Since I've been out here my wrist has been bothering me. A lot.
The injury was dormant then it was creeping. Then it was throbbing. Then it felt better. Then it wasn't.
My plan was to get a retail job if I needed extra money but that hasn't panned out on account of me worrying about lifting things and having issues with pain when cleaning. It's a bummer.
So I decided to go to physio at long last. Physio isn't really a part of our healthcare system the way it should be so it's not something I usually do. Usually I just think about how little money I have and do without. The pain in my wrist felt different. Probably because everything that I do involves my right hand and it freaks me out when it hurts.
The original injury involved photography and twisting knobs and holding a camera this summer made it worse so I decided to take a break from photography.
There were other reasons to take a break, other things that were bugging me about photography. The gear thing is stressful. It's expensive and that shit is bulky. I want to live a simple easy life, not one where I need a car just to drive my gear around. I can't afford that shit either and I don't even know if I want it.
Then there's the file management. That is still a mess and I am still doing a terrible job of it but maybe one day I'll figure it out. When I have money maybe then the whole hard drive mound thing won't bug me as much.
I stopped posting and dealing with my photos in Scotland and never got back to it. I want to get back into it. I want them to be organized and tagged and saved as the right names. I just have to sit down and chip away at it.
I don't want to be an event photographer. I don't really even know if I want to be a professional photographer. I don't really know.
I do know the last few months have been weird and hard. I've been thinking about how I relate to the world and how photography plays into that. Until I took my break I didn't leave my house without my camera. Usually if I left my house it was to take pictures. Photography has been my reason for joining things, making friends, going to events and exploring places. For the past few years photography has been my reason to go outside. It's also been the way I experience the world.
It's a bit different from the people who experience the world through a phone but it's still something where I was never just in a place. I always had my camera out. Always. Without photography why bother. Except the last few months I have bothered. I have gone to the beach just to go to the beach. I have gone to events just to check them out. Life is different when you leave the camera at home.
So I am back trying to take pictures. I think it'll be more chill going forward, which isn't a bad thing. I want it to be fun and rewarding not just something that stresses me out and that I don't know how to deal with. As Elizabeth Gilbert says if you love something you love it enough to plow through the stuff that sucks about it. I love photography but I don't love dealing with photos. I love photography but I don't love my memory cards or my mound of disorganized hard drives and files that may or may not be saved somewhere.
I don't know what the answer is to that question. That's okay. I don't have to know.
I am watching Dirk Gently on Netflix and while Dirk can be wildly incompetent — how is he not dead — I love how chill he is. Sometimes you just have to ride the log and end up where you end up. You end up in a secret passageway with a magic lightbulb? Explore it and see what happens. You'll probably end up somewhere that is kind of like where you expected to be.
I've never really had any clue what I was doing when it came to dealing with my photos. I still don't. I'm just going to keep swimming and see how it turns out.