Thoughts for the day

Seriously, my life is not this screwed up or depressing as what follows, actually it's quite joyful most of the time and I get many things done... although I struggle sometimes with why I'm here and what I'm doing and whether I'm using all my limited minutes wisely enough...

It’s like a crazy dream or nightmare – every day I’m hit with a thousand different ideas from money making schemes to story plots to new websites I must visit to ways to finance that someday trip to Europe to teaching moments with kids to new bands and new books... I can’t take it sometimes, the constant beating of my brain into a bank-account checking, survivor-focused gummy type solution, all tin residue in my mouth from the gunpowder of millions of misfired brain cells, al the contriving of fantastic plans at work only to see them flush into the mental ether when the office parks, green hills and million dollar homes suck past on the drive home to be suddenly awash in children, beautiful children yet so needy, the kid-naps into their worlds and tears and frustrations and giggles and “look, dads” and vocabulary assignments and ridiculous math sentences crafted to entice but fated to create a 7-year-old terrorist armed with a late night meltdown... It’s like the same crappy practical joke and I go to bed too tired to even be properly depressed about it, with some vague notion that what I didn’t tackle today I’ll get to tomorrow, leading up to my final act of setting some ungodly early alarm on my cell and praying – why? — it will actually wake me up…

Click click

This is crazy. I need another hobby like I need another hernia. Like I don't have enough to do.

A couple weeks ago, I went onto Flickr to find Creative Commons works for a brochure (to use with attribution to the artist). I had never spent much time on the site, and I was blown away--not so much by the quality of photographs, but by the size and depth of the shooting community, the camera comparisons, the ability to see which camera and which settings were used for so many shots, the comments, the ability to control rights, blah blah blah and etcetera.

I was hooked. I wrote down the names of cameras I was interested in, that I might be able to afford. I didn't actually think I'd buy one... I had way too much Christmas shopping to do.

Then I went to Circuit City's going away party in Concord, looked inside a lonely glass case, and saw the Nikon I had researched only a few days before--for neary $300 less than its normal retail.

Mind you I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with this thing, or with Photoshop for that matter. It doesn't matter. I'm printing out free guides from friends and the Internet. And already I have nicer photos of my family than I ever had before. If I could just squeeze some non-working time out of the daylight... if if if...

"Already dumb"

I read something like Already Dead and wonder about the limits of my own imagination. Denis Johnson besides being deliciously poetic captures the interiors of multiple charaters without ever being duplicitive or cliche.

On the one hand it's inspirational. On the other, I look at my own writing and the complete life and death struggle that goes on just creating Scene, and I want to cry.

At least I'm enjoying a great read.