Through It

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This year, 2011 AD, has not been the year I had hoped. However, it may be the year that I learned to accept, to deal and to get through. When your gallbladder fails, you have to have it removed. You can’t change that. Magical thinking won’t change that reality. I did take some good photos and make some good images. I’m happy with that aspect of my creative life.

This year is looking to end in an unusual way, with unusual circumstances. But I’m embracing that because embracing is the best thing to do. I’ve done some reading the past couple of weeks and I’m feeling like I understand where I am in my life, in my relationships and the directions I’d like to pursue going forward. I’d love to say “look out 2012!” or “gonna kick major ass this year!” or any other pronouncement. The realist inside me is saying just calm down, find peace and let go of the things I cannot change.

I have embraced my ADHD. I’ve struggled, albeit less severely than others, but I have struggled and not understood why I got B grades or why I couldn’t focus on counting 124 measures of rest, play the four tympani notes and then count another 72 bars until the massive tympani roll at the end of the song. Or why I have such a hard time getting to the point. So I started meds in earnest after the gallbladder surgery. And it has made a difference. However, I’m having to relearn how to apply the improved focus. I have to structure my day better, otherwise that focus is wasted on some trivial matter or technical issue. I have to focus on the things that matter.

Goals for 2012:

  • I want to take my photography up a notch
  • I want to write a lot more music
  • I want to pursue some publishing ideas I’ve had brewing
  • I need some space from dooce.com
  • I need my own physical space to work (I love sharing an office, but I want to make noise and writers may or may not like noise)
  • Write 2 longer posts on blurbomat a month, every month

What are you hoping to accomplish in 2012?

Nut Bolt

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I think I prefer editing photos on the iPad rather than the iPhone. I love the immediacy of the phone, but I can’t see the details as clearly on the phone, despite the sweet display. I’m sharing this anyway, because I’m pretty happy where I ended up color-wise and with the light.

Rusty and Ragged

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We haven’t seen a lot of snow this winter. So I’m grabbing as many shots of bare trees and sickly gray sky as I can before we are buried in white.

I’m also trying to firm up a decent workflow from my phone to this site. WordPress is rough around the image edges. While the iOS WordPress app is nice, posting an image to Instagram and using their app to simultaneously post to flickr and tumblr is much easier than fiddling about with post formats and image sizing. The biggest issues for me  in the WordPress iOS app are that I can’t:

  • edit an excerpt
  • set a post format
  • edit the image metadata so that the image popup looks like I want it to, with a caption and title

I had been using a plugin to do my larger images, but I like having WordPress know about my images rather than relying on a plugin.

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Anyway. I’m doing a little better. This has been a brutal holiday even without my personal stuff going on. Lots of family events and shuttling to and from. I do have a great deal of hope for the future, no matter what it looks like. Unrealistic hope can kill you, but I’ve always believed in visualizing the future you want and that consistent effort toward this future will yield real results.