Tag: Project 52

Good enough

I had the OS X Twitter app in the background and saw this tweet from Nuwomb while I was editing and choosing a photo for my weekly upload for Project 52. I usually have a story to go with my photos. I want readers to understand why I chose the picture for sharing but I also want to share a bit of myself and what's on my mind —  in the moment. Scott's tweet got me thinking about the amount of time I was spending choosing the "perfect" photo from the set I took this week. I realised that perhaps what I already had done was good enough. Maybe I was working too hard to get things just right. I was trying too hard to impress, and I was missing the point of sharing my images on the web. So I stared at that tweet for an almost a minute and then went back to Lightroom and chose the photo that spoke to me.


The person in the photo is a student, +Stephen Weber who is interning with our department. We had a few cloud-free sunny days this past week, and we felt encouraged to take out cameras out and get some exercise as well. We strolled along the trail behind the mall leading from our office building up to the Panera Bread. I wanted a photo of the seating area for an attempt at an HDR, but Stephen stepped into the frame just as I was clicking away. I think this photo is better than what I had in mind.

Following the trail

The weather this week was unusual. We had a few days where it was cold and damp1 and some days when it was a bit warmer. This Thursday the sky was mostly sunny and the temperatures were in the 50s'. Some of my coworkers decided it was warm enough for a quick photo walk along the trail behind the mall near where we work. I always bring my Nikon D40 to work but decided that the only camera I needed was my iPhone 4.

There wasn't much to see at first. Mostly brown patches of the winter-beaten woods. We walked all the way down to the gazebo near the back end of the Panera2 where I found this little patch of colour. I applied a new filter app3,Painteresque that I am addicted to.

  1. Most of my friends and family know that I'm not a big fan of winter ↩
  2. We walked about half a mile so we stopped in and rewarded ourselves with coffee. ↩
  3. I love Instagram for displaying these photos. ↩

Wasted!

Often when I look at my to-do lists and my "want to do list", I get anxious. There is so much that I want to do — write an iOS app, start my web development and computer security consulting firm, launch a photography business, go on a food tour of Italy with my family, start a technical school — that I often don't know where to start. Looking at my current list, I've got a few projects I still haven't started and even more that are in a state-best called "pending". Too many ideas, too little time, and not enough discipline.

Then I spend time beating myself up and feeling bad; less than. Wasted all this time. I guess the question is what am I really looking for to fill my soul. Is it accomplishment? Is it fame? Or is it ... just filling the desire to make something. I'm not sure. Sometimes it feels like all the above but I think I am beginning to see the truth. My truth.

I think I just want to find the zen moments that my 11-year-old self-found while sitting in his room taking things apart, seeing how they worked, and then creating something new — exploring what and wherever my mind took me. Whether that was experimenting with electronics building radio frequency transmitters, programming firmware, writing computer games for my friends, breeding tropical fish, cultivating my plant hybrids, ...

Nothing about reviewing the security equivalent of TPS reports sounds fulfilling. The thought about doing that for the next year ... I shudder to think what my mind might look like. I blame myself mostly. I blame myself for not being who I needed to be. I blame myself for not continuing to pursue what was meaningful for me. I got distracted by being and doing what others thought was needed.

So my friends, if you are reading this, I need your help. I need help finding my way back to a place where I was happy. I've been in an angry space for a while and it's eating me alive. Where do I go from here?