I’ve been thinking a lot about compost recently. Compost as in actual compost, because I’m giving gardening a go, but also compost in the sense that I am a person growing in the compost of all the years I’ve lived through so far. I have also been beating myself up about spending money on things I am interested in for like two weeks and then dropping it for something else. But recently I picked up this old plastic Lomography film camera that I bought off one of Kyle’s old staff almost ten years ago for like $150. It came with a whole bunch of different lenses and colour changey things and a proper camera bag but I have no idea where any of that stuff is now. But I still have the camera, and it turns out it still works (see above and below).
I gave up on using this camera for such a long time for a bunch of reasons; the first time I took in a roll of film to get developed, it cost me $50. The second lot of film I got turned out to be the wrong kind, and the third came up completely blank. But now I live down the road from a much cheaper film place, who only charge for development if you roll comes up blank, and I can go in there and ask the nice staff about the film I need. There were a lot of duds in this first new roll I got developed, but the good ones look pretty damn good. I'm thinking I might like to use photos like this on a new twine game. And so now I’m like, hey, I’m really glad I didn’t give this thing to an op shop during one of the times we moved house. And I know that it’s probably not healthy to hold onto everything that you own because someday it might become useful again, but I dunno. I think there’s something to be said for giving things a bit of time. And also just because you don’t master something doesn’t mean the time you spent doing it was wasted. Not only because it made you happy, but because doing it synthesised something new in you, and that new thing could one day turn out to be something quite useful.
Anyway, I guess this whole exercise got me thinking about how I have all these skills that I’ve picked up over the years, and it’s like maybe all the weird hobbies and interests I pursued for a while were like scraps going into the compost bin, to break down and help me grow into this creative person who can do quite a lot of things, actually. It’s definitely not the most efficient way to do things, but fuck it, efficiency is overrated.
This is a very roundabout way of saying that I’ve wanted to start a personal blog for a while, because I miss writing about myself and my thoughts and the things I like, and I like it more than using social media. And I haven’t until now because I didn’t want to start yet another thing I will most likely lose interest in and abandon at some point. But it’s fine, because now it feels like that in starting this website, I’m just adding another scrap to the compost bin, and the time I spend on it will start to break down into some tasty, tasty nutrients for my creative soul, and maybe even improve my writing a little bit. We’ll see, I guess.
reading
- strange little girl - jessica knight
- the loudness of unsaid things - hilde hinton (for work book club)
- closer to the metal - caleb triscari (the essay that inspired me to ditch substack and make this neocities site instead)
watching
- interview with the vampire season 1 (it's...so good)
- steven universe season 1 (round 3)
- bones and all
listening
- i get into trouble - maple glider
- all mirrors - angel olsen
- big swimmer - king hannah
playing
- stardew valley v 1.6