Point, Click, Repeat.

You know how you feel like your brain works in a certain weird way that isn't the norm. But then you hear from a few people that sometimes their brain works in similar ways, too. So then you rationalize that maybe it is normal, but usually people don't mention it because it's just, you know, normal. But you for some reason feel like picking apart every tiny step in the thought process and then let each step bloom out into a whole tree of possible thoughts related to that branch. And you have trouble just seeing the linear path of the thought progression you thought you were going for because that one came really quick and easy but then you got caught up in all those other interesting alternative strings, and then you've lost interest in that original path because, man, there are some other really cool ideas out there. Like how you can get lost in Wikipedia and the internet because you can visually plug into that huge thought bloom and research and track down even more details of each sub detail, so you can fill in even more leaves on that tree?

And that is the highly abbreviated version of how the internet and quick fix information sharing technology heightens our internal sense of being bipolar or ADHD. Even if you've just got a little touch of those, they have an outlet to build into a major drain on our mental energies.

[But then you realize that some people mentioned they have a similarly functioning brain, but that doesn't make it the "norm" because it's just a handful of people and not everyone. So you realize that you actually are weird after years of just assuming you really were normal.] - this chunk can go at the end of the first paragraph because it is a continuation of that thought, but then wrote the tangent about Wikipedia, which led to the side thought of the internet intensifying ADHD and other mental things related to attention spans and thoughts, and then went back and finished the thought from the first paragraph, but then with this second chunk in there, it isn't such a direct jump from talking about Wikipedia to talking about the internet, so decided to either cut that part or put it down here, but it makes slightly less sense to read it here after you've already read the second paragraph... because the second paragraph (more chunk than paragraph) is a different tangent on the branch than the third paragraph (chunk). They're all related but not necessarily belonging in the same linear thought process.

Does anyone else's brain work like this? To the point where you spend most of your time awake/alive trying to make the thought clouds just shut the fuck up so you can concentrate and enjoy the moment without immediately jumping into thinking about the next 3 dozen possible moments and the 4 dozen ways that the last string of moments could have gone?

Ramble ramble rant rant thought cloud/tree/jumble/ripple/etc blah blah blah!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I forgot that I used to like to post recent pictures whenever I sporadically posted on here. Did I ever post this one from my last job? I think I posted it on an entry that I left in nonsensical haste awhile back and then removed the next day (which I almost never do because I'm a firm believer in letting things stay once they're out there).

Anyway, it was for a jeans ad:


And fuck proof reading! I know that that is the part where you go thru and straighten out the bends and make your random ramblings make more sense for everyone... add some linear to the cloud. But fuck it, I'm not in the mood. And the whole point was to ponder the jumbling mushrooming nature of the progression of thoughts, so proof reading and rewriting just seems to miss the point! Ok, time to hit submit before I go on another ramble. It just helps to type it out instead of keeping the thoughts on a sloppy sloshy internal loop. Exercise the hyper energy tearing the insides apart! And..... out.

http://austinist.com/2009/01/25/snapshots_zombie_defense_league_co-.php
(http://i.gizmodo.com/5136970/hacking-road-signs-is-frightningly-easy-and-funny-and-illegal)

http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_nature/386245.html

http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_nature/385387.html

http://images.smarter.com/blogs/carrottop.jpg

I look in the mirror and I don't even know who I see anymore. It feels like I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out who that person is, but also a lot of time trying to drown out who I know that person to be.

I'm applying for grad school right now, in photography, but I've already applied in student affairs and social work. I got in to the schools I wanted both times, but turned them down because I decided to work on different things. They were both things I know I'd be good at and that I'd like to do, but I turned them down. Turned down student affairs because decided social work would be a more flexible degree for what I wanted to do (which meant it would give me the flexibility to do lots of things and not be forced to make a decision about what I would actually do). Turned down social work because decided wanted to pursue my passion in photography. Now I'm dragging my feet with applications for photography, maybe because I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. But what do I have to lose? And what happens if I get accepted to photography and suddenly turn it down because I've decided to do something else? That'd be fucked up in a "flush life down the toilet" kind of way. I don't think I'd do that... I'm more worried that I'll get all locked up about applying that I won't actually get any good applications in and I'll have no options. Maybe the whole procrastinator thing where if I don't try, then I won't have something to fail at, and if I do fail, then I can blame that fact that I waited until the last minute and had a lot going on and blah blah blah?

Until recently I was going to apply to both social work and photography and then decide which to do. Now I'm only applying to photography because it's what I really really want to do. But I'm so terrified that I'll keep going down that path and either not be good enough, or be good enough but not be able to leverage it into an actual career. What if I spend all this time working toward this, and then it just doesn't go anywhere?

I think I've noticed something in me that I've noticed in a lot of other people. The belief deep down that we're amazing and talented, and feel that we should do great things with our life... while at the same time being terrified that we won't achieve greatness, so we sit and worry and get neurotic, and in the process we don't do shit with our time because we're too afraid to channel our talent into working 110% at getting to the point where we can convince the world that we're destined for greatness. If we just got over it and realized that 99% of humanity does ok with their lives without being a superstar, maybe we'd spend our time doing something rather than having a mentality where it's either all or nothing. Superstar or nothing.... but there's a lot in between the two extremes.

I've talked about it with my roommate a lot, and also I think indirectly with my two best friends M & C, and with others, about how when we're young we feel like we're so full of potential and we have so many options, and then as we get older those options seem to dwindle, but we still feel like we have this well of potential, and it can be frustrating when we don't feel like we're living up to that potential.

I think a lot of us are very talented but we don't always have the self marketing skills to do something with that talent and have our talent recognized. Because talent that doesn't get out of our brain really won't take us anywhere.

I'm sitting here with way too much caffeine in my system, unable to sleep, while my beautiful girlfriend sleeps in my bed, and I won't let her know most of the things that are bothering me. I need to be getting all my application stuff done for grad school, but I'm afraid to talk to her about it because going to grad school means eventually leaving Texas and I have no idea what that means for our relationship. We have strong feelings for each other that we rarely discuss because we don't know what effect it will have on the other. She tries to bring it up occasionally, and I avoid it because committing to feelings about a person scares the shit out of me right now. I'm too afraid to even think about and even figure out how I feel about her, because I'm afraid I'll hurt her someday no matter how I feel.

And when went home for Christmas and New Years, felt like I barely opened up for my family, even though it's something I've been working on. Lots of opportunities, and even had lots of conversations in my head with them, but never opened my mouth. I've been so shut off from everyone lately. I'm being torn up inside, and I've been around the people who I can talk to the most (sister, mom, family, my best friend C, my girlfriend A, etc), but I just keep my mouth shut and think about it in my head, even though that gets me nowhere without bouncing it off others. Plus just opening myself up to find out what's going on with them... something I've neglected.

Damn, too much going on in my head to feel like I'm making any sense here. I feel like I'm squishing 4 or 5 different topics together and not figuring out the details of any of them. Should just try to sleep again, but I know there's too much in my head to do that. And too much caffeine. Could try to stay up and work on stuff, but don't want to wake A up. Could take a Tylenol PM and see if that'll put me to sleep, but don't know if that'll mix well with all that alcohol I had earlier (and the beer I'm working on now). I just know that I need to do something about it all and stop just wining in my own head and turning myself into a victim of myself.

Two pix I uploaded recently. I have thousands of images from the last few years that I haven't edited and done anything with. I spend all my time concentrating on my "art" stuff, when I have tons of other stuff I'm ignoring in my hard drive.

First one is from a workshop last year with Scott Church (look him up, he's awesome), and the other one is of my roommate when we were just messing around in the studio:

Kind of an interesting thing to think about, actually...

"It took seventy-five years to bring democracy to Europe, from 1914 to 1989. At some point, the entire European continent was governed by either communists, fascists, or Nazis. Two hot wars, one cold one. Tens of millions of people killed. The good news is, I don't think the Middle East will take as long."
-R. James Woolsey (Former CIA director)

Finally got my summer body of work posted on Flickr. At first I wasn't sure about it, kept thinking back to the previous set and comparing. But now I'm pretty into the new stuff, too.

This time used the 8x10 view camera instead of the 4x5 one. Again, contact prints toned in the dark room.

So I know I'm basically tone deaf and can't sing. But I've been singing a lot in the truck, because some ass face stole my radio and I have nothing else to listen to. And then I get home and my roommate is out of town and I walk around singing. So I decided to sit down with Garageband and record some vocals while listening to Round Here by the Counting Crows, one of my favorite songs.

Thought it would be maybe at least semi decent and not total rubbish when I went back and listened to it. No, it was total rubbish. I should now stop singing around anyone at all. Fuck.

At least when I looked up the notes and started playing along with the Garageband organ, I could at least tell that it was working. I know I'm good at instrument, and I've now confirmed that I'm horrible at singing. Suck.

Oh well. Also, I've been addicted to Monica Bellucci this week! Can't help it, love the older hotter women.

http://community.livejournal.com/foto_decadent/1825025.html#cutid1

I think it's really weird how snobbery and status works sometimes. When digital photography first came out, "serious" photographer and pros sneered at it and thought of it as an amateurish fad that might eventually turn into something but for now sucked and lacked personality. And now, many pros have turned to digital and have dumped film and a lot of manufacturers have stopped making film. And now I hear pros and people at camera stores talking about how "film is only used by amateurs now". Which there might be a little to it, since a lot of pros use good digital stuff now but photo departments do tend to still have students learn on film. But a lot of fine art, product, and fashion photographers still use it, and it's still pretty awesome. Just because a lot of pros have stopped using it, doesn't make it bad, but to them they can keep their self-important status by looking down on those who do still use it.

Anyway, not bitter, just something I've been thinking about today while tracking down 8x10 film and having my professor lend me his huge awesome view camera. Can't wait to start using it!!!!!

Ok, this is a great link to a posting of a bunch of pictures by Dan Flood:

http://community.livejournal.com/foto_decadent/1777778.html?#cutid1

And it reinforces my long held beliefs that:
1) a woman wearing a man's button-up shirt and barely anything on the bottom is automatically 500% sexier,
2) it's easy to take a sexy picture of a girl who has really sexy eyes,
3) if a photo features a star of a recent TV show, people will pay attention to it,
4) pictures of "model types" can be really fucking boring.

So, had a nice break but class started again this week. It's going to be good but busy. Just one class, called Concept to Exhibition, which is exactly how it sounds. Come up with a concept for a body of work and then get it ready for a gallery exhibition. I'll be switching to the 8x10 view camera instead of the 4x5, which will make awesomely detailed contact prints. Still going with the mask theme and empty, creepy, yet approachable and pretty scenes. And I'll be using a new toner that turns the silver in a darkroom print from black to metallic silver.

Spent the night drinking and hanging out with my roommate, listening to a bunch of music and using his dog as a pillow. It was a nice night after spending all day scrounging online for the film I need, and going around to stores in town to find new masks and props. It's surprising how hard it is to find fetish masks in Arlington, TX!

Anyway, I think i started this post with something in particular I wanted to talk about, but i don't remember what it was. Guess I'll watch some Lost and go to bed...

Awesome how our faces look just like little jiggling bags of meat sometimes:
Super Slow Motion Punch Fest

Last night went out on the town with a bunch of other photo folks in Ft Worth. The first place was really fun. Not too crowded, and a kind of lighthearted vibe. There was a group of bros near us who a few times tried to hit on the girls in the group (2/8 or 1/4 of our group), but it was lighthearted and not creepy. We had about 1/3 of the basement area pretty much to ourselves, and we drank and did crazy dancing (see last post for examples) and took shitloads of funny pictures (give a camera to a drunk photo major you'll be blind within five minutes from the flashes).

Then we went to a place across the street because the other birthday person's ex-boss wanted to go. That place bothered me. Crowded, pretentious, peacocky, overpriced, etc. Some people were too drunk, I had to persuade assholes to leave my gal friends alone, etc.

Don't worry, this post kind of has a point, and I'll get to it eventually :-)

So time to go, I walk 3 of my gal friends to their car, some asshole bros in the parking lot are asking me why I'm not getting in the car with them to "at least get a BJ", etc. Then I have to walk about 5 blocks to where I'm parked. All the bars were closing at 2:00, so the streets were filled with little mobs of overly drunk people spilling out on to the streets. I wasn't too drunk, though I drank a lot (made sure we all drank a lot of water after a few friends started getting overly sloppy drunk).

Had to wade through crowds of these people who were acting very idiotic. Every cross walk was like a perverted version of the movie Death Race 2000 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVqJIsJrfQA). Every light was being completely run by drunk drivers. While at the same time there were tons of drunk pedestrians jay-walking into the same streets without really watching the traffic flow first. I'm surprised I wasn't run over, let alone the people not paying attention. There were people stopping cars to talk to the people inside.

Anyway, it was really annoying and obnoxious and reminds me of why I hate drunk people as a general rule. Get a few drinks into a frustrated urban robot, and they suddenly don't give a shit about themselves or others.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and have gotten a little fed up with people?

I love drinking as much as the next person, but isn't it a good idea to at least keep some situational awareness?

Just kidding, I guess there isn't a coherent point to this, just wanted to rant and think about it ;-)