…and some days, you’re just a bum.

May has been a weak writing month so far, for no discernable reason. A good chunk of the first half of the month was spent working nearly every day — good for the wallet, bad for writing. This week, however, I’m not sure if I’ll be working at all: the problem with this testing gig (other than low pay and no benefits) is that it’s as-needed, and sometimes projects simply don’t time out to give steady work. There may be a shift starting on Wednesday, but in the meantime, that means Monday and Tuesday are something of a wash. I managed to get some errands done today, and tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful and warm, so I’m hoping to go out and enjoy it.

Saturday morning, I got up and headed south to Portland, where I helped my friend Adam move one of his friends into her new place… we got back north about 4am, so a kind of long day, but it was fun and good nevertheless. It felt good to get out and doing something with other people. Timing unfortunately didn’t work out to catch up with Dan, but hopefully I’ll manage to track him down some other weekend.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading about HDR photography, and decided to experiment a bit with some of my existing work… I already take doubles and triples of a lot of my shots, so I figured it’d be reasonable to find at least a few sets that would be suitable (the best way to create an HDR image is to set your camera to do exposure bracketing, and do multiple shots at multiple exposures… 3-9 shots at different exposures should give you a nice range… tripods are practically a must). In the process or sifting around, I found my shots from spending Thanksgiving down with Claire and her family in Williamsburg, VA. I miss her like crazy.

I tend not to talk much on this blog about the personal stuff — I’ll bore you to death with mundane shit and idle references, but when it comes to personal interactions, they at most get a mention. This is entirely intentional, and has nothing to do with wanting to avoid being “emo” or any other similar poseur bullshit. It comes down to the fact that it’s personal and private. Sometimes I think I shut it down a bit too much, though, so let me open up a little bit: this past fall, I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind, and several events transpired that exacerbated it — in short, I was a trainwreck. I ended up relying heavily on Claire for support and a receptive ear, which put a lot of extra stress on her. Things started to fall apart, and ended back in January with her decision to cut off all contact. This is largely my own damned fault, and you’ll not hear me argue any different. I regret where things ended up, and daily wish there was some way to fix things. Not looking for anything, not pity nor advice, just saying it because it’s been on my mind.