stripethree

Most of the time I write about all the fun, wonderful, productive things going on. Today, I write about a failure. With the arrival of a new digital SLR camera over Christmas, I thought it would be wonderful to hone my skills all 2008 long with a photo a day project. The fruits of this labor may or my not have been noticed here.

Well, I made it to the first week in March, then I slipped up, forgetting to snap something after a long day at work and a trip to the gym afterwards. Last week I started my new project and my hour fifteen minute one way commute. Makes it hard to find time to take pictures. I considered bringing the camera on my drives, but that would prove a bad distraction, and additionally, I did not want to leave the camera in the car all day or bring it into work. It is a military base so even if it is technically allowed, it would probably be looked upon oddly and with suspicion. Not worth the trouble. So with my time window closing I forgot one day, then two, now three. Even before I missed the days, the subject matter was getting predictable. Working at home left me ample chances to catch the cats doing something photo worthy, but also left me with more pictures of my cats than any man should have. My car, and my friends cars from the Friday night gatherings also began to dominate the subject matter, and one can only have so many pictures of cars. I have more than I need.

So it is now that I officially declare this little pet project a failure and I’m pulling the plug. No excuses: it was simply getting overly forced, and I need to find another way to motivate myself to practice and find new subject matter. While I didn’t expect the photo a day to always yield my best frames, it was becoming too much of a ‘snap a quick one before bed just to keep it going’. Not what I wanted, at all, and not what was going to be conducive to sharpening my skills. Perhaps some of the monthly ‘assignments’ and contents on some of the forums I participate on will suffice. I won’t stop shooting, and perhaps it will even spark more creativity when I do have the time to dedicate to it.

I’ll preface with this: if you don’t want to read a bitch session, stop now.

This week sucked. Sucked. It dragged. It was frustrating.

I sort of dodged going out tonight because I was just in a shitty mood and didn’t want to drag anyone else down (sorry Matt, I didn’t ignore the calls, I realized my phone was left in my car). It was one of those weeks where everything I touched turned to shit. How fun! Both of my projects at work I constantly ran into dead ends trying to fix things. I’d elaborate but it would bore you to death. Class, was tolerable, but these assignments are tedious, piss poor excuses for ‘work’ at a graduate level. I seriously did not just spend hours formatting servlet output so I don’t get docked because shit isn’t the right font size. Give me a break. The one freelance web project we have been trying to wrap up for weeks, the client is dragging their feet getting us the last trickle of content. Part of me doesn’t care, I already got paid, but I want to project done and over with. There are bigger and better things. Thankfully I don’t deal with said client directly (no, that’s not the problem) because if I did I’d have screamed at them by now. The car, in exchange for having fun in the snow with her last weekend, decided not to start on Thursday morning. Awesome! Actually, it’s probably due to the fact that either my battery is dying or I tried another failed experiment at getting these stupid, overpriced piece of shit lights to work the way they should. Maybe a little bit of both. It’s been over six months now with these lights. Fucking overpriced pieces of shit. I wasn’t going to bother with the car not stating issue Thursday morning because I had another at my disposal, but oh, that one didn’t want to start either. My own fault for not driving Kharissa’s car enough while she’s been gone and thus, the battery was drained. So there I was, with keys to two cars, one two years old, one six months old, less than 35k miles between them, and neither starts. That pretty much summed up the path most things took this week. Yay for getting to work late and thus, falling behind on hours that I’ll have to make up if I don’t want to burn precious vacation hours. And speaking of Kharissa being gone, talk about things that just blow in my world. She doesn’t get much phone time, and I can’t really call her, and she has no internet except apparently she got to an internet cafe this weekend. It sucks when you are used to seeing someone multiple times a week. I could write or send her something, but by the time she gets it she’ll be in the field where I won’t get to hear from her at all. Again, none of which is her fault, :shakes fist in the Army’s general direction: but it still sucks. I love you babe, can’t wait to see you again. When we do get to chat, I don’t want to go on and on about what’s going on here because, as you have read if you got this far, it hasn’t been all taht thrilling and more so, because I know where she is (in training), it sucks even more, there’s nothing going on (it’s the middle of Kentucky, what is there?), and I know she wants to be out of there badly enough already. I guess the point is that I knew I’d miss her a lot, but turns out it’s waaaaay more that I thought. Ten or so days down, eighteen more. As long as they can go by somewhat quicker than this last week.

I feel better having typed that all out at a ridiculous pace. I am looking forward to spring and summer, very much. Going to my first driver school/track event in April, going to Vegas for the first time for Rebecca’s wedding in June, and hopefully come August, the start of a trial run for future things (vague on purpose, don’t ask, won’t tell until it’s for sure). Right now, I’m most looking forward to March 9th, which can’t come soon enough.

Cold, snow, whatever, I think a trip to the batting cage is in order tomorrow. All I did today was work, and I didn’t even finish all of what I was supposed to. Fuggit.