11/24/24-12/11/24

Sometimes I am deeply intimidated by my own ambition. How much one wishes to accomplish may inadvertently crush the ability and drive to get started. But one thing I’ve learned is that progress, any progress, even just by doing the simplest of tasks, can erase this abstract mountain I ask myself to climb. This is the realm where my biggest enemy lives; self sabotage.

Recent darkroom work has breathed life back into my black and white work. This year I embraced color a good deal more than year’s past, partly as a way to simplify things for myself. Working in a lab and having the convenience of machines to do (most of) the work for me is something that is hard to pass up when the BW workload feels heavy. Yet the feeling of coming out of the darkroom with something physical is still what drives me, makes a photograph feel whole. Maybe someday I will explore color darkroom work, who knows. But for now I appreciate it for not being that, its contrast in workflow.

I have a strange relationship with time. The past and future both feel nonexistent, and I guess in some sense are. Yet I can feel the past in my mind and body, and feel tethered to the future like an infinite ball of yarn. The present feels like this shapeless, invisible , never-ending machine, its only true function converting potential energy into kinetic energy. Yet it reveals itself to me as a being, a shadow, a friend and a foe, the Chinese finger trap of life. As I sit here and write this, time moves on. These thoughts are in the past. The time you’ve spent reading this is in the past. What is there to hold onto, and what should be let go of?