Wow, I have not written in a while. But I never had any intention of stopping completely. The biggest challenge with writing is also the most fundamental part of writing: the subject. When I decided to make this blog, I didn’t want to have any kind of theme or subject or whatever idea that I had to stick to. Back when I was writing my basketball blog, finding something to write about was a bit easier. It was finding the time (and mustering up the effort) that was a pain in the ass. The frustrating part of all of this is that I really enjoy writing. It’s cathartic to be sure, but there is something else about it that, well… that I have a hard time putting into words. I’ll get back to this thought a little later.
I spend a good portion of my day on the road. My family owns a small office supply company in Florida and I’m the one who does most of our deliveries to our customers. It’s not the only hat that I wear but it’s usually the first job that I complete during my average day. Coincidentally, I had this exact same job from about 1999-2001 but I was working for different companies at that time. The point being that I’ve spent a lot of time traveling the streets of South Florida. It’s very, very, rare for me to ever reference Mapquest as I can pretty much tell you exactly where something is if you give me an address in Dade or Broward.
So as you can imagine, I’ve seen some pretty interesting shit during those many hours on the road. Some of the stuff I see may only be interesting to me but I imagine there are others intrigued by seemingly ordinary minutia. You would think that I would have realized a long time ago that I should keep a camera with me to document some of this stuff. Well, the thought has crossed my mind many times, but have I ever brought one with me? Nope. Sure, I have a camera phone but it’s not the same. I hate camera phones. I don’t subscribe to the “Its better then nothing” philosophy either. The beauty of photography is it’s timelessness and camera phones are the embodiment of not having time to do it right. Nobody would ever confuse me for a professional photographer but you don’t have to be to take a great picture. A great photographer can make a picture tell a story. But anybody can see a story and take a picture of it.
So I’ve decided I’m going to bring a camera along with me from now on. What will I take pictures of? Well, aside from the endless amounts of hilarity that the denizens of South Florida provide, I really would like to take pictures of the area itself. More specifically, the, um, buildings. No, not the architecture (not exactly anyway) but just the essence of the buildings and their surroundings themselves. I’ll explain. Recently I’ve become increasingly fascinated with commercial buildings constructed during the late 1950’s -80’s. The “Suburban Sprawl” era. (Hang in there with me) To be even more specific, I’m damn near mesmerized by buildings from that era that are either abandoned or are rapidly deteriorating. There is something haunting about these buildings that were built during an era of “optimism” and “progress” and are getting older and more obsolete by the second. I would go on and maybe even go into detail about some of these buildings and why I’m infatuated with them but that’s really what a lot of my future posts are going to be about in the not to distant future. Same goes for the other stories that I see on the road every day. In a way this is actually in keeping with the idea that I don’t want my blog to have one specific theme or subject. I will just be recording some of the things that I see in everyday life along with other thoughts and rants.
To finish up, let me get back to what I was talking about at the end of the first paragraph. The wonderful thing about writing on the internet is the permanence that it has. You’re thoughts are recorded and can’t be lost in a fire or thrown away in the trash like they could be if you were writing in a journal. The Internet can’t suffer from Alzheimer’s or get amnesia. Yes, a website can get deleted but in theory your work can survive indefinitely. Once something is on the web, it’s very likely to stay on the web at least in some form, somewhere. This is not true for all of those moments that we all encounter every day that are gone as soon as they happen. This is not true for all of those different places that I see every day that are hanging on for dear life, and are destined to be destroyed for the sake of “progress”. But with a camera and an Internet connection, you can preserve some of those moments and give your future-self a tangable memory. That is, if you actually remember to bring your camera with you.
