exhibitionism

I can't remember what street this was on. Could it be Kenmare Street? Spring Street? I really should start taking notes. Photo taken Apr 2008.


So, yeah.... I wasn't on Flickr after all (per previous entry). I wasn't online much for sundry reasons.

I met a hardcore amateur photographer last night at a party whose camera was large enough to launch a missile. I asked him if he was on Flickr or iStock. He said, "I'm not much of an exhibitionist. I share my photos with friends but only if it's of them." So he takes all these photos but only he sees them. That's true love. I asked myself if I could ever be that way -- that is, fully devote myself to something without any audience or target beyond one's own self-imposed benchmark(s). And it was then that I realized I just struck on a major element missing in my own endeavors all these years. It's not like I never had that mindset; it's that I've never kept to that mindset for very long.

I didn't walk away thinking, "oh, he's the real deal and I'm not." A year or so ago I would have thought that, but one advantage of aging is that you start automatically being kinder to yourself. I did think that he's got his methods of spreading the (artist) love, and I do too. Except I'm still not sure what my methods are. Even aging has not spared me from the murkiness of my ever-changing convictions.