Month: October 2007
Most of the trouble I cause in my world comes from an inability to stop myself from talking. At least 95% of those instances revolve around me being agitated to one extreme or another about something. And while I well know I should keep my mouth shut when I’m worked-up, I’m not always succesful. I could argue that most of the agitation is caused by someone else making inappropriate comments in a similarly excited state. But being occasionally unable to ignore such provocations–as you would expect from any rational person–isn’t something to be proud of.
I seem to be able to better handle it in business than my personal life. But then you won’t survive long in business if you take it personally, for various reasons, (mental health, upset clients, lack of objectivity, blah blah blah). And I’ve found that even when a client does go off the deep and attempt to take me with them, if I just keep quiet and wait a day or two, cooler thoughts will prevail without any intervention from me.
I felt kinda good about today. Was an overall positive day. And I felt like I accomplished something while working. And Refresh was entertaining, if not educational, tonight.
So it’s unfortunate when I got home that my email was clogged with messages from clients whining about a pile of petty little things. Doubly depressing when, after hadling what I immediately could and filing anything undeserving of a response, I had only 1 email left. So not only did they piss on my mood, but it wasn’t in the least bit productive.
This calls for a photo collage. My recent favorites:
1. Princesa de la Tempestad, 2. Lotsa Colors, 3. light a cigarette, 4. Goddess Light., 5. artrepair8, 6. seawind, 7. tutu, 8. the promised land, 9. zlatna dolina – sarajevo, mon amour, 10. São Paulo., 11. on the drive to Yosemite, 12. Untitled, 13. yellow, 14. Reykjarvíkurnætur, 15. Sojin with Lemonade and Chips, 16. floored
Failure is being without resource or hope. You have nothing and nowhere. You’re not only homeless, but literally on the streets, with nowhere to go, and no one to turn to. And you have no idea what to do to make it better.
To me, that was always the ultimate worst outcome of failure. (Sure, you can argue death would be worse, but if I died, I don’t think I’d care any more about the failure aspect. And I’m looking for real suffering, here.)
But…
Look at street people. Talk to them. Or, try to anyway. Most of the real, hardcore street people are not there because of a single bad turn of events in their life. Losing your job and getting kicked out of your apartment does not directly equate to peeing yourself and sleeping under a bridge for 15 years. I’m not trying to make any judgement call about these people except to say that they’ve usually got larger issues than a rough patch in life.
So barring extraordinary circumstances, no matter how bad the average, healthy person fails, they’re never likely to hit that perceived rock bottom.
The whole point of this is then to ask: if I simply cannot fail like I always worried, then what’s stop me from trying… anything? What have you always dreamt of doing, but you feared the worst? Well if the worst isn’t a possibility, then what’s stopping you?
Thanks to Stephanie, I went to the ‘yardsale’ the Washington Photography School was holding this weekend. I could have gotten in a lot of trouble there… but I generally behaved myself.
Unanticipated side effect of the new Macbook. It has magnetic latches for holding the lid shut, apparently at each corner. And Pixel–who loves to rub up against the…