Thursday, October 04, 2007

Internet Photography, Internet Dating, and Internet

  • Photography has, for the time being, taken over for fiction-writing in my day-to-day hobbies. It's not that I'm particularly good at it, but it's not like anybody cares, either.

    To me, good writing is something that I can forget that I wrote, look back, and laugh. If I can't make myself laugh, I really don't receive any enjoyment out of it. That's why I've pretty much stopped taking writing seriously, reducing it down to bullet-pointed items and silly vignettes about talking penises.

    Real writers workshop their writing. I don't want to do that. If somebody else gives me a suggestion, the stuff I write will become something other than mine. It will be a group effort. A collaboration. It becomes less about amusing myself and more about pleasing others, and that's not something I want to do. It may seem self-centered, but honestly who gives a crud.

    I get the same simple enjoyment out of photography as I do with writing, except I know that I'm virtually talentless in the field of photography. I own a $100 point-and-click camera. Anybody's grandmother can "become a photographer" with the same equipment these days. I feel like, with photographs, I can just take pictures that make me happy. I take pictures of Marshmallow Peeps and bizarre Mexican candies in a macrostudio that I built over the course of a weekend.

  • Internetted Dating Update: I got a message from somebody, and we chatted on AIM for a while. I looked more closely at her profile and it says she's currently in a relationship. Why would she be on a dating site (and actively seeking people by messaging them) if she were in a relationship. Ugh. Otherwise, coming up pretty much emptyhanded. I sent a few messages which either haven't been received yet or were ignored. Whee!

    At this point, I've been pretty selective with the people I message. Some shared interests are nice, and if they look like they have a sense of humor. Or, if they can support a dopey male secretary who longs to write crappy fiction. Would be a perk. But still, being single is of primary concern here, people.

1 comment:

Baron Von TrundleBed said...

I had a writing professor at West Chester that was very cautious during peer reviews. He wouldn't allow us to change word choice, sentence structure, etc. because he also believed your writing then became a collaboration. It was refreshing.

Good luck with your internet-dating venture, here's hoping you don't get too many foot-fetish messages.

Miles will be coming home today at around 4:30 for his Fall Break, we can all hang out if you still want to get together. Bingy.