I have been mulling over a few decisions the last few days. The biggest one is about what role social media plays in my art. I love to share my art and the stuff I find on line, but sometimes ALL the STUFF available is just, too much.

I made the decision to get rid of pinterest and Tumblr today. I started Tumblr to share rants and info that didn’t fit with my regular blog. Before too long I was simply sharing stuff to Tumblr for the hell of it. As for Pinterest, I never really took to it. I also found a ton of unattributed art on both sites. A terrible thing I noticed on Tumblr was that many many images were not being shared with attribution. I found that an art journal image of mine was shared without attribution. Aggravating but also not in keeping with my CC attribution request.

I find that Tumblr is a really nice blogging platform but since I use Typepad to good result I don’t see the point of using Tumblr.

So I deleted my accounts, as of yesterday they are gone. I expected to feel, I don’t know sad about it, but I don’t. I don’t regret it and I’m ready to focus my attention back to the social media that matters to me: my blog. I will keep some sort of presence on Facebook and Twitter but I see those as downtime distractions, for moments where I need to unwind and not think. Maybe laugh and chat with friends.

I started this process months ago when I started to delete twitter accounts that were aggravating to me. There were some tweets that seemed like a rock in my shoe, not really painful or irksome initially but after a few dozen steps were leaving an irritating blister. So I cut them out. I suddenly found that twitter became a more positive experience. I then turned around and did the same on Facebook. Again, it was more positive. I had a group of likeminded, and similarly humored people interacting with me. It was great. At the time this process started I was reading some Audrey Lourde, and there is a quote that I found particularly arresting at this time, “This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns.” I had a personal epiphany while reading some of her essays and my behavior which I won’t bother to share here as it’s not relevant to what I’m writing. The point is that sometimes when I make a decision I can’t be overly concerned with how others feel about it.

I know that some people will be disappointed in my backing away from FB and Twitter and I do feel bad about that, but again it must be done. I will be participating but simply not as much.

I am planning on moving a great deal of my social media time over to G+. I like the format and the amount of learning taht has been going on over there. IF you are interested in joining G+ follow this link and add me I'm here.

There is some sort of lesson in all of this. I'm not sure what it is, but I suppose that's part of the journey isn't it?

This little guy was exhausted and on the sidewalk next to work. He's still got his egg tooth and his shell was soft. Most likely he was within a day or 2 old. In the cold pouring ran he had turtled up and I picked him up and took him to the swamp, snapped his picture and placed him on a gentle slope in leaf litter. I like turtles with their prehistoric looking faces, hard shells and deceptively slow movement.

No walk today, just a few picture from over the weekend.

I took my walk last night wandering the city with my camera looking for something of interest to photograph, but I added to it a challenge. I bought some adapters for macro and zoom images. I used them first a month or two ago when I first got them and wanted to throw them across the room in frustration. Really frustrating.

Anyway, it was my challenge for the night. I took a lot of crappy pictures and totally annoyed Christie with my constant stopping. I deleted most of the crappy pictures. But here are a  few that I liked.

Yesterday I went to my favorite beach for a morning walk, because I do that kind of stuff now; I walk in the morning before work. Just thinking of the idea of it makes my head hurt. I park my car, get out my camera, and start walking.

Then I hear them, 3 loud obnoxious trophy wives who are also walking on the beach with their 3 loud obnoxious expensive small trophy dogs. The miniature poodle and the jack russell were playing, ie attempting to dominate one another, loudly; while the corgi simply looked distressed and kept walking away from the hot mess, which incidentally is what the corgi's owner was doing as well, clearly they were both dragged along to an outting that was supposed to be fun but ended up in one dog/trophy wife attempting to dominate the whole group.

Meanwhile I'm not headed anywhere onto the beach because none of the dogs are on a leash and only one of the women is making any sort of attempt to control her dogs; except the corgi's owner who's appeared to be containing herself but heeled on command.

It's 5:30am and the loudest of the group has a Starbuck's cup. Now I know for a fact that only one of the starbuck's in Beverly open before 5:30am and it's not the one on this side of town so, either this woman is traveling to the ghetto for her coffee, or is washing and reusing her cups OR she's sipping cold coffee from the day before. Since she's on foot I seriously doubt that she travelled to my hood before going to the beach. I'm not judging either way, but how about she get a reusable mug?

The whole scene made me grumpy. I wanted to take some sun rising pictures of the far end of the beach up close. Instead I had to listen to loud talking woman with her mystery coffee, who became louder when the group saw me, and their obnoxious dogs barking.

Anyway. The whole thing made me feel like this:

The dog has taken to walking up 2 or 3 stairs, milling about there in a confused fashion until I get up and turn lights on so she can get down… She starts this process around 3am. This does not excite me and I'm sure she doesn't understand why I'm more grumpy than usual when I first wake up.* If not for the fact that I went to bed early last night I might be wearing new fuzzy slippers. Somehow this dog does not want me to get more than 6 hours of sleep on a week day.

Enough griping about my dog. Last night I went for a walk. Afte the wind and rain of the weekend it was gloriously sunny and perfect weather, not too hot and not too cool. Perfect. Which is also a sign that fall is near and I'll be wearing a parka before too long. Sigh.

Continue reading →

On the weekend I like to get up early and walk around town. The streets are quiet and it's me, my camera and maybe one or 2 other people; usually joggers. I've also taken to walking after work if I'm not dead tired. One of these days I'm going to go for an evening stroll and get some shots of the really cool old signs. On my list of places to get a picture of is a cool old neon sign  that is a giant cactus. That will require a drive.

Some pictures from the nice side of town and one from my 'hood.

Part of the reason I've been walking so much is pure enjoyment and secondary is getting to know my camera. I used to ride my bike for exercise and just the pure enjoyment of the ride. Now I need a reason to walk, and luckily my camera has given me a reason.

Normally when  hurricane/tropical storm runs through New England I'm in the area that gets whalloped. This time the storm went further inland and we simply got a bunch of rain and wind. The worst I was worried about was losing some of my pears due to high winds, and I did lose a few, but not many.

The western part of the state and other areas did not fair so well. We're texting and checking on FaceBook to check in with family members and friends in other locations.

We were lucky.