Well, I have official confirmation that at least one person has been to this website who I didn’t expressly ask to come here, so… I suppose that means it’s working as intended? Sort of? Maybe less intended to be a way for concerned friends to check on if I’m alive, but let’s not focus on my social and interpersonal failings.

But that’s not really what this update is about.

As of this past weekend, I have finally recovered about 5 years worth of photos I had previously been unable to locate. To be honest, I had thought them to be lost, so I’m relieved to find that, at least as far as I can tell now, I have my entire collection of about 35k photos all in one place.

I was also able to import about 6k photos from my cell phone dating back to around 2017 or so, so for the first time since like 2010, I actually have all of my photos accounted for.

I’ve also developed a formal catalog to sort all this stuff, as well as a folder system for organizing files for this website to hopefully keep myself a little more organized so that I can maybe make some progress on this thing.

Still to do: Sort out and remove all of my aunt’s and ex-wife’s photos (which I still apparently have from long ago having helped them transfer files between computers), then categorize what remains, and compartmentalize it all so it can be shared in some kind of coherent way.

Something I’ve been debating: What do I do about people?

I’ve got thousands of photos of other people. People I often no longer have any means of contacting. I think some of these photos are great photos, but I don’t want to risk anyone feeling as though their privacy has been invaded if they find a bunch of decades-old photos of them up on my website here.

To address this issue, I’ve devised some rules for how I want to proceed:

• No names (except for people I can still contact and confirm whether or not they mind being posted). This way, these photos will never come up from a google search of someone’s name (except mine, perhaps). The few occasions where someone sat for me as a model, I WILL be posting their name, since it was their intention to model for photography (this is like 2 or 3 people I think at most).
• Any photo posted can be removed by request of any person in the photo, or a representative of that person (just email me about it).
• Nothing exclusively unflattering (that is to say, someone might find an angle unflattering or whatever, but if a photo can ONLY make a person look bad, I won’t be posting it).

The above seem, to me, like a reasonable way to respectfully post photos without as much risk that I’ll be doing something invasive.

Is it strange that some part of me is nervous to see this all spread out in front of me? Perhaps I am afraid to confront that after all these years and all of this potential, what I have here is… all I have to show for myself. I’ve spent more time afraid of failure than in pursuit of creation.

Perhaps the natural solution to this fear is to continue to create. If I am ashamed I have not done more, the only solution is to continue doing, no?

And so, I shall. But right now, I think it is a time of gathering and preparing more than creating. I’m organizing things, trying to collect myself and everything in these spaces around me, and get everything to a point where I can take stock of what I’m doing and decide what I want to do next.

I am still working on Aspect Heroes. At present we have a dialogue written for the demo, and I’ve got about half of one character totally finished, with another two started, and two yet to begin.

The next workshop project I will work on will be mom’s unfinished stained-glass window, but before I can get to that the garage needs to be turned into workshop again, which means sorting all the unopened boxes.

And maybe around these larger projects I will carve out some time to paint something. I can kinda feel the restlessness in my hands that comes from needing to get some paint on some canvas. I also need to get some more content written for AudioExploration. I’ve got a half-written thing on Jeff Beck, and a mostly-finished Earworms article, but I haven’t set aside time to finish these. The Jeff Beck thing is at least in part because I started writing that before dad’s diagnosis and Jeff Beck being one of dad’s favorite guitarists makes it hard to come back to. But… then too, there’s all the more reason I should finish it, too.

Anyway, I’m still working on things, and still fighting with WordPress’ terrible image-hosting. Is it just me? It’s terrible, isn’t it? Maybe I’m doing something wrong. If anyone reads this and has tips on how I can “do image-hosting” better, I am all ears.

Alright, keep making stuff everyone.

Peace

Erik