year 2016, week 28

Preface

I have something to say. I know this now. What that something is, well that is the journey. I often find myself thinking about life in a very elevated way and think that writing it down and putting it out there will help me find the clear message.

Daily, Weekly will be my daily thoughts published once a week. It is not a daily journal, I want this writing to go deeper into my thoughts than that. I want to find the source of my urge to create, explore it, deconstruct it, throw it away, and rebuild it with focus. Writing will be the way I transport there and from time to time I will use photography to illustrate my message or frustration.

Monday.

I am tired of the melancholy. Let’s have some fun again in photography. Serious work with a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor thrown in has stood the test of time. And enough time has passed since it has been the norm. With the current state of the world has enough work that is unfiltered, raw, etc.

I don’t mean that the work should gloss over the problems we are facing. I think we can take the serious subject matter and comment on it, challenge it, in a way that is less dark more witty. Make people think and laugh at the same time. It is okay to laugh. Remember laughing? How great of a feeling it is. And when we laugh we let down our guard and allow the world to see a bit more of ourselves.

Tuesday.

Another day, another dollar. Am I really just working for the money or does my work have a deeper meaning? Does it have a larger purpose besides paying my mortgage? I have always let my day job make the money and photography was there to be a “creative outlet”. But looking back, giving it that title was just me selling it short. “I can’t really do it for a living so why bother.” As the years went by with that mindset I became more and more willing to only give 80% or less to my work.

That all changed a few years back. I decided to be a photographer instead of photography being a hobby. Now I still don’t make money from my work, but for the work I put out into the world I act like I do. Not to pretend I am something I am not. Instead it is to push myself to only do my best. 80%, hell 95% isn’t really good enough. I have to put my all into it because the people I want to see it are the people I want to eventually work with. They don’t want to see shit work. There is enough of that out there.

Wednesday.

Intentionally searching what I am meant to say feels like going out looking for love and that is not the proper way to find it. Love finds you, if you go out looking for it you end up attaching to things safe and familiar. Love is the opposite. It is uncertain and scary.

Therefore I have to mindful on this walk into my thoughts not to be deliberate. Today nothing came to me about my work. But writing something helps. This helps.

Thursday.

I realized today that posting to social media that you will do something doesn’t hold you accountable. I have read quite a few things lately, watched a few video even, where people say they are putting it out onto social media or YouTube (are those the same thing?) to be help accountable. But who really holds people accountable anymore. Peers, possibly. Professors, hopefully. Bosses, most likely. But most likely they do not consist of your followers.

Maybe they mean that they are trying to hold themselves accountable. That makes more sense. Jack Coyne wrote about a great tip he learned from Casey Neistat about writing a todo list for yourself everyday. Keep that list with you and add to it throughout the day and make sure you mark off some of those things. That is self accountability for sure.

No one will do my work for me. No one is going to come along and give me permission to do my work. I have to just get off my ass and get out there.

Friday.

Framework, conceptualization, etc. Have I done enough of that yet? Can I move on? I think so. For now anyway. So lets move on.

I work in the civil engineering field. 13 plus years of drawing commercial and residential developments. Besides designing the waterlines to the buildings and the sewer lines that take wastewater away the main thing we do is design how stormwater interacts with the land.

Most of the time the dirt here in New Mexico is sitting under the hot sun waiting for rain to fall. When it does the ground does it’s best to soak it up. But rain storms in New Mexico can cruel. Often dumping half of the years average rainfall in one localized area which is very makes it very difficult to design.

As Albuquerque’s crawl climbs the west slope of the Rio Grande valley it under minds sandy bluffs and fills in arroyos. These have been the landscape for a long time and replacing it with concrete arroyos, asphalt roads, shopping centers, and subdivisions it hard on the land.

This is what I work with on a daily basis. I live, work, and play in this city. In this industry. And my photography and writing should explore it. I don’t need to go to a far off country to find and exotic landscape or interesting culture. Albuquerque has that right here. I drive by it at 60 mph on my daily commute.

I hope to post episodes of Daily, Weekly every Friday.
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