Steven's Stream of Consciousness

I am missing photography. I haven't had much time for it in the last couple of years. 

My camera feels like a sweet girlfriend I've neglected. Even though I'm regrettably not in love with anyone, I want to feel in love again.

While teaching new employees how to take photos, I realized how much the craft can be joyful and full of possibilities. 

I've missed my friends and how good it feels to make something cool. Things change. One buddy told me a couple of nights ago that he doesn't even own a camera now. That's kind of a shame. I get to know these other photographers whose work I'm following and it's a thrill when one of them gets an amazing capture. 

I can't wait to get to Tigers for Tomorrow with my new lens. Below is a shot I got of the moon last night, hand-held. I am digging it. 

 

It doesn't matter if someone doesn't like my photo or finds some concept to be silly. They have different tastes or they don't "get" me or they're just rude for the kick of it. How it makes ME feel to create something neat is the source of my passion for it. I've lived enough to know that we worry way more than we should about some things and are dangerously deluded about others. 

If I were to describe it in a report for school: "My aim in photography is to create beautiful things that we can enjoy together." 

It's funny because it's earnest. I'm not as nerdy as I sound. At least I try not to be. Unless, you know, you're into that... I'm not too old. It's not too late. 

It's awesome if you've heard of me, but that's not ultimately the satisfaction. We're just trying to get through this day alive, bruh. Here lately, the world's seemed so dangerous that it's not totally implausible that someone might stalk you and mean you harm or try to control you when you're pretty set in your ways by now, fella. 

Some days I really feel this instinct to strike up a fling with someone, get a girlfriend, get a wife. I don't have a lot of experience with that. I've not had the all-you-can-eat buffet of casual meaningless sex just because it feels real good. Other days I don't think about it at all. 

I spent most of grade school infatuated with a single classmate who I didn't even really know much at all. When I got to college, it was during the era when AIDS was still fairly new and it was scary as hell to realize that you could sleep with someone one time and have a death sentence. That's not a terribly conducive environment to being a young man pursuing conquests. 

I've taken all of these photos of these beautiful people, but they aren't giving me anything more than a few minutes of their time and the patience to do something cool. Their boyfiends and husbands were always standing right beside me, nice chaps most of the time. I love their energy but it's always borrowed, not bought. It sure would be nice to stumble my way onto something with the potential to become something more. 

I'm also not a smooth talker -- at least not in person -- but I also feel like I know enough about enough things that I could incite an interesting conversation if I can get the timing just right and not say something accidentally stupid and thoughtless. 

I'm the guy who appreciates authenticity and being blunt without being mean. How amazing would it be if it was real? If it lasted? Just cut me some slack if I hit the occasional rhetorical landmine. Ain't love grand? 

I want to meet and date an artsy chick. Someone who gets what it's about. Who'll read my stuff to make sure I don't sound like a jackass. Someone who needs a partner, someone to trust. Someone to scratch my back when I'm tired and massage my scalp when I'm trying to fall asleep. 

Someone who is playful and loves to laugh. Someone I'll find new ways to demonstrate my love and affection. Someone willing to keep on her toes to earn a place in my orbit. Someone who'll be happy to see me come home and give me fun reasons to get up out of bed on a regular basis.

I picture having that in my head, hoping today might be the day we meet or collide or collude. But I'm not all thirsty about it. I'll be fine, however the future turns out. It just seems inevitable that at some point an amazing woman will appear in my life and actually enjoy hanging out and talking. I'm worthy of that, right? That's do-able. There are 7 billion assholes on this planet. Surely one of them will take a liking to me. I want to fall madly, insanely in love with her, as terrifying as that sounds. 

I wish fate would hurry up, as long as it's a good time. Don't need nothin' but a good time. And it don't get better than this...

I want to source radiance and spirit from people I genuinely like being around. We should talk more about art and artists. Music and movies. I love finding new things that are amazing and cool. It reminds me that I am, in fact, still alive. I'm not too old. And it's not too late.

These are the best moments in life when we rise above the tedious foundation of everyday life. When we step outside our own heads and lose ourselves inside the sort of art that ignites hope and happiness. 

Life is what you put into it...  Yada Yada Yada...

What I get to do for a living is AMAZING! Accepting the responsibility to focus and try to create something cool stirs within me a genuine excitement to face the day before me, hoping some moment worth capturing will stumble toward me at the most opportune moment. Or I'll just miss getting it, shrug it off as funny or scary or wild and it will have to live on confined to my memories.

That's the incredible thing. One day, we're all going to be dead. There's no escaping it. Yikes. But that doesn't mean we have to be forgotten completely. Or that we welcome that fate too eagerly. I'm not too old. It's not too late. Even if no one remembers my name in a hundred years -- how many people do you know about from a hundred years ago? Nada.

The fact that I'll leave physical remnants of who, where, when, and what I'll become gives me a sense of comfort. Future students and researchers will learn more about my generation based partially on what I preserve for them to someday ponder. Right there among the 999 quadrillion other pixels being uploaded on Instagram and TikTOk right now. 

I love that other people appreciate photography as much as I do. It's an interest community, but I largely became disconnected from my old friends when I became a newspaper publisher and COVID started lurking outside our doors. So much rebuilding of relationships to do... People on the fringes of it wade in murky waters sometimes; we're all doing the best we can do. 

I don't have any illusions of being some hot shot photographer, but I do follow artists and influences who continually astonish me with their talent.

It hurts a little each time I realize how far their talent extends beyond my own. I want to know about more extraordinary people and continually seek out something new that'll make a memory and make something cool out of thin air by the way I create an experience within someone. Trippy stuff.

I do feel silly sometimes, can feel like a walking cliche and I'm a tad competitive, but I'm secure enough that I'm staying down to earth. As busy as my job can be, I do it because I love what I do. It's sad that sometimes I feel angst knowing that my capacity for being a carefree young man is extinguished. I can do a pretty good imitation of him. 

Hey girl, let's get in the car and go somewhere and check things out and eat some good food and see if there's any good music playing locally. 

CRINGE.

I flip through the bound editions at work and feel connected to the people who experienced life so deeply through their small town newspaper. Someone really should make a movie about everything it takes to keep a rural newspaper prosperous in these crazy times. It's like being handed someone's baby and being responsible for it living or dying, plus the unexpected twists. To keep something important alive and pulling for its future as it evolves. Whatever form journalism takes next, we'll still have a need for storytellers. A need for eyes that see beyond the obvious. We'll get there as smoothly as we can in choppy seas.

My life WOULD make a pretty amazing reality show as long as you trim out the boring parts. Let's edit out the part where I'm sleeping with this ridiculous mask over my face like I'm Darth Vader because my body tries to kill me every night.

It's always so awkward when I have to put that thing on in front of a cozy new friend so she isn't poking me half the night to point out that I stopped breathing for 30 seconds. Creativity is what gives me the will to ignore unpleasant things in life. To carry on. To live. To feel something... Life starts to get a little dull unless you sharpen your edges. 

Our team is going to do the best we can, preserving a piece of community and contributing to conversations amongst neighbors that become new memories, People of the future need to see that we were here and this is what we wore and this is what we FELT.

I'll be thrilled if anyone smiles and laughs and feels something after browsing through my pictures among the sea of fading prints. If nobody else likes our content, who cares? Let's do it for each other. 

I'm amassing a ton of images in my day job, and I want to put effort into it so it maybe makes someone feel something too. I want my time to matter to someone and for some thing. 

Good night.