For the first time in a long time I woke up at 5am. Already, I’ve written and published two articles, responded to half-a-dozen emails, and am now spending time with my son before he heads off to preschool. I should really try to wake up early more often.
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Saul Leiter on pleasant confusion
“To be in a state of pleasant confusion sometimes can be very satisfying.”
Saul Leiter, In No Great HurryTonight, I finished up watching Tomas Leach’s In No Great Hurry*, a documentary on the late Saul Leiter (1923-2013), a painter and photographer whose work I’ve enjoyed discovering over the past few years. This quote from Leiter is one of many quips he blurts out throughout the beautiful film, but it more so than the others resonated with me.
I’ve found, mostly in retrospect, that some of the most creative and inspired periods of my life have come when I felt unsure about life and my creative pursuits. It’s difficult to feel secure and not riddled with anxiety in those moments, but I’ve found that when you can accept the ‘pleasant confusion,’ it’s freeing unlike anything else to just float around in an inspired abyss. Until now, I didn’t have such a succinct way to describe the state of mind, but Leiter summarized it beautifully.
*Worth noting ‘In No Great Hurry’ is available to watch for free on Kanopy, provided you have a valid library card.
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Learning WordPress’ new Site Editor tool
Still getting to grips with WordPress’ new Site Editor tool, so apologies if anything on the site seems out of place.
It’s a bit confusing at first, but once you get the hang of the system it’s fantastic for building out pages. Still quite buggy, but that’s to be expected considering it’s in beta.
It also works surprisingly well on my 11″ iPad Pro, which usually isn’t the case for site builders. Well done, Automattic. Curious to see how this continues to take shape.
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Cool Autumn Drives
There’s something magical about cool autumn drives in the evening with the windows partially down, the heat turned up, and the music blasting.
In this case, the music was the album Under Dirt and Soil by The Story So Far.
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What the world needs
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman, The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman: A Visionary for Our TimeA quote I come back to on a near-weekly basis.
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Crown Graphic Special
I managed to pick up a Crown Graphic 4×5 camera for a decent price (and in great condition on eBay). Admittedly, I’m not all that familiar with large format photography (largest I’ve shot until now is 6×9 120 film), but I’m excited to learn more and eventually pick up some sheet film to put through this beautiful machine after a thorough cleaning.
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What sense is next?
In the past two months, I’ve lost my sense of taste and smell due to my second bout with COVID-19, my sense touch (partially) on one hand due to burning my fingertips, and now partial loss of hearing due to a randomly perforated eardrum. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m going to be very protective of my eyes over the coming weeks.
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Back to the basics
It’s been too long since I’ve run a proper website in any capacity. This is my return to a self-owned means of sharing the mundane (and occasionally exciting) creations and moments of life with the world in visual and written form.
I’m not going into this with any preconceived notions of what I expect this online journal to be, but it’s probably safe to assume it’ll be some amalgamation of technology, DIY projects (in many forms), photography, and all other things that inspire me. As for the rest of the site, it’ll likely serve as my online portfolio for anything and everything I create.
Like so many of my creative outlets, this will be a living experiment that shapeshifts as time goes on, but my hope is it will be the central location from which all of my creative endeavors start and are shared from.
Gannon Burgett 