It's been a dark and stormy month

I don't really like to read other people's blog entries about why they haven't been posting lately, and I never thought I'd write one myself, but ...

The light has been terrible lately. Overcast, rainy, grey, flat, boring, icky. And so I haven't been much inspired to take a lot of photographs. Although I will say that some of the pictures from my recent mini-vacation in New Hampshire were taken in the rain and fog and they came out OK. These two, for example:

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But once I got home from my trip I got busy with work (actual work plus some office drama that I don't think I'll go into here) and busy with life and busy finishing up my mom's blog and I just didn't get around to posting much here. And the light really has sucked.

And why has the sucky light affected my posting here? Well, the connection is that when I'm not taking photographs I like to look at photographs. And so I've been looking at a lot of pictures on Flickr lately. And the other thing is that I tend to get obsessed with new things. And I really have become obsessed with Flickr.

I mean really obsessed.

Since I've the last time I posted to Gienna Writes, I've submitted a few pictures to the deleteme! group, and even got one picture voted into the group's safe. It's this one:



Of course, right around the time that my pic got posted to the Safe, everyone started complaining that the quality of the photos in the safe had really gone downhill.

The rest of the pics I submitted to the group for critique went down in flames, and deservedly so:





(click on any of the pics in this post for the larger version.)

So that was fun, but I also realized that I have a lot more to learn about photography and that I do want to try and improve. Hence, the looking at other people's photos thing. Because in my mind that's one of the best ways to learn.

And, holy crap, there are some really excellent photographs on Flickr. I made these mosaics from my "favorites"pages. I could stare at these things all day (and sometimes I do):







(Clicking on any of these images will take you to a page with links for each beautiful photograph. Also, there is a row missing in the last image ... you can see the missing pics here. Also, for photos I've added since I made these tiles, click here. That'll keep you busy for an hour or three.)

So, that's what I've been doing online lately.

I've been keeping a journal for just about as long as I can remember. I have stacks and stacks of them in a drawer in my office. But my enthusiasm for journaling and the urge to write comes and goes. Sometimes I'm really motivated to write every little thing that happens. Sometimes I go for long stretches where I don't write anything at all. During the years that I was married, for example, I barely even filled a few pages of one notebook. (Being miserable tends to dampen the creative urge and the drive towards self-reflection.)

Since I've been keeping my journal online, I've been much more faithful about adding to it. I think that's because it's so accessible (so long as there's a computer around) and because I find typing easier and faster than writing longhand. There's something about the fact that other people can read it that adds an interesting element to the mix, too. I mostly write this for myself, but the fact that it is public adds a little drama, I guess. And I love drama.

Anyway, this is a really roundabout way of saying that while I've been obsessing about photography lately I've also been missing the writing and think I'm ready to get back to it again.

And, just in time, too, because November is coming and you know what that means, right? Yup, it's time for National Novel Writing Month (affectionately known as NaNoWriMo) again.

Now, I can tell you right now that with my new work schedule there is no way on god's green earth that I'll be able to write a 40,000-word novel in 30 days. But I was thinking that it would be a good time to get back into "Gienna Writes" and that I might try to do some short stories or crappy poems throughout the month of November.

So I've written it down, which is the first step to getting something done. The next step, I guess, is doing it.

I'll be back ... I'm just going to check in on my Flickr mail ...