Life Upgraded

Hello again. I have been so busy I forgot about my last post! It is now August and we owe $85,323 on the house!!! Time has still been flying by and I am happy to report that the moments of feeling like a slave to my job have subsided a lot. Acceptance is a powerful perspective.

While all of that is great, I am mainly coming by to write some other thoughts.

Lately photography has been a passion of mine. Trading hasn't interested me in anyway whatsoever, and while I still watch video game related stuff on a daily basis I have had practically zero drive to participate in them. I have in recent months been obsessively shooting with my wife on our weekends and on our vacations trips. I have watched her go from a very timid "un-beautiful" feeling woman, to a much more confident model who is proud of the way she looks thanks to her tremendous efforts at the gym, and at home with her diet. We have had some progressively great times and I feel super grateful to have captured some really nice shots. It has become something of a bonding exercise for us. Not that we aren't already very very close, but it never hurts to have something the both of us enjoy with our time together.

The main reason I am here writing these things is because I have, for the first time (that I recall), been finding my passion (and my thoughts about how to proceed with it) bringing concern in my mind over how others will react. I honestly don't remember living my life in the light of thoughts like that before, as I've mostly always just done what felt natural to do. You see, my wife's parents are religious and they've had several years of distance between them due to her last marriage and the shenanigans that went on with it due to her husbands manipulative nature and lack of being able to treat her with respect. Since our getting together they have now reunited and the doors of communication are open again. What's the potential problem with all of this?

If you know me, the obvious answer is that I don't just shoot regular portraits of my wife, but those that are erotic in nature. I have never felt negative over doing so in my life, and as time goes on and I recognize the very reasons we like these things ever more clearly, I feel progressively more passionate and connected to what is.

If I were to just keep these images to myself I likely wouldn't be writing this right now, but I find myself so appreciative of the photos I take that I intuitively feel I should share them. I liken it to a child wanting you to listen to a song or watching a video they really like. They want you to enjoy this wonderful thing with them, and at the same time, it enforces affirms their taste. I am sure on some level that is a part of it. I have no delusion that I'm a photography master, just that I like what I see and I think others would as well. Because of this I have been frequently contemplating the creation of my own website such as the current popular greats like METART, & Femjoy. After all, if I am sharing these things, I might as well monetize them if it's an option. The potential conflict in the context of everything is pretty obvious, so I'll steer clear of expounding on that. Instead, I'm happy to report that as much as my wife is grateful to have her present relationship with her family back, she is surprisingly accepting of whatever it might mean to be supportive of my photography venture. There is of course trepidation, as in her previous marriage any gateway that could be used for her ex to open the doors to infidelity certainly were, especially under the guise of "it's for you" or "it'll bring us closer together". I say this because it has been a consideration of mine to photograph other people as well, which is where things definitely have a more potentially problematic side to them.

What I have discovered over the recent months is new and interesting to me. In the past I would simply enjoy shooting whoever I was in a relationship with at the time, but now I have become kind of engrossed in shooting in general. There is something about operating the camera that I find enjoyable, so I end up pulling the trigger a lot. I guess it was how playing guitar was to me on some level. It felt good to make it function, and as a result I simply ran through scales and noodled around rather than actually playing what I would call music. While yes I have been taking photos for the last 10 years or more, I have done absolutely zero in terms of learning about how the camera I hold even works. In the last months I have spent quite some time coming to appreciate the function and science behind photography. That can and probably will be a post on it's own, but what I want to express is that I think the understanding I have come to in terms of handling the instrument, has actually caused me a desire to engage with what I understand much more. It's rather entertaining to see how some obvious principles of light and mechanical function have engrossed me.

To continue on the recent mention of shooting others, I have been happily surprised to take inventory of myself and conclude something: That I simply love looking at and photographing the female body. I always have of course, but more importantly, I see that I can accurately deduce that it's something I should love doing in no small part thanks to my DNA. The human drive is all thanks to this mesh between the hardware of the machine we live in and the programming that compels it. Religion attempts fervently to deny this reality, and thus those who operate under the programming of it, suffer greatly as they attempt to deny an even deeper programming. It is literally the program we have to thank for our very existence, the one to multiply and thusly, "survive".

My recent assessment of where I am has brought me to (for probably the first time in my life) a place where I have conviction that I could simply photograph beautiful people for the fun and money of it, and leave it at that. Even as I write this I feel the stigma surrounding it, as anyone with a right mind and understanding of what it would mean for most, would be naturally inclined against someone in a deeply committed relationship photographing other people nude. And I can easily agree with that. Without knowing the man that was proposing to engage in such a thing, I too would have my doubts. The plain and simple fact in my experience throughout life is quite bluntly that men are fucking cheaters, and that men will do anything to to follow that instinctual drive their DNA has given them. Who knows though, maybe I've simply watched too much of Dateline's "To Catch A Predator" 😂

Some of the concepts roaming my mind lately have been about our ideas of beauty and where we get these ideas of what is right or wrong. I like to play devil's advocate a lot. It's just where my mind goes frequently. I think I like to study logic, and I find it satisfying to encounter contradictions. Especially in my own thinking, as the awareness of these things often opens me up to my own bullshit so I can move past it. That is consistently the hope anyhow.

I really don't have to dive deeply into the fact that society is the creator of these standards, whatever they may be. That should be obvious enough. Instead maybe I'd like to think of the contradictions that exist because of them. For example, a thought came to my mind in where my mother in law would argue that there is no need to see naked women for "work" and that is just an excuse to see naked women. Immediately the role of a doctor helping give birth came to mind. He's viewing a woman in possibly a far more intimate setting/moment than I would be. Is he sinning? It could be argued that ultimately he is doing no wrong, for how else is a child supposed to enter the world, right? It then would all boil down to intent, and the benefits weighed out against every negative factor.

Don't get me wrong, I know from years of being devotedly blind to reason myself, that there's no convincing someone of something else if they are that committed to their current way of being. I don't intend to convince anyone, but I must admit, there is once again a certain satisfaction I receive from watching someone be presented with very solid logical arguments and conveniently ignoring them simply because... well, they're inconvenient. "People don't like having their world views fucked with" as Jed McKenna so nicely put it.

The bottom line, distilled question I truly have is: Who the hell determines what is morally right or wrong, good or bad? Just as the good doctor must bring babies into the world, perhaps I must bring these beautiful expressions into the world. And the people related to me that would argue their beauty based on their own standards... well, they can have their opinions, but this is my life and I intend to live it just the way I have been: By doing what I want.

We came out naked. It doesn't get much more obvious to me that being naked is a perfectly natural thing. We've been trying to document things we find beautiful from the moment we stuck our fingers in the sand. I am responsible for my life and my happiness. No one else. Now, I recognize that it's all a mix, and that harmony doesn't come about by living so selfishly that you inadvertently ruin your life through your choices. I am grateful to say that I have been shaping my life in a harmonious way for a last several years, and I intend to continue doing so. It's not that no one's opinion of me matters, it's that I need to know who's does, who's doesn't and live accordingly. Thankfully my wife loves that shit out of me and supports my passion for photography.

At this point I do not know if I will be photographing other people or not, but it's a beautiful thing to know that if I do, I have the support of my most cherished person. Many know the saying, that "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" and that might perfectly apply to me shooting other people nude, or in intimate situations. One thing that crossed my mind had to do with my cycle of interest with erotic images and galleries that I frequent. While of course I find these things pleasing due to genetic impulses to reproduce, I now also view them as a photographer and sewing machine jockey. I am lucky enough to count myself among one of the probably very few men in an amazing relationship, that can look at erotic content and not feel like I am lacking something in the woman I am with. I spent several years doing just that, and I'll tell you one thing I've learned over that time is that everything is always about perspective. Heaven and Hell is between the ears, truly. I have been honing (haphazardly) this one facet of life in one form or another, pretty much all of my adult life.

I have been with heavier women and been quite happy, and I've been with fit women and been pretty unhappy. It is the human tendency to compare that is the culprit. We are often comparing what we do have, to something perceived as "better" that we aspire to have, feeling the loss of it though we never had it to begin with. The trick is to compare what you do have, to having nothing at all. If you still feel unhappy then, after allowing yourself to exist in the alternate reality with sufficient focus to analyze it, then you may have something after all. Otherwise, your unhappiness is probably due to comparison in the less beneficial direction.

I am of the understanding that even though there may be no real problem with photographing other women, that the mere exposure itself could possibly cause me to lose sensitivity to my own relationship, just as perusing galleries does for pure enjoyment or trying to find cool outfits, poses, or ideas. That is yet to be known, but I think it is certainly worth keeping in mind. Too much of anything sours what makes it special. It is one of the most fundamental principles there is. In other words: Stay balanced. Even as I write this I am out of balance. With deliberate consideration and discussion, we agreed to spend $3,300 on a new camera and some high quality lenses. While it will at present put our payoff date a month out due to not putting that money towards the house, we felt it was worth having the tools necessary to produce the quality I wanted. This is definitely not an excuse, as our old Sony A55 is almost a decade old now and I have missed focus more times that not. We have upgraded to the Sony A7iii, and by doing so we have evolved into the very recent technological breakthroughs of today. We've went from a smaller 1.5 x crop sensor to a full frame 35mm sensor, and from a mere 15 focal points in the camera, to a whopping 693 focal points with the best eye auto-focus in the industry at the moment. To say the least, I have been overboard on things and have at the moment, ironically achieved burnout. 😂

It seems as time moves forward, we are certainly progressing towards some sort of more beautiful and harmonious existence. Yes, there are bumps along the way, and when they hit they suck, but we overcome them by refining whatever process we need to. We are still moving forward. And while I feel I've let myself down on some level with spending so much on a hobby, the schedule can be caught up on if I truly wanted to do it. The real question is: would it have been worth paying the house off on the arbitrary date a calculator told me I could do it, versus going the next 39 months being frustrated with my blurry photos? Probably not!

We will see what the future holds.

Closer Look at Cliché's: "Live in the Present"

There is this deep unconscious drive we all seem have, to "live correctly" and not make "mistakes". It seems to be at the center of every human being, and it makes sense. I think it is obvious that the drive of a person is to be good and do the best they can in life, (whatever that means to them) with some people being the inevitable exception of course, but the striking questions I've always instinctually had in the forefront of my mind are:

"What is best? and Why? What makes that the truth?" But I took those thoughts a step further, and rather than simply asking another for the answers, I did the work and kept trying to find the answers through my own experience.

They say you gotta live in the present moment. People implore each other by the masses. There are movements and groups dedicated to present mindedness, so much so, that being around can make you feel like they think it's some sort of sickness to consider anything outside of the current moment. 

"You mustn't do that!!!" 

I once spoke to a girl in her mid-twenties who was running her own Yoga studio. She had come to me with some inner problems she was having due to a catastrophic relationship failure that took her from total bliss to complete confusion and despair. The more I spoke to her the more clear it became that she was engaging in this Yoga discipline as a way to run away from the pain and fear that was overwhelming her. On a very real level she was in this aspect, a blind person leading the blind. I've seen this a few times in my life and it's pretty much the same template every time. 

To cut through the bullshit, here is what's really happening. People aren't trying to be present minded at all. It's not about living life to the fullest, because if it were, that fullness would include the discomfort and negativity as well. 

The real goal these people have, is to get rid of the pain of life, and they refuse to look at the fact that not only must it exist, they must go through it, and they will go through it, no matter what.  The balance of life demands it. What they really want then out of a "full life", is a life as full of as much bliss and happiness as they can extract. 

A year and a half ago, when I set out to save all this money to trade, and I worked so diligently and spent so little on things I didn't absolutely need... I was commended several times, being told that I was "working so hard". 

I would tell people, "I'm only working so hard because I'm lazy". They didn't seem to understand, but it's the same tactic that the Yoga practitioners employ and the whole present-mindedness movement: People working real hard now, so to avoid the pain later. And there is some wisdom in that... 

Problem is, they don't realize that's what they are doing. 

A part of them want's relief from the reality of life so desperately, they actually believe that their practice is going to rid them of the misery for good. And that hope is turned into belief, because the smiling faces of everyone in the group, and the confident words of the leader become their proof... But those are often fronts and lies, because the people participating feel empty and are ashamed to show the true state in which they are in. They believe that they should be happy and filled with joy, so they must portray it to others. And if there's one thing I've observed in this life, it's that people who want to believe, will believe themselves to total destruction if that's what it takes. I've seen it in others, and myself.

The laziness thing... It's sort of a paradox because one could say I'm not lazy because I'm doing the work first instead of later... and there is a validity to that I suppose. Thing is, life, and our values, are up to us to determine. We'll... we have that option, but few seem to take the time to replace force-fed values with their own personal, genuine values. Especially when it comes to clichés, and that's why I like looking at them critically. They are things most of us are familiar with, so it may be easier to understand the discussion of them. 

According to my own personal values, which I've spent many, many years of my life arriving at, I'd rather be actively lazy than passively lazy (most of the time). I wanna work hard now, because I want the option of being really lazy later if I choose to be. Is it lazier to be lazy now and do the work later? That's entirely up to you, and I think letting anyone make your mind for you about these things is potentially harmful. But since we're really talking about avoiding pain here...  

The fact is, we must face our humanity at one point or another. In my experience, delaying that tends to make the inevitable confrontation more difficult than it would initially have been. But it's usually easier said than done and I am no exception. 

Let's look at the zealous resistance of thoughts and living outside the present moment...  In other posts I've expressed that we seem to naturally polarize every detail of our existence that we can, and I think this is no exception. It's been made black or white.

Lets very simply look at the statement "Live in the present moment".

Why? 

"To live life with maximum lifeness of course! With maximum ...rightness... ??? I dunno, because someone said so?" (That's me mocking the true believer ;)

Just who is it that determined that living 100% present-minded is the absolute best thing you could do and should do? To be blunt, I don't care. I suppose another way of life: Balance and conscious choice. 

[Reminder] It's rather easy for someone like me to sound contradictory in my expressions, as I am neither for nor against absolutes, but expressing my personal values can paint a different picture if one forgets that I know I am only expressing my opinion...   [Onto the Opinion] I find it a bit ridiculous for a human to blindly accept assigned values for which they base all actions of their life upon, without examining them, yet, I consciously do some of those things myself. Yes, I consciously, blindly accept values, haha! I guess what matters in my book, is that I know I am making the sacrifice in critical thinking for certain things because the outcomes don't hold significant importance to me on those items. I think we all do this, but most only do this. 

Who is going to be President? What is happening in the middle east? What is Oil going to do? I've consciously chosen that I don't care about those outcomes, and so I'm willing to let information into my brain and let it sit there and possibly form an opinion for me, because that opinion doesn't hold much sway in the experience of my day to day life. (Yes I can hear it now, about the President thing...)

To get back on track, what does thinking about the future hurt? Fanatics will tell you it hurts your ability to live in the moment where real life and fulfillment is. I think that's horse shit. If your desire is to be happy and fulfilled, and thinking about an event in the future or past brings you that, then who's to say you're not living your life correctly or to the fullest? I get it though, half of the problem is worrying about shit that happened, or hasn't happened yet. Well here's the thing purists, we live in the real world where regret and anxiety can help us learn things and make us "Better" humans. It's really all about balance. But you probably won't know what balance is, until you decide what you really want. That's one of the key steps man... 

I imagine that the present minded movement was started by genuinely aware and intelligent beings, and like all other movements, got corrupted by people who don't understand things the way they were meant to be understood. It comes right back to "Principles vs Rules". The principle was probably "Be present minded so you're not worrying about things that you have no power to control or change" and the rule has become "You must be present minded all the time!". There's a huge difference between the two, and I think people who regurgitate present mindedness now usually have no idea what the point of it is. 

And I'd like to reiterate: Don't let the point be determined for you. If I feel like shit and I know I need a distraction from the present moment, I have no problems thinking about the past or future if that's what is going to help shift me into the state I'd rather be in. There is a balance that can be had of necessity in the negative, which is entirely different than drowning in it, or attempting to avoid it outright. But you gotta know where you want to be, and totally avoiding the negative isn't going to help you.

In the end you could look at any way of being, as a crutch. My active laziness is an attempt to avoid a certain pain. Passive laziness the same. Hell, you could even say that to strive for balance is the avoidance of pain as well, and I would have to agree with you. But in the end if it truly is unavoidable, perhaps it's best for longevity's sake to learn how to accept it and live with it. The total avoidance of it is actually the spiritual equivalent of the Chinese finger trap. And the people professing a life without it are the salesmen, trapped in it themselves. Their fulfillment comes from the money they make off of selling it, and the smiling, lying faces they force themselves to believe are genuinely happy. 

But no matter how much I say, the likelihood is that we will always have that crazy mechanism that just ceaselessly, obsessively seeks out happiness. I think a large part of that is the brains addiction to the chemicals released when we experience pleasure. We are literally, chemically addicted to pleasure, and in this age of instant gratification being the way of life, it is only natural to seek it out. 

What seems unnatural these days, is to understand ourselves, and seek out the mechanisms that drive how and why we interact with our existence the way we do. 

Thoughts on Balance

thoughts.

one human mind does not have the capacity to see from all perspectives of all situations, and so I think that is why it is important for people who desire to think critically, engage themselves in the opinions and perspectives of others. I think there is a decreasing amount of effectiveness as you gain more experience in life though. I think you may gain the ability to develop those perspectives on your own naturally through the growth and implementation of certain foundational views.

I've heard throughout my life phrases similar to "you must enjoy every second of your life as best you can, because life is short and you never know what tomorrow brings." At this very moment I find myself unsure of how much I agree or disagree with that. I have lived a life so far like many people; full of both amazing and horrible things, And in this moment all I can say is that neither one of those extremes has me feeling that if my life ended tomorrow it would have made any difference.

I'm not speaking circumstantially, as obviously each event in my life has led me to where I am and was obviously necessary. what I'm instead speaking about is the fact that when we are in pleasure, it eventually fades away, as does the pain. for me the pain or pleasure is completely gone until I for some reason think about it. And the memory of it is never nearly equal to what the actual experience was. has any of it made a giant difference? would a part of me feel incomplete for having not done any of these things? I think; not if I don't think about them. 

And that's the tricky thing about human nature, when we focus on what we don't have and want so desperately it can fill us with an agonizing pain about not having it.

when I got arrested a year and a half ago and thrown in jail for a bullshit "Crime", I wanted my freedom so bad... I swore I would never go back to a place like that. but as of today, as of this moment I have to put a real effort into it to bring myself even remotely close to that level of pain that I felt. I remember it vividly, and the lesson is still there, but the intensity is so far removed I just have to trust the intensity that instilled the lesson to begin with.  I find the same thing goes with a lot of happy moments in my life as well. and on that note I also noticed that a lot of happy moments, when thought of make me feel pretty shitty that those aren't happening right now. so what I'm getting at is that I think general human nature is to just be displeased and constantly compare and desire more than what we have. maybe not all the time, but most of the time. I've come to the strong conviction that being consumed by the present moment is the only way we really feel contentment.

obviously if my life ends tomorrow, there won't be a me to regret having done or not done anything, so that age old cliché is inherently speaking about someone who is alive. life is a paradox. In one instance we can be doing something awesome, yet feel negative during that because we are focusing on something we want and don't have. and in another instance we can be doing something we dread, but feel grateful at the same time because we're focused on how the situation could be much worse. I really have come to feel that there is no such thing as balance, but an infinite fractal of shifting forces. balance is merely a momentary snapshot in a specific point along the struggle of forces of this dynamic universe. balance with one area inherently means imbalance in others. Perhaps for every balanced thing we perceive, the force is simply going to a fulcrum which may be beyond our perception.

perhaps harmony is merely a temporary adaptation which forces those stresses onto other systems. in our human psyche, adaptation is in learning lessons through pain and pleasure. and as that balance lasts longer and longer the lessons fade and therefore we tend to automatically shift back into imbalance. Anything that is not constantly reinforcing the lesson is allowing it to recede.

I had in mind a graphic, but I am too lazy at the moment to draw it up. Imagine your typical see-saw, with the triangular fulcrum in the middle, all pointy and exact. A level see-saw indicates balance of forces on lateral sides, but all the pressure is on that tiny fulcrum. That tiny point represents a narrow range of things that bring you happiness and stability. It does not provide much room for shifting forces, but if you increase the things that you can count on for contentment, the fulcrum widens and is supports balance much easier. Instead of a triangle it starts to flatten out like a supportive square. 

On the outside, all my interests seem like they would be a wide plateau for balance to exist. Take away a few of them and I should be fine.. and in all honesty, those things have little to do with my happiness.. The issue with me, is that those things are mostly illusory in their effect of balance. What balances me are things like connection and interaction with loved ones. Discovery of people... But most of all, a sense of security in the future. A sense of freedom. If any of those things are taken away, my balance crumbles.

I guess the inspiration for this introspection in itself is because I have fallen out of harmony for the time being. I can certainly say I'm not happy with my perceptions and I don't really find solace right now in the wonderful things I have experienced in life.

I feel like maybe I can only slightly smile as the box for those things has been checked off. but once again only when I think about them.