I am sitting at my writing desk, yep I have one of those. It looks out over my rear garden across the fence and up to the Tararua and Rimutaka mountain ranges. Bliss. The desk is Rimu, recycled from my old garage, was here when I bought the house and none of my other desks or tables feels as good. I am listening to ArrowFM, I have a radio show tonight at 5pm on Arrow, sponsored by the Tin Hut. The radio I am listening to is a Bose. Also sitting next to me is a Leica M9 with a 50mm 1.4 summilux lens, a Mont Blanc Meister Stick writing pen and the other side of me is an Apple iPhone and, of course I am writing on a 17” MacBook Pro.
What does this say about me that I didn’t know before?
Well for one, until I started writing this I did not realise how I am addicted to technology. Yep, addiction comes in many forms.
I am sitting here with a couple of grands worth of gear and asking myself “what the hell”.
Is my writing, image taking, communication skills any better for having such expensive toys? I doubt it. A pad and pencil would have my writing sound just as good or so I like to think. A small pocket sized leica would do me fine, or so I think J
All this gear is paid for so why am I questioning myself. More important is the fact that I use it all. Yep, I use it all, daily. My camera travels everywhere with me, my iPhone the same. My MacBook Pro could well replace all my other computer gear it is that powerful and so it comes to me that all the gear I need to communicate on the Internet could fit into one small shoulder bag. That is how much technology has changed. Makes me smile it does. And I get to use it.
In days gone by, in the days when I worked for a living and my work was the love of my life I was also a technical maven in making damned sure I had the very best gear on which to do the very best work. And so, today what is all this gear for. What is my motive, what has god put me here for? What does god want with me? I know god needs me, but for what?
Tell stories? I look out at my garden, at the hills that rise above me, I look at the vegetation and ask myself, I ask god . . . what sort of stories do you want me to tell? Happy, heavy, heartless?
Maybe, just maybe I already know and I have started and I now simply need to keep myself on track, doing what I am doing. I don’t have the weight of the world on my shoulders today, I have a sense of freedom, I have freedom to do whatever it is I wish to do. Excellence as a story teller. I guess that is it and exploring the web I find others who are doing their thing and their thing is pretty damned cool and yet no more and no less than I am capable of doing. And so richard me lad, Just Do It! Fuck you Nike, you were right. Just Fucking Do It Dickie! J
