A new beginning

A long time has passed since I started this blog, and, a long time has passed since I did that first entry. Indeed, a lot has happened in my life since that first post, and in some ways an entire lifetime has passed. So why return here now? Well, the reason is this picture that I saw very early Sunday morning:



As I have grown up, I have come to accept that not all things are logical or easily explainable. There are times I will see things that have a great deal of impact on me, and I won’t be able to really pin it down. That picture, two charming and cute bears at play with a sparkle in their eyes and a palpable connection between them really caught my eye, and I followed the links to more of their pictures. The sum total effect was one of those logic defying results – a group of pictures of people I didn’t know ended up sparking a good deal self-contemplation that bore some fruit.

Rewind to this past week. As the week wore on, a strong sense of ennui began to take hold of me, probably late Thursday night. By Friday morning, as I went to work, I was really not motivated to do very much. Friday was molasses spilling out of a jar onto a counter top – slow, messy, and frustrating. I left a bit early, hoping that a early jump into the weekend would help, but there was not much I could think of to do, no movie to see, no activity that sprang to mind, so I ended up at home with more time to pass and a critical mass of boredom pooling inevitably like dust bunnies under my bed.

The boredom and lack of things to do is in part because I am saving hard for a couple of trips (Tuscany and the Caribbean) that are coming up in November, which I am very excited about. However, being a very active puppy, and I get bored out of my skull when I am at home without much to do. My partner doesn’t live with me, and the house is rather lonely place to be. It being a mess does not help, but I couldn’t even seem to get motivated to do even tackle that. Instead, I slept early on Friday, and slept till past 13:00 on Saturday. I didn’t go out at all, even though it was clearly a gorgeous day out. Even working on my pictures, one of my main hobbies and one that is a good standby for when I am bored, seemed a futile.

For the few hours that I was up on Saturday, I did my default activity, surfing the Internet hoping to be entertained. I went through Digg, Woot, CNN, NYTimes, Cynical-C, Kircher Society, Pruned, YouTube and a number of other good standbys that I check in often. None seemed to do very much for me this weekend. I browsed my Flickr site repeatedly as if some magical flood of comments would appear to validate my work. Of course, none was there, and I ended up just exploring Flickr, and after a good deal of browsing came across the picture above and from there hoped into the pictures of Mike Grauer, one of the bears in the picture.

His pictures are of his home, himself, and his flowers. Many of them are good, but it really wasn’t the quality of the photos that really struck me, but rather his commentary and subject. Flickr opened up a voyeuristic window on Mr. Grauer’s life for me, and Mr. Grauer very openly supplied the details in his comments – for example, the myriad pictures of flowers shared his love of gardening. Two photosets in particular, one called 30 Secrets and the other called 365, were very personal in nature and Mr. Grauer really offers himself to the world in an unvarnished “This is who I am” way that I would find very difficult to do. I very much admired this approach. The comments to these photos and the links to other bear community photos made me think of belonging and community, both things that I desire in my life. Also while some of the pictures and narrative was sad, overall, I very much got a positive feeling from his pictures – that although he had gone through hardships and shared them, he survived and overall seemed to be living a happy and satisfied life pursuing things he enjoyed.

So the picture, photostream and ennui combined into a good deal of self-contemplation. At the end, I realized I wanted to share more of myself, and to it do as Mr. Grauer did – unapologetically and unvarnished. I think this blog, is a good place to start. I am not sure I am ready to share it too openly with the world just yet, but it will be here and hopefully grow even as I grow more comfortable being who I am, and hopefully find belonging and a community that I can really feel as my own.

I am not planning this blog to be the open heart diary type of blog. Perhaps, as I grow into this and grow more comfortable about talking about myself, the posts may become more “revealing” of my inner self, but to me I’d just like to start sharing thoughts and some history in a safe place where I can be me.

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A music video to go with this post...


Madonna, Hey You