Musings

Testing….testing….is this thing still on?

Yes, for those of you who followed my little musings about music and photography for almost 7 years originally, I am back…in a way. The truth is I’m not sure why I decided to share this little scribbling with you tonight. I don’t want to guarantee when the next one will be. I don’t know what I want to share with you specifically. I just know that all of a sudden on the first Monday of September 2021, that I wanted to write something…anything again.

I suppose that might be in part because of the times we are all in globally. But not in the way of talking about Covid yet again. I’m weary of it like everyone else is. I guess I want to just say something about me during these times. If what I relate on the personal level is helpful to you in even the slightest way, I will consider my job done. But first let me take the briefest step back.

Just over a year ago I decided to reboot my social media. In so doing though, I wanted to keep the original idea of Soundtrack Of A Photograph-that is, where music meets photography. But I wanted to do it in a very scaled back way-a photo of mine, a lyric quote, and a brief thought from me. I also mapped out other creative ideas that are slowly but surely being accomplished.

Which leads me to this post. There is so much to say, yet nothing to say. Should I go emotionally deep, or keep it lighthearted? Should I write for therapy, or joy? Well…why not both.

Like many the past year plus, I have struggled with an entire range of emotions. Losing my previous job and thrust into the uncertainty of a global crisis I had a lot of time to think. Maybe too much time to think in fact. Ironically with all the time in the world to work on projects (such as the long promised photo book), I found my attention meandering. My brain could just not get around working on ‘the creative’. I suppose now that I am working again, that the balance has shifted again. Perhaps that was what I needed all along, but it is not the happy place I envisioned it might be after a year unemployed.

But then it came to me as I sat down to write this musing. I wanted to talk about passion. Not of the sexual kind, but the of the life kind. To my closest friends I will apologize for bringing up Diane Cardwell’s remarkable book Rockaway-Surfing Headlong Into A New Life, which I read recently. As I read its pages, I found myself nodding my head, saying yes, yes, fuck yes to almost everything she wrote about. There were some subtle parallels to my life the past few years that made me feel a connection of sorts. But more than that was the way the author stumbled into a new life and passion that hadn’t existed previously. I was enthralled by her approach.

The effect the book had on me was solidifying those thoughts I have had in my head this past year plus. Were it not for Covid and travel restrictions, I am convinced I would really be there. It is not merely a fleeting fantasy, a ‘I’d love to do that situation’. No. It is a place where I feel I need to be. Where I need to experience that type of passion again. And I know that when I experience it, life will change for me, and like Diane Cardwell, I will truly come to understand that feeling of living for passion, instead of living for a job. Others may not feel that need, but after so much time struggling sorting the thoughts out, this book really made me evaluate what I want to do.

Until it happens, I think I am going to be a little scatter-brained, a little unsettled, and restless. And it won’t be an abandoning of my current life in all aspects, but is a realization that if I don’t do this soon, I will never do it. I could wax poetic as I once did here about the past, about past feelings. Those are all valid and useful to help me define myself. But the one thing the past months have taught me is to move on, move forward. To live for passion after a lot of years not living for it. Onwards and upwards.

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