Month: June 2005

It’s comforting to have a pretty serious camera again. Since effectively giving up film photography a few years ago (first by laziness, then officially when I accidentally sprayed WD-40 instead of air into my beloved Pentax K1000), I’ve been using tiny, mediocre digital cameras that could give me halfway decent pictures (compared to what more money might have gotten me), but never the same satisfaction as I would get from a more substantial piece of equipment. Sure, a better camera lets me take better pictures (which is why I got one in the first place), but I’ve also realized that it’s a better prop, too.

By “prop,” I guess I mean “shield.” People take you more seriously as a photographer when you have a less subtle camera, and don’t give you as many funny looks as they do when you just whip out a tiny one and stare intently at its screen. Effectively, you look like you mean business, so people assume you have some business taking pictures. For a wallflower like me, that’s very, very comforting. My social skills are famously ineffective at bars, parties, and other big social functions: I’m shy, I fidget, I get self-conscious talking to people I don’t know. I mingle badly, and have never been able to master the art of standing around and sparkling. I don’t smoke or drink, so those standard props don’t work for me, either. With a camera, I have something to do that makes me feel more at ease. It gives me a way to participate that bridges the gap between my solitary and my social instincts.

Luckily, though, I learned a long time ago to see through a camera lens but not just through a camera lens. The camera may be my shield and my crutch, but I’m careful to look up and experience what goes on around me, too, using all my senses. In that way, the camera reminds me to pay attention to what’s going around me, instead of getting too wrapped up in any nonsense happening in my head. So there’s this strange relationship: it helps me hide but draws me out at the same time. Plus, I don’t have to worry about what to do with my fidgety hands, especially with a camera that’s hefty enough to require them both.

A good friend’s troubles inspired me to spend a chunk of the evening reading through old entries, especially the ones from around the time I had my spectacularly maudlin meltdown a few years ago. In a way, I was looking for a little reassurance, for some proof that the doldrums that have been dogging me for a while now aren’t so bad when you look at the big picture. Well, I suppose they’re not. It’s not very encouraging, though, to realize that I’ve slipped back into some very bad habits I thought I’d kicked. The overall dullness of my posting for so long now is really just a symptom — granted, it’s a real obvious symptom once you notice it — that I’ve gone back to pushing, pushing, pushing my feelings as far down as humanly possible, and at the very least hiding them when I can’t successfully suppress them. The way I feel it, this has led to me becoming the most boring, dispassionate me that I can ever recall being. The last few weeks of sitting around the house more than usual have reminded me how much I’ve retreated into myself over time, making a bad habit out of what once had been an emergency measure.

I am one frustrated motherfucker. I’m frustrated with myself, and with lots and lots of things about my life. I’m keenly disappointed about a few things, and mad at myself for not doing more to make them happen, or keep them from happening. For instance, I seem to have shut out most of the people who would have intentionally or accidently called my bluff. After all, if you’re trying to avoid the obvious, you probably avoid the people who know you best. Even worse, you probably don’t even notice you’re avoiding them until you realize you’ve already alienated them.

Which is stupid. And cowardly. And fucked up.

I’m not sure when a touch of reserve gave way to my being an impassive asshole. I’m sure it was just a slow accumulation of teeny decisions. Cue the development of my internal monologue: “No, I have a lot of work to do.” “No, I don’t have the energy to go out and be cheerful.” “No, I don’t wanna explain what’s on my mind.” “No, there’s so much catching up to do.” “No, I really owe them an apology more than dinner and a movie.” “No, we haven’t talked for so long that I can’t just call and pretend I haven’t been a jerk.”

Suddenly, I notice how lonely I am, and what an insensitive idiot I’ve been. But I don’t wanna face up to it, so I shove it all down a little further and move along. Of course, I definitely don’t write about anything that I ought to talk about first, so you the public get another post about TV or current events or something. Remember when I has stuff to say? I do.

So, I’m sorry. I’m sorry in a general to way to anyone who still bothers to read this nonsense, but mostly I’m sorry to a particular handful of people I love for not talking to you in a long while, or for making you think I didn’t want to talk to you. I do — desperately — but I’m pretty ashamed that I dropped the ball so often and let things deteriorate so much, especially since I want so badly to know how you’re doing. If you have any forgiveness left, I’ll try not to be such an insensitive/oversensitive jerk anymore.