Summer's nearly gone.
I started off writing a really depressing blog to go along with these photos, but I thought better of it. I've been a very neglectful photographer, and I've felt really aimless. I am only just now taking the difficult though much-needed baby steps toward remerging myself in some sort of creative community so that I can rediscover some inspiration and then, maybe some time in the far off future, I will take more photographs. It's not that I don't care or that I don't want to try. I am exhausted and, to put it vaguely, really struggling with the larger mysteries of life. No, in the end, I don't really know what I want to be when I grow up. I graduated with a passion and a direction, of some sort, in photography, and I moved to this beautiful big city to fully realize the possibilities. But I kept jumping up and down and all around and couldn't get anyone's attention. I didn't know what to do. I had no savings and no job and no plan so I had to start working -- and I mean really working -- long and hard hours at a restaurant so that I could live here. For awhile my photography and my work in the food industry coexisted somewhat. I shot some weddings, some freelance bits here and there, and I even had an exhibit (though somewhat amateur-ly and haphazardly organized on my part) at my favorite little coffee shop this past spring.
Since April, though, I have almost solely focused on being what I hope is the perfect general manager (at previously mentioned restaurant) for my staff. I should be proud that I have stability and that I do my job fairly well. I should be optimistic about the future and my options. I should be grateful that I was promoted and greatly supported (by the owner, operating managers, and a slew of other professionals who know what they are doing in this crazy and, at times, discouraging industry -- not like me) though I'm young, inexperienced, and, well, just generally emotional about life. I have a lot of reasons to feel like I've done a good job, but I don't feel like that. I feel confused and anxious. I feel like I have something inside of me that I've pushed away and totally neglected. It isn't that I don't love my job or the people in my life because of it, but I don't nurture the part of me that has something to say, something beautiful to show. I never thought I was the most creative photographer, but I do have a point of view. Or I did. Maybe I've lost it, or maybe it's just so deeply buried that it feels completely gone.
I am not sure what I am committing to in this blog post, but I want to be held accountable for the simple things that I'm not doing. I don't blame anyone or anything for the overall lack of passion all around me. And so, at the moment, I don't really have much more than these little snaps from my phone from the past few months of summer. It's a feeble statement, but at least I am still half-awake and trying to pay attention.
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