Tweak

I broke the pact I made
I failed at one, two, three - all the tries

I discarded everything then gave up for a time
Choosing to lay my focus somewhere else

Never became maybe
Maybe then yes - okay.
Here is my unexpected truth
All I really needed was a container


From the archives:
(untitled)
Rending
Hydration

Secret Service

Until I trust you, I don’t trust you. This is my default and I come by it honestly.

When something bad happens I become watchful. That is exactly how I am right now, during this global pandemic.

Fellow citizens are usually good people but they are impulsive and unpredictable.

Before the global pandemic, I covered a lot of ground. I rode the subway everywhere. I took photographs all over NYC while waiting for traffic lights, running errands, going to appointments, and commuting to work.

Now I go out very rarely and when I do I need my full brainpower to navigate congested streets full of people. I do not want to catch COVID-19 from a fellow citizen, remain asymptomatic but contagious and spread it around my household and my building. I don’t want to be sedated and sucking air from a ventilator. I do not want to be with fellow citizens who are losing their damned minds because it is 65 degrees and sunny.

Even before lockdown I stopped taking photographs outside. I turned my attention to stuff I could photograph inside of my apartment. That way I don’t have to be aware of my surroundings or dodging fellow citizens.

Constraint can be good for art. It has been - most of the time. I post the good, the great and maybe in retrospect the mediocre to bad on Instagram daily. I like to share my practice.

One day I had an idea. For the first time, I longed for fresh air. I wanted to photograph outdoors. I also thought that this might be a good thing for Jeremy. He’s a photographer. too. We are on the same page with COVID-19.

The plan was to go outdoors together. We would walk single file on the sidewalks and into the park. We would be spotters for one another and that way we could concentrate on our photography rather than fellow citizens. It will be like having the Secret Service, I told him.

This is not our first rodeo. When you’ve cared for an immunocompromised toddler, a global pandemic is like riding a bike.

Jeremy was gifted a period of time. While he was photographing my only job was to watch from all angles to see if fellow citizens were headed our way. One time, as he bent to get a different angle on a subject, I told him we had to move along. When the spotter tells you to move, you’ve got to listen and act immediately.

In the park, my Secret Service detail involved scouting emptier parts of the park, away from vectors on bikes, the brazenly unmasked, and the coughers. When I was on duty I did not look at my phone or become distracted.

Then it was my turn to have a protector. All of the time spent photographing inside the bathroom and out the window had a way of informing this work. I could keep busy in a very small area. There are no trees or grass inside of my apartment. That was enough to keep me engaged.

We didn’t have free reign, but that was okay. Like I said before, constraint can be good for art.

As we walked home, we took a circuitous route in order to avoid fellow citizens clogging the sidewalks. We walked single file at my insistence. The breeze and air invited us to do this again. We will.

You can follow me on Instagram at to see my recent photographic series called Shelter in Place and Protected Photographs. I also have pre-pandemic imagery there too.

You might also enjoy:
Best Case Scenario 
I suffered for their art
These Are My Subjects

You With The Camera

Your photography is evolving from here to there to somewhere else. This is familiar. But maybe it’s happening much faster than usual.

Let it.

You could ask it to slow down, but it can’t and it won’t.

The picture you take today renders everything you did yesterday obsolete.

Those who stop growing die.

And those who don’t die have another set of problems.

Making the new photographs means letting the old ones go, even if they’re kicking and screaming while you do.

Say goodbye. Be firm. But go ahead and cry if you want.

Keep moving. You were never meant to just stand there.



From the archives:
Picture Edit
I walked to the end of the driveway
The Photography Rules I Had Last Winter

Picture Edit

It’s good. I can see that.

The lines are there. So are the composition, saturated palette and light. The filmy Christmas lights hung on the awning add a bit of whimsy - I could go as far as to say light irony - to the photograph. This keeps it from being too precious, too conventional, too full of itself. The rest of it is just the right kind of majestic.

Everything that years of working, failing, then trying again and succeeding are there.

This could be a welcome addition to my series.

I don’t feel the way I should about it. There’s no quickened heartbeat, crack of the bat against the ball and powerful arc signaling a home run. There’s no thrill in having captured it.

Like everybody, I spend my days in compromise. Maybe I cut a corner here, stay longer than I want, say yes when I mean no, exert willpower. My life is good. None of it is over my head. Not really.

But with photography, I’ve got to be all the way in. It gets to have my whole heart. If there is exactitude with love then here is where that is.

With this I get to have the orchestra, the breathlessness, the purity.

So I go ahead and delete it. I don’t regret it. Soon after, I don’t think about this image anymore. It’s stunning how quickly that happens.

You might also enjoy:
I walked to the end of the driveway
Chicken Scratch
My Future Crappy Work

Careful Words

The pause before speaking.
The silent blank pages slipped between dense, thatched prose.
The lull, the exclamation.  
To sate, not fill.
Even the endpapers.
Even the subject line.

You've worked the tinker right out of it.
The sweat wiped away by the same deft hands that penned.
That swept aloft to me alone, exclusive, dear.
To my eyes, the brain that soaks it in.
Smooth skin, blown glass.
Or as they say, like butter.

Chicken Scratch

The first things I wrote were hard. Touching the words would give you splinters. Tumbleweeds blew through. Then the locusts came.

Later everything softened. Think of watercolor. The words became porous. I became that way too. It wasn't like things were necessarily better. But I did have a bigger bank of words and colors for it - for you.

I thought about doing some new writing about what you said and what happened. I didn't. Not everything needs to be written down.

Now you're wondering if it's you. The question hangs out there between us. That's fair. If I were you I'd do that too.

In the end, it doesn't matter. Not really. It is about somebody. But in a way it could be about anyone.


From the archives:
The Hatchet Job

The very second you lost me

Letting People Get Used To Me

Suffer The Words

You capture the germ of something. It's good. You work fast. Everything is lucid and frank. Nothing extra, nothing wasted.

You wait a bit and add more. It's bad. There's only one thing to do. Throw out the new, bad stuff. Leave it, and you'll ruin everything.

The first few sentences are still perfect. There lies the beauty. There lies the problem.

You labor a bit. It's fruitless. You have somewhere to be, so you go.

You forget about it for a while. You work on other things. The other things write themselves.

This beginning, this jewel of a thing hangs in the air. Until you find the proper middle and end that is where it will stay, suspended and waiting.

You're eager, but that won't get it done. Patience is what you need. You also must be ready to act quickly. Words sometimes arrive unbidden and unexpected.

Completion of this cultivated prose lies with the self that goes off script while doing the dishes. The shower is a think tank. So is the track.

You rein in this runaway train when it comes to paperwork, bills, forms and mathematics. You accommodate. You wish it were different. But you also treasure. For you, the wordsmith, that reckless vehicle is pure gold.

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What I know, what I don't know

The Best Thing Someone Never Said To Me

Modern Narcissus

Venn Diagram

There are things I am not good at. There are things I do not enjoy. There are things that are difficult for me to learn.

I won't focus on the things I am not good at. Except for this. It is good to know whom to hire. It is good to know who to collaborate with, consult with, or delegate to.

There are the things I am good at. These things are extremely enjoyable. They are also easy for me. Oftentimes I find myself in a flow state doing these activities. That is how much I like them.

I like them so much that no one pays me to do these things. I do them for free.

I get a lot of compliments on the things I do well. I don't know how you do it! people say.

I know what they mean. I feel the same way about other people's talents. I'm delighted by good dancing. I'm in awe of people who can put together IKEA or don't get lost in new places. I wonder how musicians feel after writing a spectacular song. There's just too much to keep listing this way because it goes on and on like the infinity symbol.

It’s been a while since I’ve worked for a paycheck. But I work hard. I also work smart. I've assessed a lot of skills doing the things I do, reading the things I do and collaborating with other people.

I might want to monetize the skills I've been amassing. Getting paid for the stuff I am good at, the stuff I love to do and the stuff I've been doing for free while in a flow state is something I am interested in.

A couple of weeks ago it hit me. I've been attending a graduate school of sorts. I didn't know I was enrolling in it, but I have been enrolled. I won't have a diploma and graduation ceremony.  It won't have a beginning, middle and end. On the other hand, I have no tuition or student loans.

The people I've worked with and collaborated with have not realized that they've been running an internship. But that is exactly what they have been doing.

The graduate school thought put a fresh spin on things. Here's where my thinking took me. Maybe reading about me will help you too.

Stuff I will not attempt to monetize.

There are certain things that I do very well and enjoy very much. But many people also find it easy or enjoyable to do these things for themselves. It would be difficult to find people who would want to pay someone else to do these enjoyable activities. Even if they did, the market would be flooded with other individuals who are good at the same activities and hoping to make a living at it.

I will just keep on doing activities like this for free.

Stuff I might attempt to monetize with some caveats

There are things that I do very well that not a lot of other people do nearly as well. It is more of a rare talent. I enjoy these types of activities very much.

There are potential problems with getting paid to exercise these particular rare talents.

I can do these activities better than almost anyone. However, most people aren't very discriminating when it comes to these particular things. They might be able to perceive the difference between good and crappy. But having someone else with less rare talent do it cheaply or doing it themselves badly is deemed good enough for most purposes.

Also, there are many, many rarely talented people who are willing to be paid to engage in activities like this.  There are more people willing to be paid than there are people to pay. This is a problem for me when it comes to getting people to pay me to do activities.

That does not mean I rule out monetizing these enjoyable activities. However, I'd need to think of this as not the main gig. It could be a secondary gig.  If it looks like it could take off, then I could always re-evaluate my prospects.

Stuff I will probably attempt to monetize

This is what I am calling the sweet spot.

There are some other rare talents I have. It turns out that the activities surrounding these talents are both enjoyable and important in ways the previously mentioned activities are not. The activities and skills are also more high stakes.

There are not very many people who do these activities well. There are not very many people who really want to do these activities. I sense that people would rather not do these activities but do not feel that they have a choice. Sometimes they engage others to do these activities who are clearly not up to the task.

 With the right approach, I could find people to pay me to do these activities.

I would find the people who can see the value in what I offer. I would find the people who are self aware and interested in delegating these activities. I would find the people who could afford to pay me.

This is important. People who are interested but cannot afford to pay me are not my prospects.  People of means who do not see the value in what I offer are also not my prospects.

Monetizing the Sweet Spot.

#1 Represents activities that I enjoy, learn to do easily, am talented at, and am better at than the majority of people.

#2 Represents those activities that most other people find difficult (from the standpoint of time, skills, or both), confounding, and not enjoyable.

#3 Represents my monetizing sweet spot.

My Potential Customer

#1 People who are interested in what I do well, value what I do well, and are comfortable with collaborating and delegating.

#2 People who can afford to pay me to do these activities for them.

#3 My potential customer

The reasons I left the workforce are the same reasons I am staying out of the workforce for now. But I am thinking about the near and more distant future. I am seeing where I might fit in and what my sweet spot might be.

I love Venn diagrams. I think there could be more of them as I sort out the whole monetizing skills thing. I've been making Venn diagrams for a long time to help me sort stuff out. This is the first time I've shared any of them.

You might also enjoy:

What To Say

Percolating

A Stressor Is A Stressor Is A Stressor

Lying In Wait

There is writing I have finished. It's pretty damn perfect. But I will not share it publicly now.

Someday is a time when I can share this writing. I feel badly that I cannot share it immediately. But not badly enough to post it.

I am not sharing it because it might make someone else feel bad. It's cryptic but they might figure it out anyway.

So I'm sitting on it.

It feels good to tell you about this writing that I have done. If I choose not to share it now, then at least I can talk about the writing. That's better than nothing.

There is some writing that lives in my head. I haven't worked on it yet in a literal way. That is because I knew from the beginning that this writing would get me into very, very deep hot water.

I've worked out the bones of my story but I haven't used my iPad to record it in the usual way.

So this writing is going into the someday pile also. I'm willing to risk small quantities of hot water, but not this much. I like to stir the pot - a little.

There is writing that is too personal. It is too revealing.

There is writing that is about parenting but would be potentially embarrassing. So that's shelved.

I am glad that I've shared the writing I have. There are one or two pieces that are on the edge of what I should have shared. Would I share them again? I don't know. Some days feel like yes, and some no.

The more stuff I write, the more I've written and shared. I've got a good meaty inventory of it on my blog now.

The more I write and share, the more I've shelved. There is a bank of this unshared writing.

There is writing that I may never share. I could share it if I'd burned every bridge with all of my previous writing. You can see that this will probably never happen.

I've written this. I've shared it. I've mentioned other writing that exists that is not getting shared. You can't read it now but it's not invisible. It's been given its due.

Here is what is helping me now. Keeping good writing that is potentially inflammatory on a shelf is not the same as ignoring it or throwing it away. A stockpile is not a trashcan.

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Subtract One

I Will Say The Wrong Thing

July 1999