Sorry this is a few days late. I’ve been a bit busy, and have been remarkably productive. Time has a habit of getting away from me when I’m being so active, though. Ah well. Better two days late then never, right?
I think this picture speaks for itself. Alternatively, it’s an existentialist nightmare. To each their own, I suppose.
Tom
Meet Sisyphus.
Last week, I went on a road trip to visit one of my brothers out in Ohio (the other brother came on the road trip, as did my mom). On Wednesday, two interesting things happened. The first was that my bocce team won its first game! Whoo!
The second was that I got an e-mail from HP (my roommate, not the computer company). The subject line simply read “Whoops.” When I opened up the e-mail, I saw his message to me was “I did a thing.” Then there were pictures. So I clicked the first one, and saw this kitten staring back at me.
She is 8 weeks old (I guess 9 weeks now). We named her Sisyphus because, much like the character from mythology, she seems to repeat herself ad infinitum, regardless of the unchanging nature of the outcome (ie, she goes and eats my power cables, so I move her, so she runs right back to them again). We call her Sissy for short, because let’s face it, that is exactly what a 9 week old kitten seems like it should be named.
As a roommate, she’s pretty useless for paying bills, or maintenance, or really anything involved in renting an apartment. What she lacks in money making, though, she makes up for in loving to cuddle, chasing invisible enemies, and turning into a pure ball of energy and tearing through the apartment, making death-defying leaps to furniture and the top of my closet (I’m still not sure how she got up there, by the way).
I’ve tended to feel as though our major decisions in Boston have been generally blessed with good luck – we successfully paid for our Chelsea apartment, found decent jobs, had Evy and Ivy (aka Stripes and Fatty, the two cats we had in Cheslea) in our lives, moved to Brighton (because Everything’s Brighter in Brighton), and now we have Sissy, a playful, friendly kitten that likes to explore and seems to have no interest in getting out of the apartment. Now if only I can trick her into smoking so she will remain that size…
Oh, the size. Yeah. She’s a 9 week old kitten. For a sense of scale, here she is sleeping on my feet. Yep, she’s that small.
Tom
I’m not being vain here. It’s because I have a parrot on my shoulder. I believe it’s technically a larakeet. But, what matters is that it hung out on my shoulder for a while and never crapped on me.
I’ve high fived a monkey and had a parrot hang out on my shoulder. This bucket list keeps getting shorter…
Tom
I posed a question to Twitter recently, and I got an interesting mix of results. The question, in paraphrase, was: “Do all creatives identify themselves by their craft, regardless of how ‘professional’ they are with it?”
I was defining “professional” as “being published/contracted/what have you.” So, being amateur just means you’re not getting published. Which, even though I have had one picture put up in a travel website, means I am an amateur by these standards.
I have a number of creative friends – most of whom I know through Nano – and they responded rather interestingly. Most seemed to do what I do, which is identify themselves as their creative pursuit (ie, writer, photographer, etc). At least one told me that when he tells people what he is, he uses his job and not photographer, as he doesn’t want to confuse people and doesn’t feel like having to explain. Meanwhile, a few others have it right on their business cards, even though their main places of work are not photography related.
I tend to go between things. When people ask me what I do for a job, I tell them my actual job. I tend to joke about it, but since it’s what I do for a living, it’s the one I use. But I am not my job.
What I do for a job is a matter of economy. What I do for myself is a matter of living. I am a writer. A photographer. A wannabe musician. A terrible poet. A drawer of stick figures.
My name is Tom, and I am a storyteller. Who are you?
Tom
Depending which album it’s in, this photo seems to go by two different names (I uploaded it on separate occasions, hence that discrepancy). And I know it showed up last week in my post, but let’s face it, out of my first 14 pictures, this one is the best.
Part of that reason is experimentation, obviously (I had never photographed fireworks before Sunday). Part of it is color (there is a lot). Part of it, I think, is the way fireworks invoke the inner ten year old in all of us. Even when I’m standing with my camera on the side of the Charles River, taking guesses at settings and hoping pictures I’m taking come out, there’s a part of me that’s Tommy, sitting on a blanket on the grass of the junior high school near my parents’ house, watching the town’s display, and knowing that when I get back after this, there are leftovers from the cookout to munch on, and sparklers to play with.
I love the Fourth of July, if only for those types of memories.
Of course, new ones are always being forged, aren’t they? This year I went go an awesome cookout full of awesome people (I’ll be talking a little more about that in a future post), and made my first professional(ish) feeling attempt at getting pictures, with all the right equipment. I wonder what next year’s will hold?
Tom