Not

Not that this isn't usually "personal;"

I'm in the process of making a short film about loneliness with my best friend on an Arri SR2, and it's been really difficult to come up with ways to convey that, especially since I'm making it with him. He makes me feel less lonely than I've ever felt before. I'm so excited for the chances I've been getting to not only produce, but to collaborate with him.
I've battled with anxiety my whole life, and this time in my life, for many reasons, is helping me learn how to channel my fears into excitement and productivity rather than letting them turn into crippling anxiety. He's helping me a lot, and even right now, for instance, I'm afraid of making a shitty product because I'm dry on ideas, but instead of letting that make me shut down, I've got to use it as a sign to consume more art, to find inspiration in the world around me, even if that world sometimes gives me anxiety.
Along those lines, I'm also in the process of going off my SSRI. I've been prescribed to it since I came back to college (after dropping out); I was eighteen then--I'm twenty now. I've taken many other steps recently to nourish my body more naturally, and as maybe kind of part of that, am taking it upon myself to peter off of my prescription and see how I can handle life without drugs. I'm not going to be scared. I'm letting myself be excited about it, whilst not abandoning the notion of it maybe not being time yet and having to go back to them. Things will work out the way they're supposed to, and I'm going to see how things work out off of my SSRI.

I thought about attempting to make this into something more like prose; there's time for prose another day, or, who knows, maybe even later today. This is just thoughts I wanted to share (with nobody, let's be honest).

Femininity

I'm in an experimental film class right now, and here are some super short shorts that I've done for it over the past month or so. Cheerleader was prompted by an assignment of a 60 second video with no editing. Factory used an audio track that one of my classmates made and I put the visuals to it. Not a whole lot of grief or stellar equipment went into these, but it's some stuff I've done. I don't intentionally set out to make all of my projects about femininity, but it's kind of happened with the work I've done in this class. Taking two classes on queer sexuality simultaneously will do that, I guess.

Experiments

Doing some film and some still experimenting lately; need to get film for my Canon AE-1 to do some mooooreeeeeee. These were all taken in one night with two pals. I edited them this evening, despite the fact that I haven't fucked with Photoshop in about five years.
I need to keep up the experimenting to develop a personal photographic aesthetic. I'm going to school studying film in hopes to...get a job. But ideally I'd like to DP. I just got a bunch of books on cinematography, but I've gotta get my hands on more more more!!!

Pizza is from South U Pizza in Ann Arbor, Michigan; served to my intoxicated friends with love by my best friend. This is her beautiful mug:

I didn't edit this one, I just think she's pretty.

Drown

What did I say? I knew this would be lacking bulk. Maybe I'll try again. Here's something that I did camera (and a little bit of design) work for last month. 24 hours to write, film, and edit a movie. So physically taxing, and I skipped out on work and almost got fired. It was something like summer camp; I loved it.

Independent

On July 4th I was drunk all day with my best friend. Last year I went for a walk and found nothing interesting, went back to my dorm room and watched a movie. My hair is a lot longer now. Things are ever changing.


Why are these photos so tiny? I'll figure this out eventually.

All right.

How many times have I felt so unusually, mildly creative that I've started a blogger account, only to get so frustrated by the ugly blogger layouts and by my old, glitchy Canon Rebel XT that I abandon it within the week? Many. A lot of times. And here I am again. This blog will likely be worthless, because I think that the only way for me to really realistically post anything online, it will be primarily consisting of the written word, and that's a dying medium, right? And it's not even like I'm going on a mission trip or doing anything exciting or philanthropically that's worth blogging about. I'm just me, here.

And being "me, here" is maybe what I'm trying to explore. I used to write every day, even when there was nothing to write about except my being overwhelmingly sexually frustrated about boys in my precalculus class. I took a creative writing class at my university over the Winter 2014 semester and loved it, but also failed to continue any creative output as soon as the semester ended. So let's try this.

It makes me sad to think of things like the hundreds of journal pages devoted to pubescent douchebags and the zero that I have devoted to my father, who passed away completely unexpectedly in May. And no, this isn't going to be a blog about my facing death, but maybe me just facing how essential it is to constantly be creating, whether it be explicitly art or simply just productive thoughts, regardless of whatever shit life decides to throw at you.

So let's try this.

Finally, a photo of myself and my other half; for good measure. 

-R