technology woes

this is mostly a rant.

i will be taking my external hard drive to a computer repair shop tomorrow and while i might be jumping the gun, i fell that there is a distinct possibility that after letting it fall onto the hardwood floors in my new house and part of the casing breaking that i might be saying goodbye to all of my digital files since 2005. this is not exciting.

i feel like i am working through several stages of the grieving process and am sitting pretty at anger, with myself and with the technology. myself for being a packrat who stashed everything onto the hard drive put all the work to the back burner until it was organized. the technology for being fallible and being the third hard drive that has failed.

over the summer, i thought to myself, after being overwhelmed for far too long about the ever-growing amount of photos i’ve taken (because let’s be honest, my photos are what i’m most afraid of losing) that sat there in disarray, i thought about just trashing everything myself and, like this blog, starting from scratch with my work.

now, there’s a possibility that that might happen. and despite the anxiety that comes with the loss of possibility or memory, it’s probably okay. realistically, the only photos that would be lost are the ones taken from my cell phone (which there are quite a lot of). since 2010, i’ve kept all my memory cards so if i really wanted to, i could retrieve those. but the candid and spur of the moment photos from the last three or four years will be gone (bummer).

what i’m really trying to say is while this situation is really crummy, there’s certainly a silver lining. the universe ‘konmari’d my digital life for me. maybe it’s that the weight of a “backlog” will allow me to move forward and produce new and post more presently relevant things.

i guess we’ll see.

photograms

well, we’ve reached the part of the year where it’s so cold that all i want to do is sit in bed. for a good portion of the day i did that – however, i was not unproductive. i used my time to do some inspirational research for visiting the darkroom tomorrow.

after seeing a class on photograms being offered at newspace, i thought i’d look into the process again. it was the first thing we worked on in my b&w course with nancy breslin back in 2008. this afternoon, while scouring the internet for interesting photograms, i came across a few interesting examples, artists, and a related but entirely different process.

new friend

a couple of weeks ago, i learned that holga was shutting down their factories in hong kong. in response (and a desperate move for photography motivation),  i added a new friend to my repertoire of cameras – a gently used holga 135bc.

printing

for the first time since i moved to oregon, i mixed up some cyanotype chemicals and made some prints. it’s been a while since i’ve printed and they didn’t turn out the way that i expected. i admit, i was a little distracted as i printed and most of them were underexposed, i wanted to put them online because the finished prints featured something i’ve never seen and i can’t find anything about it online.

new york city streets

honestly, i wasn’t expecting to head into nyc from my dad’s place (it’s pricy!) but when my good friend from middle school, kasumi, asked if I wanted to meet up for dinner, how could I say no?

on the road

I’m sitting pretty here on the megabus and let me tell you: it is certainly an upgrade from my old friend the Chinatown bus. double decker seating, room to breathe and to put my bags. this is living.

i’m in a strange place right now and that is being in the east coast but being used to west coast time. i spent most of today  going through stuff that i wasn’t able to take to oregon with me. all I can say is what a phenomenal time to revisit blogging. i’ll try to get photos of some of the treasures. one more day in Delaware and so much left to go through. gute nacht!

i’ve got a lot of work to do. i guess that’s what starting from scratch is. in the midst of all that, i’ve got two years of AmeriCorps that i’ve got to look back on. last night’s entry made me think that in addition to all of the art and writing i’d like to motivate myself to do and to share, this would probably be a good platform for me to get some of that reflecting out of my head and into a slightly more tangible form.

that’s all.

making friends

i made a new friend last week. we’ll call her shanna. i met shanna while volunteering at the art class held in the apartment complex she and her family live in. we made paper chains together and i was nice to her.  if i had to guess, i’d say that she is 4 or 5.