Blog

Just doing a little blog maintenance (alas, not much actual blogging…) when I happened to notice that I uploaded a few photos much earlier this year, but never pressed the publish button. Better late than never?

It’s 7-Jan-2017. I’m showering. Bitcoin has been as volatile as a bouncy ball. And as I lather up my hair with whatever shampoo was closest, I can’t stop thinking about freedom. This is nothing new. The topic perpetually disturbs me. It wiggles its way into my mind alongside any number of other thoughts – and it proceeds to hijack all of my mental attention. The steamy water falls over my face, and I’m no longer thinking of my bitcoin roller-coaster ride....

The end of 2015 is now. So, too, is the beginning of 2016. Focusing on the latter is probably a simpler task, but I feel compelled to briefly review the year foregone. I wrote less and I drove more. I barely touched my camera. I cooked rarely and ate out often out of necessity. I made money, but I spent far more time away from home than at home. I had very little leisure time to myself....

You’ve probably heard the trite expression that every ending marks a new beginning. In fact, it is not true. Sometimes endings simply mark a reversion to an older way of life. A lifestyle with nothing new… in fact one quite likely more familiar than whatever was ended. This kind of an ending brings with it no excitement or novel expectations for the future. It simply restores previous expectations and shutters the recently exciting possibilities....

There I was – twenty two and almost broke. No, it was even worse than that… I was in debt to an institution that was supposed to open minds, but excelled only at opening wallets. So I was a bit disillusioned, too. I was renting a run-down studio in the nicest part of town I could afford and painting my way right into poverty. I knew going in, although I had to constantly remind myself, that I was going to avoid the corporate rat race....

I am sure that you have run across a few of them, indeed, you may be one of them yourself – a person who proclaims, with complete sternness and steadfast belief – that everyone has a vice. It is, indubitably, a common enough sentiment. So, even if I have written about it before, it has been far too long – and I intend to touch upon it again. An appropriate place to start, it seems to me, is with a definition....

I titled this post on the 31st of December, 2013. Then I saved it as an empty draft and let it sit empty for nearly three months. Such is my life. No time to write, and only a little time to plan. 2013 was a quick year. It was a year of fiscal prosperity and familial loss. My grandmother was diagnosed with liver cancer and died only a few months later....

Do you enjoy your life? Are you looking forward to tomorrow? How much time do you spend thinking about the past? How often do you try to integrate the possibilities you may have had in the past, with the future you find yourself in right now? One of my all-time favorite novels is Les Miserables. My love for that work is, in large part, due to its treatment of destiny. Victor Hugo states that destinies can hinge on trivial details, such as whether someone is sitting or standing in a given moment....

I want you to read this slowly: I’ve never met myself. I can not pin me down. I have pictures, writings, even memories of some self I do not know as well as one thinks that one ought to know one’s self. Every instant that passes marks a change, a departure, from some former mind bound by familial relationships to others, and a social security number. It’s difficult to describe without sounding a bit odd, but that’s because it is odd....

So, there goes another year. I’ve arrived at my twenty-fifth year of existence now, and in my optimistic mind this means that I’m about a quarter done with this procession called life. Seventy-five years seems like an awfully long time to continue wandering about, doesn’t it? That is, after all, mostly what I’ve been doing thus far – wandering. Wandering and wondering. Wandering through the present and wondering about the future....