I don't want to go back to Napa, been to Napa, but there are people there I've worked with in the past who can be helpful in showing me what might be possible out there on the market. My thought was Mendocino or some county farther north, but that's probably me just looking backward to the past. Or upward, geographically. Hard to know. I'd like to get out of the bay area, I say, been here a long time. I'd still like to live in an urban area for the photographs, I'm into people and not into scenery, but that's another "what do I really know deep down about it" thought.

I'm thinking if I'm starting over, why live in a place with impossible commutes and million dollar in need of a paint job houses? I'll find a way to a short commute, I always do, but I'd like to own something, a mobile home with a DSL connection would be fine. Excellent opportunity to create my first trailer trash anthology, "aluminum under the sun". Some artists have "blue periods". I'll have my "trailer trash" period.

With all this carping I should be sitting here making some of those preparations I've been talking about instead of writing and scanning pictures. They want us to get our MCSE's or something very much like them at the company and I, of course, have said yes, "what a wonderful idea", I'll go out and do that, but inside I'm saying dear god learn more web stuff and photography stuff and the hell with an MCSE. Take the Active Directory course, if you have to, so you can understand how the company network works, but do this for survival rather than enlightenment, and otherwise go full bore for what you like. Cause if you won't, nobody else will. And it will work out. Really.

So, of course, I'll sit here right now and write and scan photographs. I got the black and white contact sheets back today from the Oakland 150 Year Anniversary thing Saturday and I've been thinking semi-dark thoughts about exposure settings and changes I need to make the next time I go out under a bright sun. I have this laid back attitude toward my photographs. I haven't made any progress on the technical side, making the exposures, for example, more consistent, but I've been going through this little dance, circling around my subjects looking for a handle on what it is I'm after, grasping at a glimpse of whatever vision is flitting around out there just outside the light.

Don't laugh. Nailing the technical side is a matter of discipline and effort, best done right off the bat, but less so of talent. Getting the fucking picture is the secret and at my age I'm lucky to still even half understand the concept. Something is happening and this is good, it's just it's taking time, probably the rest of my life.