Another End, But This One Has A Heartbeat

idiedatbirth/blog

I'm spending $100s a year on this website

so

it's time to start making it worth something.

There will be an interruption in broadcasting on this station.

www.idiedatbirth.com

18

 

I meant to write this 10 days ago, but life is still happening. My goal at the skidding end of last year was to make this place more interactive, which means posting here more instead of the blog, so this is me attempting that. I still don't really like this blog format, but I suppose I'll get used to it.

I got a lot accomplished last year, somehow. I feel like I didn't have time to do anything. Every year I do this obligatory New Years post, and I don't really remember if they're optimistic or not. Knowing myself, I imagine they're not, or at least that Zen optimism, in which everything will turn out exactly like it is supposed to.

That has always felt like: this isn't what I want, but it's good enough, so I'll deal with it, but that was never how I meant it. This is what I want, in that I am grateful for this, and don't wish I was doing anything other that this, but this is often difficult to deal with, as is... not this, so why not just appreciate this? I think the term "making the most of what you have" is also misinterpreted a lot, probably because it is usually attached to "what I can afford" and is in reference to what I haven't accomplished with my life; maybe I should change that to appreciating and cherishing what I am lucky enough to have? That's how I feel. Why can't I write that better? I love my wife and kids; they are my life; and if I were to take on the cliché New Year's resolution, it would be to appreciate them more, or at least make sure that they know I do.

We were in bed by like 9 on New Years Eve, so we celebrated on 1/1/19 with some champagne and a cigar we got at the wedding, and some Martinelli's for the kids, which Ero didn't seem to like at all. So here's to another new trip around the sun. This next year is already looking pretty promising, and if it doesn't happen like I'd like it to, I will always have my girls.

The Creative Madness Cycle

 I haven't written a word in this blog since before my daughter was born. It feels like it has been way longer than a couple years, but a couple silent years are pretty significant. Obviously, I've been picking away at lAvaNyamaya, but using this as a kind of behind the scenes blog and that as a life blog, while adding additional professional platforms on FB and IG, was a bit overwhelming.

While I have spent a significant amount of time redoing this website, I am still a little unsure about where I'm going with this. I am still not a photographer, nor a writer, but I continue to search for my voice. All I ever wanted was to create a community of creatives with a common desire, but this site never evolved into that, and let's be honest, my "community" doesn't necessarily understand what I'm doing, but I am learning to articulate my philosophy better, though it still has a ways to evolve.

I have clearly been shooting and writing this whole time, and I imagine that this drive won't be going anywhere anytime soon, and I have some projects in the works, which only require time, money, and willing participants... all things super easy to find... *deadpan face*

Right now I'm just trying to be a good father and husband, while doing my best to brew beer, with a little bit of creativity in there somewhere. I am racking my brain to make the most of this site, though, because this expense in relation to what I'm using it for no longer makes any sense to me, while I religiously use the sites that cost me nothing and get me pats on the head.

It would be futile to attempt to catch anyone up on what's happened in the last two years; a lot has happened; there were children born, and a wedding, and our home almost burning down, et bloody cetera; but what has changed the most, which might be hard to wrap your head around reading this blog post, is my attitude... maybe.

What hasn't changed is our family vacations somehow including my creative madness. This was a Christmas trip to AZ this week. These beautiful women in my life sure deal with a lot of crap, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to keep shooting them.

Just let me evolve.

...Waaay Out In the Water, See It Swimming

Most of my work from this last year is sitting in a hard drive, unreviewed.  This time of year is always difficult to get through, partially because the holidays make me want to firmly place an ice pick in my brain, but mainly because I am forced to go back through another lost year and review what I accomplished, and, while we (not the royal) did accomplish a lot this year, I spent most of it wondering what the fuck I was doing, and flailing about like an angry child.  Now that I've really understood that I've spent my entire life apologizing for existing, I'm beginning to understand that the wall I hit earlier this year was less about where I'm going, and more about who I am.  I've always felt like an impostor.  Everything I was always praised for were simple things for me, and I knew that I could really be amazing at things if I tried harder, but I never reached that point, always seemingly waiting for the right time or opportunity.  Now I'm just an old face that used to be good at things, like the trailer-trash, 40-something cousin who still tells stories about being the quarterback in high school.

...Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it.
And you'll ask yourself...


....... why am I hugging a tumbleweed?

The Pros and Cons of Being

 We met some great people on this last adventure, and I'm glad we met them; I hope we remain friends; but I felt so incredibly out of place, and walked away feeling ashamed of myself for how I see the world.  Clearly, what I have to say and how I feel doesn't matter, in that it isn't changing anything.  I've been repeating myself long enough to finally be convinced that there is something wrong with me.  Call it what you want; dig up some elusive psychological dysfunction; I must simply be a little bit retarded, and I have to come to terms with that at some point.

 I recently started a new project with one brave soul, and was completely excited about it until I really watched the footage.  What was supposed to be a project about a "normal" person's experience with the vulnerability of being naked, turned into me going on a on about me, and what I'm doing.  I've been doing this for twenty-five years, and I'm still defending myself; I'm still trying to convince people that I'm not doing what they assume I'm doing... which was what I did for over a decade of said time by complete accident... and I have come to terms with the fact that no one will ever understand that I ignorantly didn't know any better.
I'm forty-one years old, doing what I love (time and finances permitting), and investing most of my time and energy into making excuses for something that I have been obsessed with since I was a child; I've spent most my life making excuses for existing... and like five people get it..... so what the fuck am I doing?  I really never felt like I was good enough.  I always put unrealistic expectation on myself that I could never live up to; not this guy in this world.  More importantly, I have always demanded that people understand things that I clearly don't.  How do I expect anyone to just be, with someone who spends so much time apologizing for being?  At some point I imagine I will have to stop apologizing for being me, but this has been a depressing couple weeks for this stupid guy in this stupid world.  Everyone is free to not understand what I'm talking about, including me, and I am also free to keep going.  I still don't want to conform to your spoon fed ideal, but I'm tired of feeling doomed to fail, while worrying about paying bills.  I've been approaching a cross-road for the better part of this year, staring blankly in the mirror, obsessively checking on likes and followers like a child searching for approval from his parents.

Spinning Plates

 Somewhere between a combat ceremony and Rohatsu Sesshin...

I am flailing at finding a balance between being a bad father, a husband that can do better, a horrible friend, an adequate brewer, and a mediocre creative.


This place... *blank twitch*


Breathe *chokes on coffee*

11/11/2018(11)

 Going on four years since that fateful message asking me if I would be interested in shooting her because she had some "self" to figure out and love, having no idea that I grow on people like a fungus, we have found ourselves with a family, living a life together, and, surprisingly, she isn't as sick of looking at my dopey old face as I am.  I have referred to her as my wife for years, because we're doing this, so most assumed that it was so, but it wasn't, and now it is... or is it?

Either way, I am strangely happy.

 We wanted to have a simple little ceremony at Yokoji, with just Tenshin Roshi and the kids, but that gradually evolved into close family that made the journey, which was exactly what it was supposed to be.  I've been into my history with this place, but while I was at home reading about Zen, she was actually going there.  I doubt that I would have ever checked this beautiful place out without her to hide behind, and quickly felt like part of the family, until I had to wander back off into the world to carry water and chop wood for my own family.

We all got sick the week before the wedding, and I was naturally the last to feel it, so by the time family started to show up from out of town, I was curled up in the corner.  We managed to level off before the ceremony, and everything went beautifully.  It was wonderful to meet family that I have heard so much about, but a definite highlight was that my first born daughter, who has been noticeably absent in recent years, made it up, which really made me feel this second chance that I am blessed with.

 I have written about that often, but I am finally really starting to feel it.  My first two marriages were complete opposites, and both maliciously destroyed by me, but I needed them to become who I am.  What really weighed heavy on my heart these last twenty years was the kids I left behind with the first marriage.  While they have been thoroughly taken care of, I wasn't there, other than to pop in and take them to a movie every now and then, par to their mother's wishes.  Then when I was banished to the desert it was reduced to holidays, and the birthday/Father's Day calls stopped.  Since I have settled in to this beautiful new family, we have tried to bring my older kids back into our lives, but haven't been successful.  I still have no way to contact my daughter, and my son is nowhere to be found.  In the mean time, we have so much to be grateful for, and still have a lot of each other to figure out.  My first two marriages were fizzling out by three years, but we didn't start in the chemically induced blindness of standard societal relationships; we fought to build this family, and will keep fighting, whether a piece of paper says we are or not.

This is still sinking in for me, and we are both recovering from the weekend.  We had our reception at my work, where I brewed a bride ale with manzanita berries that turned out to be a pretty good beer, that the "religious" family didn't drink.  Though, despite their religious differences, they all enjoyed the ceremony, except for my mom, who used our fidgety youngest to leave the Buddha Hall and narrowly escape bursting into flames.  I will have much more to say about this, but as for now, we are just tired, and the world is up one Ellirand(Borntrager)..... and my head is cold.