it goes

The weather has improved ever so slightly here over the past week. However, the mild temperatures the hovering above freezing temperatures combined with all of the rain have reminded me (and my sinuses) that the warm weather that I've been waiting for brings with it all manner of allergies. Ah well, I'll take the nicer weather and manage the sneezing and itchiness.

As for the rest, I'm working on translating the ideas knocking around in my head onto paper, trying to make sense out of everything. I'm taking Anjali's advice to heart, watching less t.v. and spending more time doing the things that I like, things that might actually help me sort through the jumble of thoughts that race through my brain. Working on realising that little things might help improve the bigger picture is a challenge for me. I so often get frustrated by my inability to make the big changes that I want or need, and forget that, at the very least, the small things can provide some manner of comfort when everything else is so overwhelming.

In that vein, I'm working on setting some small goals and projects for myself. Ideally these things will help me focus and renew whatever creative tendencies that I have. Therein I might be able begin to see what it is that I want to be doing. There's a purely practical aspect to this as well -- the financial implications weigh heavy on my mind much of the time. What I'm beginning to see though is that the two, a rewarding career and some level of financial stability, don't have to be mutually exclusive. Yet I find it difficult to not let looming debt control my decision making process. While I have no illusions about making scads of money, enough to live a modest existence would be nice.

That being said, I'm working on establishing these projects. Over time, I want to set them out here, hoping that by exposing them I'll hold myself more accountable to actually seeing them through. One of my first goals is to really learn how to use my camera. Inspired by what I've been seeing on flickr, I get frustrated when my results don't even begin to compare. After owning the camera for just over a year, I only know what a fraction of the functions mean. Between pestering my shutterbug brother and glancing at the camera manual, I can get sometimes satisfactory, but not outstanding, results. The camera search feature on flickr shows me that my little camera is capable of so much more. It's time for me to sit down and read the camera manual, along with this book that I got last summer. I figure that if I can take better pictures, I'll be likely to take more pictures.

I also have some other ideas, but more about those at another time. More soon.