Feeding My Passion

I’ve recently been doing some things that I wanted to write about, and now that I have the PhotoJ class syllabus, I’m required to keep a blog. Now that I feel the spurs on my flanks, it’s time to write!

So to recap the last couple of months: Heart-broken and re-hired by the restaurant that fired me as the chef (after creating their menu and recipes), it was clear I wasn’t going to get enough hours at Tulips to survive while I took the last photoj class so I could  complete my photoj degree, I packed up what I wanted to keep, shipped a bunch of stuff to my parents, packed the rest into my little car, and gave away or tossed the rest. The drive from Michigan to California was very brief, about 4 1/2 days, and except for a couple of snowstorms (in Wyoming and Nevada), it was mostly uneventful.

After learning to survive, zombie-like, on less than 6 hours of sleep a night for the past couple of years while working in restaurants (from 15 hours a week up to 90 a week, no kidding), I’m actually sleeping 7-8 hours a night, feeling saner, and eating better (irony). Of course, since I moved from Michigan, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, to California, which shares that dubious distinction with Michigan, I’m not finding much work. Ok, any work. Fortunately I have an amazing and incredibly supportive family, and my parents, grandmother, and aunt’s house is large enough to accommodate me without major inconvenience.

Just to make sure, I’m smoothing over any potential problems with baking and cooking skills. My plan seems to be working out nicely.

My short-term goal is to finish my degree in photojournalism (uh, not my master’s, my bachelor’s, after having graduated high school in 1990) from the very fine University of Missouri-Columbia, the world’s first, and arguably the finest J-school in the world. I only have 1 class left, and it’s a toughie, The Picture Story & Photographic Essay. I actually started the class, lo, 11 years ago when I was still living in Columbia. But for whatever dumb reasons, let’s chalk it up to immaturity, I never finished it. I didn’t do a great job on the parts of the class I did do when I was there, and MU now has a 1-year rule about incompletes, so I’m starting over. Just as well.

One of the biggest reasons I didn’t finish was a lack of inspiration. What subjects to photograph? How to approach them? Everything’s been photographed already by every other MU photoj student who’s gone through the program over the last 60 years! Waa waa, whine whine. Solving that problem has to do with finding something I’m passionate about. And until a few years ago, I didn’t know really know what I was passionate about. Actually, it would be truer to say I wasn’t willing to follow my heart, wasn’t willing to risk loving or doing what I loved. Love is inspiring and amazing, even when you’re having your heart broken into a thousand pieces.

The most important step, and the least deliberate one, is knowing what true love is. After that, if you are willing, your feet will carry you in the right direction.

I love to teach what I love, be it cooking or computers. I’m not as patient teaching computer stuff as I am with cooking, which is probably a reflection of my less-than-unequivocal love of them. But cooking is another story. Now that I think about it. I’m probably as impatient with cooking, and what tweaks me with computers is probably falls in the same category as what bugs me about people and food: Fear of the new. I’m never going to force anyone to eat brains (not only because I don’t), and I’ll never ask someone to code in C+ (again, I don’t).

Hard to learn and harder to love when you’re afraid.