tumblring around, down the hill…
i’m really intrigued by the popularity of tumblr and i want to participate, well i do participate. i look at what 72 other people put on their tumblr walls and like a lot of it. i don’t like it all because some of the stuff that people post i’m embarrassed to i admit liking – but tumblr is weird. it doesn’t really encourage back and forth communication. you can say that you “like” something that someone posts or you can “reblog” something that someone posts but the way the layout is set up it’s really hard to comment about what something that someone posts makes you think. i don’t like that. it makes it like a simple voting popularity contest. and the other thing that i don’t like is that its very confusing to me about where people get the content that they post on their tumblrs. a lot of the material they post is copywritten (celebrity photographs in particular). i know that they can post a direct link to where they find their material but most times i’m too lazy to follow links back. tumblr encourages you to just have an eye feast and not think or read. that is one thing that makes tumblr weird for blogging. it’s no longer about writing or genuine self expression. it’s about copying and pasting. it’s also about being the coolest kid that finds the coolest things to copy/share. and it’s just another freaking time suck. so in some ways i’m glad for my current frustration over learning how to use it and also that i have zero feedback on the things that i post. like i said, i follow 72 people. 17 people follow me. who they are or why they chose to follow me i do not know. but none of them click on the “like” or “reblog” button on anything that i post. and i’ve posted about 50% original material (my own photographs). the rest is reblogging other tumblrs or links or quotations or songs or videos. it’s lame. i really kind of hate it, but like i said, it’s a new internet drug and all the cool kids are doing it.
i need to quit it just like i quit facebook. unless i can find a way to make it work to popularize my own photography. make it strictly a photoblog of just my own work. like, post one photograph a day with a story about the photograph. THAT might work.
if you by chance wanted to look at my tumblr, it’s here:
other things going on… the trip to Chicago is nigh approaching. the work i’ll be doing on this trip has the potential to be quite a bit more creatively focused than any previous work i’ve been doing. i have this new idea of writing short story books to go with the photos. i’m not sure exactly how these might materialize. maybe as a graphic novel sort of thing. depending on how much text there is to go with the amount of photos i want/need to put into a book… i don’t know. just developing the idea now but with Blurb publishing it could be a not too expensive sell, if the books are smaller format and layout is used to maximum effect to cram as many pages for the dollar into a book.
i still feel fine about not going the way of major publishers. the time and effort and gamble it is to get published does not seem worth the trouble to me. i’d rather just get things completed and into the hands of a few trusted people so that they can spread my legacy after i’m gone.
OH! i had a dream the other morning in which i saw my own face, in a mirror, as an older man. the impression i got was that i was probably about 70 years old from the look of the wrinkles on my face. 70 is not that long from now really, but it was a good look on me. i actually looked more like what i think my own dad would have looked like when he was 70 years old than myself but it was definitely me in the dream. why it makes me feel good is because it felt like a portent, that maybe it was a preview of me actually living that long.
other things in the dream; my son was still absent from my life and i was in a meeting place with other people. the feeling that Billy had not been around, still, or for a very long time, was saddening but it felt like something that i still had no control or power to affect in that life. that i was in meeting of some sort; at a church or in a classroom felt good because i still had some ability to socialize intact in my kitbag.
the 70 year old face that i had looked sun and wind worn, as if i had been living in a place with weather and i had been out in it. a different existence than i have now. so maybe it could be a portent that change is in store for me. i don’t think i could go back and live in Ireland. just because Billy is there is not enough for me. his family there is not my family and i would be very prone to isolation. no, i really do not know where i would go to live if i could go anywhere. i’ve said Santa Cruz, up north to Portland or Vancouver, Paris & London, Los Angeles… those are all old dreams which fade more and more from my grasp of having a realistic hope of ever making come true.
haha, that meeting place where i was 70 years old at could also have been a mental hospital or prison.
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