Day 564

I'm starting to lust for gear again. Sometimes this gets a little expensive, but typically my ongoing desire for stuff has positive aspects as well. There is always a period when I am struggling to understand and learn how to use my new gear when I'm interested, engaged and at my most creative. I'll wake up in the morning with some new insight as to how the gear works and off I'll go, editing, recording and snapping pictures like there's no tomorrow. Songs get written, movies get made and entire gallery shows get mounted and framed. Eventually I master the new machine and begin to lose interest in it. The exciting new gear just becomes another boring tool that I work with to make a living. Eventually, it either breaks or becomes obsolete.

I love new things, but nothing stays new all that long. I see this commercial on TV almost every morning where some guy tells us that he loves making birdhouses and is taking care of his heart so he can continue to make birdhouses for the rest of his life. Is this guy nuts? I could never make birdhouses for the rest of my life. If I ever made a birdhouse, I'd probably spend four months making one perfect little home and then never make another one again. When I was finished, I'd probably realize that I didn't even like birds.

So what gear has caught my fancy this time? Those little GoPro cameras are pretty cool. These indestructible little bricks can be attached anywhere. You could attach one to your front bumper and film the trials and tribulations of rush hour traffic. You could pin one to a dog sweater and film your dog's walk from the dog's point of view. People who are into extreme sports love these things. Here's nothing extreme about my life at all, but I still might get a GoPro. There's a time lapse setting where you could compress an hour dog walk into two minutes of screen time. I could mount one to the bow of my kayak and film ducks and pelicans. I haven't taken the boat out in several years. Communing with nature doesn't interest me. Exercise doesn't interest me either. Making a movie however...now, that's another matter entirely.

I saw another ambulance down in the park this afternoon when I was taking the dogs on their evening walk. People are dropping like flies in this heat. I see fire department EMT crews responding to something in the park almost every week now. A couple of years ago in July, the dogs and I walked right past a guy sitting on a park bench looking out at the water. The guy didn't say anything to us, but that was pretty normal. When we were walking back home again, I noticed an EMT crew and several policemen surrounding the bench. The guy had dropped dead while he was just sitting there on the bench. I don't think I need any more reasons to stay inside and look for a good movie on TV.

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