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I haven’t posted much lately, partly because not much has been going on that would be interesting to write about, and partly because I’m probably going to shut the blog down and rethink it. I may not, also; I may work on something in the background and the “flip the switch” when the new project is ready. But it’ll probably change before long up in here.

First, let me just assure you that there’s nothing ominous about my silence. Life is good; I’m taking tons of pictures and learning about the craft of photography and even doing some photo work. My family is good. The spring is beautiful in Santa Fe. My old dogs are getting older, which I worry about, but it’s very good to remember to love them as much as I can as often as I can. I’m still writing, but just not posting a lot of stuff to this dumb quasi-diary. No crazy car accidents. It remains incredibly good to not be playing music, it’s still one of the kindest things I’ve ever done for myself, and I’ve even started selling instruments. I’m cooking all the time, and I’m trying to figure out how to best combine my interest in Southeast Asian food with my interest in outdoor cooking now that the weather’s nicer. Whatever. I’m having fun and most of my online silence is me living away from the computer. A good thing.

The other component of my online silence is that I’ve basically lost interest in the “unfocused blog” idea, and I’m exploring ideas about doing something that’s a little more pointed. Now that I have some very nice and “realer” outlets for the parts of me that used to cling to music, an “unfocused blog” is just not enough to scratch any real creative itch. Part of me craves a different or at least more specific challenge. When I’m “between outlets,” then this rambling, unedited and unfocused writing outlet is better than nothing, but “better than nothing” isn’t a gap I need to fill right now. Photography provides me with a lot of the challenges that attracted me to music. And, even more importantly, I haven’t learned enough about it that I’ve stopped enjoying it. 

So, on the very unlikely chance that someone’s actually reading this – if I shut this down, I’ll be back. Some ideas I’m juggling:

• I’m more likely to craft a “real” photography website before I get back into any blogging. It’ll be a nice challenge, and Buddha knows that nobody’s going to do it for me.
• I’m already offering my help to some people with projects that I believe in, including a little charity in New York that provides birthday cakes for kids when their families can’t afford it and a permaculture landscape design startup in Santa Fe. So while it may seem outwardly unimpressive for me to just do the work my 2-3 full time jobs and family life require, I’ve got other stuff going on. Always.
• I’m thinking about starting up another little company of my own, or at least blogging about something that might generate some kind of audience. If I can craft an idea that represents an attractive-sounding challenge for me, I’ll give it a try. I’ve got the energy for a startup but haven’t convinced myself of the right idea yet.
• I’m going to put together at least one, probably two, photo books in a small run for friends and family now that they’re so easy to create and so affordable. (And on-demand is cool! I don’t have to print 500 of them and wonder what to do with 499, I can create 5 and if someone else wants one, turn that into 6 without breaking the bank.) It’s not because I think I’ve arrived at some epic level of achievement, but rather because I’m excited about what I’m doing and want to share my excitement with people I care about.
• I’m getting into printing photos a little more; this is weird for me, a departure from how I treated music. When I wrote my own music, I almost never recorded any of it. I liked the noncommittal aloofness of it, kind of like “there’s no way of capturing the brilliance of this concept in a recording, so I’m not even going to bother trying.” (Yeah, right!) So anyway, me actually printing photos out represents a type of commitment that I rarely exposed my music to, and it’s nice. Nice to get it out of the way, to work past it. In some weird way, it may even come full circle and help me feel differently about music one day. But for now, I don’t actually care; it’s enough for it to be what it is. And again, it’s not because I feel like I’ve “arrived,” it’s because I’m excited about what I’m doing and want to do more of it, and the best way to do more of something is by doing more of something. Sounds simple, hard to put into practice.
• I’m dabbling with a lot of learning for work and updating my skillset. Partly so I can do good work for my clients, partly to keep myself challenged, and partly because “you never know.” 
• I’m slowly – SLOWLY – scribbling out some backbone ideas for a novel. I may never put enough effort into it to finish, but it’s an enjoyable challenge and even when it leaves me frustrated, I find that it opens up creative channels I didn’t know about or had forgotten about. So even if it remains nothing but a creative exercise, I learn from it and grow.
• There are lots of even un-sexier things I need to handle, like projects around the house and taking advantage of several contiguous broken-toe-free months to get out and run again.
• Geocaching; good, dumb fun that I want to do more of in the spring. It gets us out of the house and takes us places we’d never find on our own and exposes me to odd places and things to photograph. It’s a great way of getting out of your own head and coming up with something to do that isn’t laden with expectations or burdened with familiarity. Even just hiking more has been great. I really like New Mexico. No, I love it. On one hand, it feels familiar, like home, but on the other hand, it’s still 99.9% undiscovered to me. So without any financial or spiritual or personal goal attached to it, it’s just great to get out and see and hear and smell and live the experiences that are here right in front of me.  

That’s the short list; if I sat and brainstormed for 20 minutes, I’m sure I’ve left large blocks of things out. Things that I’m planning and may never finish, things that I haven’t even planned. But I’m in an exploring mode, and trying out Stuff is what keeps me entertained these days. It’s not that I abandon everything I start, far from it. But I don’t pressure myself about it; I have so many ideas and so many areas to explore that there are bound to be some false starts. 

I’ve had people ask me what I’ve been doing since I quit playing music, and my answer comes across as sarcastic. (Imagine!) “I’m pretty busy not-playing music.” And for most people, that’s an underwhelming response; I’ve heard, “I’m not impressed,” several times recently, and in almost exactly the same way, so I noticed. But here’s the thing about it: 1) it’s true, and it’s great. Not-playing has been very good for me. 2) I don’t actually care if my life sounds impressive or not; what I was doing when I was playing wasn’t impressive either, and I’ve spent my “artistic” career choosing unimpressive paths. If I’d wanted to be impressive, I wouldn’t have stuck with piano and I wouldn’t have played jazz. (Well, that’s not strictly true, I’m stubborn. But the point is valid; it’s easier to be a rock star by playing rock music, so to speak.) If I wanted to take impressive photos, I’d forget about cliche sunsets and common birds and find some naked chicks or something. Whatever.

“I’m walking around outside” is probably not any more impressive, yet hiking and being in nature is fundamentally nourishing to me. “I grill food behind my house a lot” isn’t impressive, but I love it, I learn from it and improve, and I’m getting pretty effin’ good at it for some things. “I’m taking pictures of common birds and treacly sunsets” is probably not that impressive, but taking dumb, cliche pictures of this barren landscape has become important to me and so has my work on getting better at it. It’s probably not impressive that I live with all these big, dumb, ugly mutts that I love being around. (Who, by the way, aren’t dumb or ugly or even necessarily that big.) It’s probably not impressive that I have a charming kid or that I’ve been married for a decade and a half or that I’m learning the difference between Western and Mountain bluebirds, or that I know the difference between an ocotillo cactus and a cholla and a prickly pear. Or that I spend more time reading about comparative religion issues than most people spend watching TV. I could go on about all the unimpressive stuff that I do, but that defeats the purpose – it makes it sound like I’m trying to make it sound impressive. And I’m actually not. My point is that – impressive or not – I’m quite busy just being alive, and from where I’m sitting, that’s more than good enough. 

I know I’m getting wordy and rant-y. (Imagine!) I guess I’ve just heard, “Hmm. That’s not very impressive,” too many times recently to consider it just a joke. It’s actually kind of funny to me because I’m more content with more things in my life than perhaps ever before, but I have to admit that it still gets me thinking. I guess I’m not even sure if I wanted to set out to do something impressive what it would be and if it would be Suitably Impressive to others. And impressive compared to what? Or who? What is it that I’m being compared to? Me, 10 years ago? (I can’t imagine why.) Strangers? Which ones? Imagine my shock at realizing that I’ve never even taken the time to learn what or whose Level of Impressiveness I’ve been competing against lo these many years!

I’m actually smiling as I write all this; partly because I’m enjoying my own rambling more than I should, partly because I really, really like my life and find it very funny to get glimpses of how other people might see it, and partly because I’m catching myself in my old Suffering Artist role – like if the world was never impressed by my music, it was surely because it was so brilliant. So if I’ve now reached beyond Too-brilliant Music and actually achieved an entire life that “the world” (or 2 or 3 people in it, to be more accurate) doesn’t “get,” then Suffering Artist thinks we are most assuredly on the right path. And partly because the me that’s making fun of all this secretly still thinks this way.

It’s all pretty funny, just as it should be. But maybe I won’t stop pointless blogging after all. I’d hate to not-impress someone by giving up another pointless activity. (Heh…)