that I started talking about this in the second part. I think the bare minimum we can do as a society is treat people with kindness. Everyone, no matter what they look like, where they come from, or who they love, is deserving of respect and kindness.

    That includes ourselves. Believe me, I know how hard that can be.

    Recently, I was in a corporate training class. Several times within this class the facilitator implored us to ‘give ourselves some grace’. Now I won’t lie to you; when I first heard this line in the context of corporate training, it was an immediate eye roll. I’m a little hard-boiled when it comes to hearing things that sound like motivational corpspeak. In the weeks since, I have found that line working its way into my psyche.

    I don’t know how or when it happened, but I find I’m not beating myself up as much. I also know that I’m not the only one that beats themselves up over the tiniest of things, so when I recognize that in others, I make sure they know I’m a safe person to talk to. That’s a connection with another human that didn’t exist before, and it reminds me of a quote by Paul Williams in his book Das Energi, “Each man is an island. Each island is an extension of the same damn planet.”

    Kindness within begets kindness elsewhere. Start with you and watch it spread.

    Declaring iFreedom

    Prior to the invention of the iPhone, I carried a utility belt of devices. What I wanted was The Hitchhiker’s Guide, and I pretty much got my wish. The iPhone has combined them all into one, and I should have been more careful what I wished for. My phone rarely stays in my pocket, and it’s always in view. Now, I have a goal to regain ownership of this tool I possess, instead of it owning me.

    I’ve never had any notifications or sounds on my phone. It’s always silent. So is my watch. That will continue. What I need to stop is having my phone in my hand, playing with it. It’s a huge time suck, and the longer I’m doom scrolling through Twitter and TikTok, it just demolishes any hope of getting work done.

    One thing I know for sure: removing all the time sucks from my phone is a sure way for me to end up reinstalling them very quickly. So, I’m going to do something a little counterintuitive. I’m going to use my phone to keep me from using my phone. I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to work yet. There may be something new in iOS called Focus that may set this up for me, but at the bare minimum I’m going to set alarms on my phone for when I need to bury it in a deep dark hole.

    Part of declaring iFreedom means getting rid of all the distractions, and so I’m going to create a workspace free of them. Working in a single full-screen writing app on my Mac, for example. I also plan to start wearing noise-cancelling headphones, and most importantly, reinstalling a door to my office that I can close.

    A simple morning routine that even I can’t break

    I used to get up at 5am, but lately I have fallen into the habit of hitting my snooze button and sleeping away my morning time. It’s really unfortunate, because that time between 5am and 8am is the only real quiet alone time I get during a day. I need it, and yet I also need to sleep for more than 5 hours in a night. I can survive on six, but I really need more than that.

    So, with the understanding that your morning really starts the night before, I’ve been picking what I’m going to wear the night before. I generally sit in a hot tub for about 30 minutes before bed and listen to my Daily Calm. I make sure my room isn’t warm. I tend to turn the fans on blast while I’m in the tub.

    In the morning, I hit the water before I hit the caffeine. This is the point where some of the high-falutin’ guru types tell you to practice gratitude or journal. My brain isn’t wired that way, and I’m not going to force it to do something that will end up frustrating me early in the day. So, I’m just quiet. I read, and I’m quiet. Did I mention the part about being quiet? As I’m writing this part, it’s 9 at night, and I’m surrounded by a screaming bird, melodramatic adult children, and a cat that thinks I should be somewhere else and wants to tell me so very loudly.

    I like my quiet mornings. A lot.

    Stop watching and listening to infotainment media

    I am an information junkie. I’m the guy that watches C-Span, school board and city council meetings for fun. However, two years of a pandemic on top of four years of horrible 24-hour news cycles filled with as much batshit crazy as humanly possible has pretty much destroyed my desire to know what’s going on in the world. I have an acute case of news fatigue, or I would if what I found myself watching was actually news. It’s not. It’s the empty calorie infotainment of cable news, where they spend 2 minutes on the actual news, and 8 minutes with a panel of people that tell you whatever it is they think you want to hear.

    Like a lot of you, Desert Storm was the gateway drug for watching cable news for hours, because you never knew what was going to happen next. All the ensuing Breaking News events over the years kept our eyeballs firmly on the screen. This is a habit I need to break. I have one guilty pleasure that I had intended to keep, which was watching Rachel Maddow. However, as it appears she’s stepping back from a full-time stint doing her show and pulling a ‘Carson’, it’s probably the kick in the butt I need to break this habit.

    I’m cutting out all the infotainment and news out of my life. If it’s important enough I’m going to hear about it. I’m also cutting all the political content out of my podcasts and reading habits for the foreseeable future. The year ahead is going to be chock full of those nuts from here until November, I’m sure I’ll hear enough about that as well.

    The bottom line is that I’ve found this has a detrimental effect on my motivation to create, and I’ve had about enough of that.

    The Practical

    De-weaponizing my Socials

    Just like watching too much news as a detrimental effect on my creativity, the same goes for my social media feeds. I’m going to spend a lot of time curating my feeds to put creative content front and center in there instead of the loud and angry squeaky wheels that seem to dominate my timelines.

    Far be it from me to urge anyone to do anything I’m doing, but in this case I’d like to make an exception. Instead of doomscrolling through Twitter finding reasons to be angry and depressed, why not eject those accounts and replace them with people and things that actually interest and inspire you? Does curating your accounts to purge the negativity take time? YES. Is it worth that time? I think it is.

    Create a Workflow

    As far as I know, I don’t suffer from ADD or ADHD. What I do suffer from is the ability to get lost in the muck of a project very easily. As I reflected on that fact, it occurred to me that I’ve never constructed proper workflows for any of the projects I work on with any regularity. I’m sure that constructing some proper systems and workflows will aid me in turning out more consistent content, like writing articles for Medium. But honestly, who wants to see that?

    Create first, consume later

    In a way, this goes and in hand with breaking my phone addiction. As I mentioned in that section, if I grab the phone first thing in the morning, it’s over. So, along with that is blocking out a period of creative time early in the day to create first. I believe I’m going to start with a block of 30 minutes after my morning quiet time where the phone is not in my line of sight to work on the project of the day. Social media time may be used as a treat for making good progress.

    If I can hold to 30 minutes for a prolonged period of time, I intend to raise that in 15 minute increments until I reach a point where my flow gets broken. I find that after a certain period of time I reach a point of diminishing returns, so the hope is that I can raise my attention level to something more acceptable.

    Practice Consistency

    The hard truth is that inconsistency is the result of much I’ve written above. If I want my content to gain wider acceptance, consistency is key. I’m hoping that blocking out this time will lead to more consistent output. However, in the spirit of practicing consistent output, my intention is to determine some reasonable interval I can commit to, and sticking to it until I feel comfortable increasing my output level.

    Finding that interval is going to be really important because if there’s one thing I can tell you about me, it’s that I bite off WAY more than I can chew regularly. I know myself enough to know that once I miss on overdoing it, I lose momentum. So it seems to me that starting small and slow is the way to go.

    There is a downside to going small and slow, and that’s not being able to grow as fast as I’d like. The only way you make up for that is creating the kind of content that makes people want to wait. I hope I’m able to do that.

    The Professional

    Becoming more comfortable with promoting my stuff

    I’m going to fill most of the readers my age with heart-stopping anxiety in one sentence. Ready?

    Hi. I made you a mixtape.

    Honestly, I think I’d rather gargle ground glass than ever do that again. But let’s be honest; the fun in the mixtape is in the making of it, right? It’s when you go to hand it to another person that the it all goes wobbly. I think it’s the same for promoting what I do. I can’t be the only person who thinks like this. I can create my art all day long, but when it comes to holding it up to the world, I feel very much like a nervous teen. I also get the horrible feeling that I’m a slimy little spammer when I post my stuff on social media.

    I know where this comes from. At least, I think I do. It’s some weird hybrid of not feeling like I’m good enough to waste your time, and feeling like a salesman. It’s something I need to get over, because the only reason anyone would think I’m a spammy salesman is if they’re seeing my feed in their face ALL. THE. TIME. No one does that. So I should be able to post something I’ve done at least once a day without feeling crummy.

    Also, I am good enough. That’s someone else’s voice talking in my head, and while it’s hard to get him to leave every once in a while, it’s just trying to stop me from doing something I enjoy.

    Learn how to pitch and attract clients

    With the exception of one person, every paying client I’ve ever had was a friend or family member insisting on paying me for my work, with me insisting they didn’t have to pay me BECAUSE they were a friend or a family member. If I spent half that time learning how to pitch and attract clients or commissions, I’d probably be much farther ahead.

    I have to be honest, this is the one that really stumps me. I haven’t a clue on where to begin. It’s not for a lack of looking for training, I can assure you of that. Unless I’ve been staring a class on how to do this right in the face and don’t know it, I don’t know how or where to begin this. So, the first step as far as I’m concerned is finding some training on the subject, and preferrably one that explains it like I’m five. I need the Freelancer’s version of USA Today: bright colors, big fonts, small words.

    Gain my first recurring freelance clients

    Of course, I plan to make use of that training to gain my first clients in the areas of writing, audio and video production and editing, and photography. With that said, I believe I’m best served focusing on one thing right now, and I believe that’s going to be writing.

    Writing is a lot like learning to play piano; it’s the gateway to a lot of other instruments. Anything I write, I can repurpose. If I can repurpose it, I can spread it around. If more people can see or hear it, then it should build a base of support around my work, provided I can follow through with a few of the other goals I’ve set for myself.

    I know, I said ‘should’. Humor me.

    Make my first thousand dollars in freelancing by the end of 2022

    This is where the rubber meets the road. The ultimate success of consistent creation and promotion, and learning how to pitch and attract clients will be in my ability to create revenue from it. I may have set this goal a bit high, but I think I want to challenge myself here.

    I want to generate one thousand dollars from my content in 2022. I think that’s a substantial enough amount where I can say to myself that it worked. If it worked to one thousand, then it will work beyond that.

    Final Thoughts

    To recap, I want to practice kindness. I want to break my addiction to technology, infotainment, and negative social media. I want to spend my mornings in quiet solitude, and block out time to create art before I consume other media. I want to create reliable workflows so I can create consistent content. I want to break the mental barrier I have about promoting my work, and attract new clients so I can realize my goal of making this work a source of income.

    I believe that this is my way of doing it right in 2022, and I want to succeed.

    So, let’s do it right.

  • Rudee Inlet Benchwarmer, Nov 20th, 2021

    About This Photo:

    Canon T5i, 24mm f/4.5 1/2500

    As I passed this guy, he was saying to someone in the phone “A life lived for others is the only life worth living.”

    Einstein on the Beach, ladies and gentlemen.

  • A Mid-Life Creative Mindset

    So, you’ve decided to jump and follow that tiny voice in your head that told you it’s time to leave a job you hated and try to make a living out of something you love. If you’re anything like me, you may have started from a place of excitement with a side dish of abject terror. Let’s admit something to ourselves: We’ve spent twenty or thirty years following a schedule, procedures, and rules someone else made.

    Now we’re in control, and if you’re anything like me, your brain had a little bit of a short circuit. So it’s likely you may have gone in one of two directions. First, you may have gone full bore into everything all at once because you were a little apprehensive about the immediate future, or you took a week off to process everything and then went full bore into everything all at once.

    Or, you’re me, who has a slight problem with executive dysfunction from time to time and got frozen by the prospects of starting. Of course, I started. Otherwise, you wouldn’t see anything here, but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the size of the task before me. It took me a little while to wrap my brain entirely around the fact that I wasn’t working for ‘the man’ anymore and that my income was going to ultimately depend on what I could pitch, create, and deliver. Even though I prepared for it on a few levels, I was not anticipating having a short circuit over it. I did, but I’m ok now.

    I’m ok now because I had to get myself into the right mindset for what’s to come. That’s not an easy task for someone of my age and previous mindset. First, I crave certainty because my upbringing and the jobs I’ve worked for years relied on certainty. There was a particular order and logic to my being raised as a Navy Brat by a Navy Chief, and most of the jobs I’ve worked were full of If = Then logic, quality and performance numbers, and KPIs. That’s all gone now, and I was looking for something to replace it in the vacuum left behind. So I had to ‘detox’ for lack of a better term, and start looking at the concept of creativity in a way that my mid-life brain could handle and begin to move forward.

    Don’t Be That Guy

    The first thing I had to do to create that new vision for my mid-life creative future was to get rid of the voice in my head that kept trying to tell me I would fail. I mentioned this in a previous article. For me, weeding that garden was not an easy task. I couldn’t just tell that voice to go away; I had to look at the life behind that voice and realize why he was telling me that. I also had to compare the end of that life to how I envision the end of mine.

    It sounds like a grim view to take, but it was the only way it would work for me. Somewhere along the way, I picked up an idea from someone to start at the end — your ideal eulogy — and work your way backward. I have some experience writing eulogies and rewriting them several times because I thought better of telling too much truth to the living. Still, every point I edited out stayed with me, and I use those points to remind me that I am not that guy. I will never be that guy, and I deserve to be my own person who can succeed in life doing what he loves, not what others force him to do.

    Four Principles

    Of course, there’s more to cultivating a proper mindset than just digging in the dirt and freeing yourself from your past inner voices. You have to create a foundation for your future. As a person who wants to be a Creative for the 2nd half of our lives, we need to live a different lifestyle than our parents did and separate from the life we lived before. I think that our future starts with the following four principles.

    Curiosity

    Since it’s trendy to do so these days, I will make a Ted Lasso Reference. The darts scene references the Walt Whitman quote, “Be curious, not judgmental.” At my age, I remember that my father would just come home and sit in a recliner for the remainder of the evening and not do anything. He had no hobbies and no interests.

    It’s possible that the day job just took all the energy out of him, but I believe that’s because he had nothing to look forward to at the end of the day. I love coming home and spending time with the family, and then once everything for the evening is taken care of, I can get to writing, or podcasting, or just noodling around with the guitar.

    When I’m not actively creating, I’m learning. Whether it’s classes on Creative Live, YouTube Tutorials, or something heavier on LinkedIn Learning, I’m doing my best to work on my craft when I don’t have the energy to sit down and make something of my own. That’s the promise and the investment I make in myself as often as possible. To learn how to make better art and then do the best work I can.

    At our age, we must maintain our energy level throughout the day and cultivate and maintain that level of curiosity — of play — that we ad when we were younger. It’s easy to become ‘set in our ways, but I think that’s the act of surrender. We still have more in the tank than we think, and I challenge you to find that reserve and make your art whatever it is.

    Boldness

    If you’re a one-person army dedicated to creating and promoting, then there’s one thing you already know: No one is coming to help you. Because so many of us have been a part of some organization and working with teammates for decades, it’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that there’s another person somewhere to give us direction. But, unfortunately, there isn’t, and the sooner you accept that, the better it will be.

    However, because there’s no one else to give you direction, that also means that there’s no one around that says no to your ideas. Let that sink in for a second, and then think of all the things you’ve always wanted to do but were afraid someone wouldn’t let you do it. For example, I made a list of all the projects I’ve always wanted to work on over the years but never had the time or the belief in myself that I could do them.

    After I finished my latest project, I felt a little lost about where to go next. Then I remembered I made that list and found it. As a result, I’m writing the first work of science fiction that I’ve done in about 30 years. Unlike my previous attempts, this one comes from a place of relative happiness instead of the pretty dark place I was in my teens and twenties. With any luck, it will turn out better than anything I’ve written, but the result isn’t the point. The point is to be bold enough to try something well out of your comfort zone. I’m better for having tried.

    Discipline

    The self-proclaimed gurus often amuse me with names like the barefoot creative, the hammock writer, or the four-hour photographer. They make it seem so easy. But, of course, we know being a full-time creative is not easy. It can be overwhelming. It’s incredibly overwhelming for a person who’s lived on a schedule for most of their lives. Clocking in and out and being prepared to account for every moment they’re unproductive. The freedom from not having to account for every second of your day is lovely, but it can very quickly lead to a lack of direction and motivation if you’re not careful.

    Stopping to watch the baseball game one day can lead to hours in front of the idiot box. Checking your notifications on Twitter leads to mindless doom scrolling, and TikTok is an endless rabbit hole if you don’t put a stop to it. Wiser people than I have said this, and it’s true: If you’re consuming, you’re not creating. The day ends, and you wonder where the time went.

    Additionally, I have a problem with planners and journals. I like the idea, but my brain doesn’t want to stick with them. Instead, I go in with a basic idea of what I’d like to do on a given day or week, and I check those off the list I make in Apple Notes. I don’t overthink it, but I know I need discipline to accomplish my goals. Since July, I’ve been trying to keep a Bullet Journal again, and I’m having some success. I forget to add in my daily thoughts on some days, but I’m trying to remember that it’s not the daily that’s so important to me. What’s important to me is the whole record. I want some way to document this new journey to look back on it later and see how far I’ve come along. That seems important, and for that reason, I’m sticking to it.

    Patience

    If it was easy and I knew I’d be successful overnight, I wouldn’t have waited so long to do it. Making this choice was scary, and part of the reason was that I didn’t know if I could do it or how long it would take to make any money from it. The truth is, if you’re doing this to chase money, you will fail. I want to pursue the thing that brought me here, and it wasn’t a dead president. It was a need to be something more than a tech support agent and a need to do something I found meaningful.

    If you commit to something like this, you can’t just duck and run when it gets complicated, when you get stuck in the ‘messy middle,’ as one of my friends calls it. You have to have a certain amount of faith that the art you’re making is worth it. You have to have the patience to stick it out through the difficulties like rewriting an article for the fourth time because it’s not working, relighting that shot because it just doesn’t look right, or re-editing that podcast because something about the sound isn’t working for you.

    This enterprise takes a lot of time and work, and you must be in it for the long haul. Three months in, I seem to be making headway, but it’s only been three months. So let’s see where we are at six months and then a year. Maybe I’ll fail. That’s fine. I’ll have failed because I tried, and if I fail, it won’t be because I panicked. A year is what I’ve given myself, and my patience can last that long, especially if I know I’m working hard to change that year to Year One.

    Final Thoughts

    We had the curiosity to wonder if this would work. We had the boldness to jump. We can cultivate the discipline to make progress every day, and we have the patience to see it through to the end. That’s our mantra. Those four pillars are the foundation we need to build our lives. May it continue, and may we succeed in what we’re trying to do.

  • Seagull, 88th St VB, Sept 20 2021

    About This Photo

    Canon T5i 135mm f/5.6 1/250

    “It’s all quite simple,” Scrappy said. “The problem is you haven’t yet identified the obstacle you’re facing.”

    Scrappy took a second to preen an errant feather before continuing. “You think that the problem is your situation, but you know the truth. You put yourself in this situation. You believe that your problem is the people who put you here. You put yourself here. So I want you to listen. The only person stopping you from solving your problem is you. I don’t whine when my brothers in the flock won’t let me eat with them. I find food on my own. I don’t complain when my brothers fly so fast that they leave me behind. I get there on my own. I do what I have to do to survive. Sure, they’re not happy about it. They’d like me to go away because I’m tiny and should have been gone a long time ago.

    Scrappy shifted his position and looked out over the water. “Now I’m sitting here talking to you when I should be down there looking for breakfast. So I’m going to leave you with this: The only person in your way is you, and deep down, you know what you have to do. You have to fix it. Or you don’t, and that means whatever that means for a human. I couldn’t possibly know. I’m just a rat with wings, right? So you think about it, and if you decide to do something, all you need to do is follow me. Better yet, follow yourself. I’m going to be far away from here this time tomorrow, and it’s time you learned how to survive on your own.

    Then, Scrappy flapped his wings a few times and flew away, leaving me to my future.

  • Surfers, 88th St VB, Sept 20th 2021

    About This Photo:

    Canon T5i, 62mm f/5.6 1/80

    On the North End, there’s no one to tell you that you can’t surf.

    I honestly can’t remember if we were dealing with a Tropical event out at sea on this day, but clearly business had picked up. These were not the only dudes out for a session that day, but the rest of the pack were several streets down from us. I think they were worried of crossing into Fort Story by accident, so they moved on down the beach.

  • Colorful Neptune, 31st St, Sept 19th 2021

    About This Photo:

    Canon T5i, 50mm, f/4.5 1/400

    Something a little different than my usual shots of The Big Guy.

    I almost want to photoshop some white earbuds on it, but so far I’ve resisted the urge.

    With the exception of my beloved seagulls, Neptune (and his little bro on the Eastern Shore in Cape Charles) is by far the thing I’ve captured the most. I have a feeling I won’t be done with him for a while.

    It’s more about the canvas than the painting with him.

  • Shot & Chaser, 31st St, Sept 19th 2021

    About This Photo:

    Canon T5i, 85mm f/4.5 1/125

    Two good doggos with a very talkative owner that wanted me to take a picture of the dogs, while I was setting up a shot of Neptune. I missed the shot of Neptune I wanted, and I probably have to wait a year to get another shot at it.

    Good dogs, tho.

  • Storm Clouds, August 13th 2021 Lynnhaven Parkway, Virginia Beach

    About This Photo:

    iPhone 12 1.5mm f/2.4 1/160

    Sometimes you’re at the 7-11, and you see impending doom. Happens all the time, right?

    Or is that just my block?

  • Road To Nowhere, Mackay Island, Aug 13th, 2021

    About This Photo:

    iPhone 12, 4.2 mm, f/5.6 1/150

    “There’s a city in my mind
    Come along and take that ride
    And it’s all right, baby it’s all right

    And it’s very far away
    But it’s growing day by day
    And it’s all right, baby it’s all right

    Would you like to come along?
    You could help me sing this song
    And it’s all right, baby it’s all right

    They can tell you what to do
    But they’ll make a fool of you
    And it’s all right, baby it’s all right

    We’re on a road to nowhere”.

    —Talking Heads

  • The Rise Of The Mid-Life Creative

    It’s 6:00 AM on a Monday, and millions of people stare at their bathroom mirrors, dreading what will happen in the next few hours. All over the world, people will clock in at a job they hate that makes them feel dissatisfied, which has taken over so much of their personal lives that they feel empty.

    Of course, it hasn’t always been this way. When we were younger, we bought into several ideas that we learned in school, that our parents taught us, and that society held as truth. If you show up and work hard, your contributions will be rewarded. In the world of our parents and those before them, that world did exist. But that world doesn’t exist anymore for many people staring at that mirror at 6:00 AM on a Monday.

    The pandemic has changed the meaning of work for everyone. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is the insistence by some companies — or, better to say, the upper management of some companies — that nothing has changed despite the evidence and would like to return to the business model that suits them best. If successful, it would be one of the only times the toothpaste has been returned to the tube successfully.

    For one group, the pandemic has caused more than just a redefinition of work but also a reprioritization of work related to the rest of their lives and the kind of work they’d like to be doing. So after years of working at jobs with little to no advancement, recognition, or reward, they leave those jobs, deciding to keep their talents at home and use them to benefit themselves. They are writers, photographers, podcasters, audio editors, video editors, graphic artists, etc. They are creatives. They are in their 40s and 50s. They have set a new course for themselves after half a life of doing something that didn’t fulfill their need to Be.

    They are Mid-Life Creatives, and I am just one of this great talent migration, and this movement isn’t going to go away. Here’s why.

    No security

    One of my grandfathers worked for General Motors for decades, the other for American Airlines. My wife’s grandfather worked for Ford. It was a different time back then when a company hired you, and you had job security. Workers had rights, and there were strong unions to protect those rights.

    Today, job security is an illusion. The days of working 40 years for one company for a gold watch and a pension at the end is gone. Not only that, but the world of at-will employment now means that we can arrive to work one day, and they advise us that our services are no longer needed. Not for any performance or disciplinary issues but simply because the company needs to cut its budget.

    So, why continue to believe that lie and that worker protections will ever be strengthened, and unions will be reinvigorated? That job security will ever be more than an illusion?

    No retirement

    The previous generations had the security of Social Security and Pensions to fall back on in their retirement years. Then, in 1978, Congress established 401k plans. But unfortunately, while 401k plans offer workers the ability to save for their retirement, we have often seen how less stable they are compared to pensions over the past twenty years. That’s because 401ks are tied directly to market performance, and defined benefit plans like pensions aren’t.

    The market would like to tell you that overall the performance of the market is bullish in the long term. Still, we’ve seen stories of people on the verge of retirement having their savings wiped out, as well as stories of the fees on withdrawing money — even after retirement — taking up to and over half of a retiree’s savings. The very design of 401k’s lets the gamblers play with the house money and keep as much of it as possible.

    In addition, the previous generation had Social Security to add to their income in their golden years. So we all pay into this system. Still, people of my age and younger can’t expect Social Security to be there when we retire as the previous generation continues to deplete it faster than the tax base pays to keep it solvent.

    So, knowing this, why continue believing in the illusion of retirement when the system won’t be there for us?

    No equality

    The American Dream is just as much a melting pot of ideas as America is a melting pot of people. However, the overall concept is that everyone has an opportunity to succeed. You’re promised the same shot as the person next to you. However, that’s not true for a myriad of reasons.

    We live, whether we choose to admit it or not, in a classist, sexist, and racist system. A ruling class has set up this system to benefit themselves by transferring wealth to their coffers and keeping it through monetary and social policy. That same ruling class tells us that we can have a seat at the table if we follow the rules, but the rules keep changing. They also tell us that the reason we don’t already have a seat at the table is that there’s a set of people trying to take that seat away from us. So instead of fighting the ruling class, we fight that set of people. In truth, they aren’t fighting us; they’re trying to follow those same rules. The ruling class sets us against each other, and when we fight, they win.

    There will never be class, gender, or income equality in our system. Despite years of happy talk about the American Dream and have equal opportunity to sit at the table, the ruling class doesn’t want that to happen. So why continue to believe the lie, and hope that the people in power will do anything about it?

    Now, that’s a lot of negativity thrown at the Powers That Be. It’s harsh, and some of you may not take the same view I do. But, we can agree that whatever you believe, the pandemic has changed much about how business works.

    After 18 months of the world on pause, we’ve learned a few things. First, the pandemic made us realize that:

    Businesses are not families

    The corporate line that “We’re a family” is hogwash. It’s time we stop believing it. We’re cogs in a piece of massive machinery, and we’re replaceable. I’ve had to learn this lesson twice.

    You can work over 40 hours a week for a company habitually, have excellent performance reviews, participate in corporate activities, volunteer for corporate initiatives, be appreciated by your colleagues, and still be on the chopping block if the company decides you’re no longer needed.

    There is nothing ‘family’ about that.

    The Status Quo is gone

    Had they made an effort to keep their human capital during the pandemic, the status quo would have been maintained. But, now that things are angling back towards normal, they would like you to forget that for the past 18 months, we still did the job. It doesn’t work for them, you see. It doesn’t work for them because this ‘family’ doesn’t trust you any farther than they can throw their server room. No, they need you back here in the office so they can ensure you’re doing the job you’ve been doing all along. That’s what works for them.

    But, what works for them doesn’t necessarily work for us. This long-term experiment in telework, which many businesses swore was not feasible, became a success. Millions of people learned they don’t have to spend hours in traffic, spend thousands on daycare and gasoline, or eat the gas station sub for lunch. Many of us no longer have to punch out to go to the bathroom, to be interrogated afterward about why we’ve spent so much time being ‘unproductive’.

    We choose to live

    We’ve finally realized that the final element of this Information Economy that we live in is the shedding of one of the Industrial Economy’s last elements: The need to centralize. You and I get it, but business hasn’t grasped it yet. Until they do, the Great Migration will continue, and many more people like me will find something else to do because we’ve realized that we can choose to live a life where our career doesn’t suck the life out of us. We can choose to do something for ourselves if the career path we’ve been on no longer brings us joy. We can choose to live and do something that calls to us and fulfills our need to Be.

    Final Thoughts

    Now is the time for the work-from-home employee. The independent worker. The freelance worker. It is part of the future promised to us but never realized. It is a future we need to fight for now because, with no protections, no retirement, and no equality, the risk is the same. If that is true, then we should act in our self-interest precisely the way a business operates in theirs.

    It’s our time now. Let’s embrace it.

  • Photography Was The Best Thing To Happen To Our Marriage

    My wife and I celebrate our 27th Anniversary this year. Every year, it continues to blow my mind that two people so diametrically opposed finding ways to keep making this work. Years ago, a musician I’m very fond of coined a term for pulling off a seemingly impossible task. He looked at a large stage that would resume its primary duty as a city skyline the next day. He called the act of turning that expanse of buildings into a show the equivalent of “making a steamroller fly.”

    I love that phrase.

    You could argue that anything hard worth achieving is on the level of making a steamroller fly.

    Still, it seems so appropriate in our case. If opposites attract, Mother Nature pulled off a miracle in our case. My wife is more thoughtful and calm, and I am a pinball made flesh. I love the ocean and will move back to the Caribbean tomorrow. My wife would love to live in a log cabin in the country with no neighbors. My wife loves Autumn. I think seasons are overrated and believe that if it’s too cold to waterski naked, it’s too cold.

    There was an age before the internet, friends. Right now, you should be extremely thankful for that.

    My wife and I are, in many ways, polar opposites. She cross-stitches, reads fantasy novels, and plays video games without apparent end. On the other hand, I podcast, love professional wrestling, and Cyberpunk stories. The last time I played a video game, it required a quarter.

    Yet it works, and I’m glad it does.

    The Week Of Fun

    The Week of Fun is my cute little name for the days between the 20th and 24th of July. I generally take the week that encompasses it off. You see, the 20th is my wife’s birthday, the 21st is our Anniversary, and the 24th is my birthday.

    At the time, the bank I worked for declined my request to take either birthday off due to availability. But, for some reason, they had no trouble with me taking the entire week off if I was getting married. So that’s what we did, and that’s how it started.

    In 2014, I worked for a camera company, and the photography bug returned and hit me hard. I found a really great deal on a DSLR and two lenses at a pawn shop, and I was off. I was going out to different places and shooting, mainly by myself.

    Up to this point in our marriage, the wife and I had never had a shared hobby. We’re very much the square peg in the round hole in many ways, and it had never occurred to me that she might like to come along.

    So when she mentioned that she might want to do that, I was more than happy to oblige. I found a decent camera for her birthday, and we went shooting. That opened up a lot of doors. Soon we were driving up the Eastern Shore to Ocean City for the weekend and finding many things to shoot along the way.

    Photography is part of every weekend, and it’s the best thing to ever happen to us.

    Now, we find ourselves thinking of new places to go and things to shoot. Moreover, it turned out that photography was a gateway to finding ways to make our relationship stronger.

    We Time

    We’ve been married 27 years in July, and we’ve raised three neuro-divergent children, both of us with full-time jobs. So to say that there hasn’t been a lot of time where it’s just been Kim and I is a bit of an understatement.

    Regarding photography time, it’s a scheduled time that’s just us. After raising three kids, each of us having a job, and of course, the past 15 months, in particular, it’s time for us just to go do something and be together.

    On the shore, in the woods, or just long rides in the car to get where we’re going, it’s just us, and it’s an opportunity to reconnect with what it was that made this wonderful.

    In situations like ours where there’s very little time or energy to do anything after kids are in bed, it’s easy to grab a book or a screen and check out.

    Also, sometimes you just need to have ‘neutral corners’ if you’ve been having a disagreement. Indeed, we’ve done both those things, but what I have found is that the scheduled time on Saturday has given way to other things. Maybe one night, I’ll not bury myself in creative work. She’ll not find herself in a video game she can’t get out of, and we’ll sit in the living room and just watch more of a series we’ve found on the streaming service. Or we’ll go back and watch a movie I’ve never seen (of which there are plenty; I only just watched The Fellowship of The Ring for the first time). Or we’ll work out where the next adventure will be early in the week.

    Communications Aid

    Here’s one thing about me that some people find surprising: Negativity affects me profoundly. Conflict elicits an actual fight or flight response due to how I was raised, and flight is the option I choose most of the time. So I will hide from it if I can.

    Now, my wife and I don’t argue much. That’s not to say we haven’t, because that’s silly. All couples have disagreements, and that’s why I embrace the concept of the neutral corner I wrote about earlier. That said, there have been times I have been hesitant to say something for fear it would start a disagreement. That’s a communication breakdown, and it’s one that was on me to fix. The problem was I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t have the tools.

    Then, one day while we were shooting, I had a great shot of a heron and limited time to get it before it took off. My wife was in the shot, and I had a choice. Take the pic with her in it, ask her to move, or just forget about it.

    This one sentence made everything else easier.

    “Could you move, please? You’re in my shot.”

    It doesn’t sound like much, but that was really hard for me to do. Thankfully, my wife knew this about me and understood. She graciously moved aside so I could get the picture. This was a massive breakthrough for me, and I told her this.

    After that, it became much easier to talk to each other about other things and not listen to the kid in my head that was scared about bad reactions or hurt feelings.

    Future Plans

    Planning the weekend shoots has led to thinking of long-term projects we’d like to do. For example, I’d like to go and shoot Tangier Island, a small island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a unique place that is slowly sinking into the bay. I’d like to chronicle life on that island before it becomes impossible. A longer-term project is to do the same for small coastal towns along the East Coast, not unlike my hometown of Machias, Maine.

    This is notable because we’ve lived paycheck to paycheck for most of the time we’ve been married. So we have resigned ourselves to the belief that future plans aren’t a luxury you can afford. However, it turns out that future plans aren’t a luxury; it’s a motivators. It’s a goal to set and then figure out the finances and logistics to make that happen. We agree that it’s complicated to travel much in our circumstances. Still, we’ve found a lot of fun and hope in the planning.

    Finding a shared hobby like photography made what was already a good relationship with my wife even stronger. I’m so happy we found something to enjoy together and new reasons to enjoy each other’s company even at this point in our marriage. I’m looking forward to many more Saturday morning shoots and future adventures.