on the double meaning of my pedestrian lifestyle...

Tonight I am doing what I do best... which of course consists of a lot of sitting and procrastinating on the computer. I did come home with full intentions to start/continue my packing, but I was delayed by several things which have led to my current position in the living room in front of the soft manufactured breeze of an oscillating fan. It's quite nice, I highly recommend it. My breeze therapy has allowed me to finish reading "Boy - Tales of Childhood" by Roald Dahl, which I started reading this morning during my break at work. This book, in addition to my dinnertime reading of the current issue of Beautiful Itineraries (formerly Bella Italia) magazine and my recent return from Vancouver has left me feeling rather dull and ordinary. My biography is rather plain. Although I am excited by my upcoming move, I must admit that I am a little unimpressed with the city that I am moving to. Spending a week in beautiful Vancouver has only highlighted all the things that Edmonton does not have. However, I know it is not wise to approach transition to a new place in a negative way. This move will be good for me, and Vancouver can always be visited or moved to in the future when I can actually afford it.

This move marks not only a change of location, but hopefully the opportunity to pursue photography in a more serious manner in addition to the token additional schooling so that I can sustain my vital signs when I do not have clients banging on my door. The pursuit of a more career path that is fueled by more creativity than defined schedule and salary is a difficult one, but one that I am sure will have it's own rewards... like that certain kind of stylish poverty that we all strive for.

The last section of Dahl's book contained an interesting musing about the differences between his early career working for Shell and his later career writing fiction. Considering my hope to find more photographic work, I found the situation he described oddly comforting.

I enjoyed it, I really did. I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do. The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. the writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

--
from Boy - Tales of Childhood
Copywright © 1984 by Roald Dahl

Considering my age (although I'm not old) I have worked in a fair number of jobs, all with varying levels of responsibility and freedom. I must admit that the jobs I've enjoyed the most were the positions that granted me the greatest amount of freedom, creative or otherwise. It's quite difficult for me to work in positions where I feel stifled by bureacracy or limited by the focus of an organization. I have a bit of entrepreneurial spirit in me, although I will admit that I am the type of entrepreneur that needs a business manager because I am rather terrible at that end of things. I'd like to be able to achieve my goal of one day being able to set up a photography studio... and take portraits for a living. Photography has become more than just a hobby for me. Although I took lots of photos will I was in Vancouver, I never felt satisfied. I wanted a bit more control over time... my photos always felt a little rushed.

It seems odd... in this post I started out by complaining that my life was too dull, but now I'm wishing that moments of it could be slowed down a little. But what can I say, I'm a complex individual (and perhaps I'm also a bit of an individual with a complex).