Have you ever misplaced your car in a parking garage?
Last Tuesday evening I wandered through five floors before realizing I left my truck at the loading dock when I returned from an assignment around noon. With the flashers on. After five hours the battery wasn’t interested in starting the engine.
But that’s not the kind of battery I’m talking about. Creative batteries are the focus right now. Where the Vespa usually provides a reliable source of positive energy the last few weeks have found it coming up short. Rides to work on gray mornings have not worked their usual magic.
Crashing waves and 500 miles of space between my office and me usually have a powerful influence on creative energy but like the Vespa I found myself wrestling with my expectations – work, photography, writing and photography. At times I can hear myself whining.
A Yamaha Vino in suspended animation along Shore Road in Ogunquit.
Mental preoccupation has been active enough at times that I find myself choosing to leave the scooter in mothballs on some days rather than ride when I know I won’t be able to focus as well as I should on two wheels. Couple that with work requiring four wheels and things get messy.
Sitting along the shore for my last breakfast before returning home I wondered what direction Scooter in the Sticks should/would take. To this point it has been a meandering work not until the rides I love so much.
Maybe I’m thinking too much and riding too little.
Watching Kim use her camera in the fading light reminded me of how resistant I can be to situations I judge inadequate for photography. Or riding. Or pretty much anything. I wish I could work with a camera as freely as she can.
More piling on of expectations.
It’s raining hard in this picture made on Old Orchard Beach just south of Portland. My pants were soaked from rain running off my Gortex jacket. Kim is collecting shells washed up by a storm. My little digital camera gets soaked despite my best efforts to keep it safe inside a plastic bag. It’s good photography weather.
On the way back to the inn I stop to photograph the railway that passes just east of Kennebunkport. At home I discover Amtrak runs on these rails and if I was so inclined I could take a train from my house to Maine. An adventure for another day perhaps. For now, looking at these tracks makes me wonder what the future holds.
It will hold more riding, writing and pictures. Stops like this one to admire the changing leaves. Those might not always be the best method of renewing dead creative batteries but it probably can’t hurt. And typing these last few words makes me think the green light on the charger has just started blinking.
Steve:
I often think that if photography was my vocation, then I think it would spoil my hobby. The same thing happened to me when I used to belong to camera clubs. It was so competitive trying to come up with that award winning shot that I often found myself taking photos of what I thought others would like and it started to bother me that it was ruining my hobby. I have now unencumbered myself from these things and now do what I want to do, and take photos of what I like instead of following the “theme” of the day.
perhaps you need a riding vacation.
bob
Wet Coast Scootin
Steve,
Your creative battery looks good from here. Your photography is always top notch and I always enjoy your writing. I wonder if it’s the approaching cold weather that’s affecting your enthusiasm about riding. The older I get the less tolerant I seem to be to the cold.
Nice post! I particularly like the shot with Kim framed in the window with the yellow wall. Nice composition.
Expectations seem to be more trouble then they are worth. I know my expectations are lucky they are mine. I am incredibly devoted to them 🙂 Sounds like your expectations, too, have found a wonderful host.
I like the stuff your doing and I enjoy following your meanderings. I hope you ride on, write on, and capture glimpses of the world around you.
~Keith
bobskoot: You’re right about the difficulty balancing photography done as a profession and that done solely as part of personal expression. At times those overlap but mostly it is a struggle to find time, energy, and focus for personal work.
So far I’ve not thrown in the towel but there are days…
I did take a riding vacation. I just haven’t written the post yet. A fine adventure for me and my friend Paul.
Mike: thank you for the supportive words. Always nice to hear when I’m thinking everything is bad.
I love riding in the cold and have found great excitement on the days where the thermometer hit the 30s.
I’ve just been caught up in a work/mental swirl and didn’t think it wise to ride until I relaxed a bit.
Like right now.
Circle Blue: a friend told me expectations were just premeditated resentments. Certainly aligns with my experience.
I plan to put this rough patch behind me a keep on riding. Have a lot of posts in progress including my long overdue review of the BMW F800 GS.
Steve, I stopped blogging for three months and only started again when blog stuff started piling up in my head with no where to which I could move it. Bobskoot is correct, turning a hobby or a passion into a “have to” can be deadly to the joy of it. Write when you feel like it, ride when you feel like.
Doug: I can relate to ideas piling up in the head. Or with me in notebooks or as folders full of images.
I’ll try and follow your advice though and do things when I feel like it. My fear is I’ll never feel like it…
Hi Steve,
You know, it’s amazing how one’s words can reach over many a miles as it did in my case. As a newb in motorcycling you blog enriches me on a regular basis. There’s no pressure though. Keep doing what you do at your own pace. Photos are inspiring (how can I get the rail photo at higher resolution?). The accompaning words do the same.
Roy.
“My fear is I’ll never feel like it…”
I don’t think it’s unusual for creative people to flame out once in a while. Change your focus (no pun intended) to a totally different topic or hobby for a while until your mental reset button is pushed. Or buy a bike so fast you scare yourself silly and awake. New blog: “Hayabusa In The Sticks.”
Dear Scooter in the Sticks (Steve):
I have been a professional writer for 31 years… That means I have earned 100%v of my income through writing. While I am far from a success story, I put a kid through college and paid off two divorces. (I am working up to a point.)
Suppose you were a professional photographer or a writer, and throwing in the towel wasn’t an option? You wouldn’t think twice about it getting on with it. I don’t know what you do for a living, but I know what happens when pressures at work spill into everything else.
Sometimes we forget why we do things. While riding the scooter may occasionally present you with wonderful and unique opporrtunities for pictures, isn’t the ride the thing that wipes the soul clean?
If I could be bold enough to make a suggestion, go riding without the camera. Take ten rides solely for the purpose of savoring the day’s images in your mind’s eye. When you take up the camera again, I’m betting it won’t weight so heavily on the creative soul.
Didn’t it feel good to poke me with a stick in your last post? Sometimes it helps to step outside the boundaries we create for ourselves. You can find a hundred ways t break the damn spell by deviating from the expected.
Nearly all of the blogs that I repeatedly read are well done. (Three suck like Hoovers, but I like their authors.) I seldom feel competition from another writer. But I hate raising the bar for myself and I am compelled to do that often.
Maine is a great place to go for pure introspection… But sometimes that’s the wrong direction. Go back next July. Find a deserted, wooded point on the water. (Scraggle point.) Swim… Lay in the sun… Get laid outside… Bake a lobster and clams on the beach… Drink a local beer so cold your teeth ache. Then buy the damn BMW GS and make an annual ride out of it. (Then you can write about riding around on one of the world’s best truly ugly motorcycles.)
I wasn’t lying when I said your blog was the motivation for starting mine. But I could never aspire to your purity of heart and soul… So I built my cathedral in the gutter, proving there is a congregation for everyone.
Fondest regards,
Jack • reep • Toad
Twisted Roads
Oh my… passing through the cyberspace looking for something else and I screech to a halt here. Fall colors, Maine, bikes, cameras… all the ingredients of past, present and future. And I miss Maine. Left in ’84, haven’t returned yet. And now I feel a stirring somewhere inside.
Riepe is right; leave the camera at home sometimes. Just like unplugging from the computer; it is reminder of that connection between what’s inside you and out. From one camera-aholic to another? 😉
Cheers.