Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The story was called, 'I Want My Head'

I have two passions: photography and writing. (The word 'passion' makes me cringe, but it's the best word for it.) I received my first camera when I was 7 or 8. It took 110 film and was blue and orange plastic. I shot a lot of trees.

About that time I started writing. The first story that stands out, I wrote in sixth grade. It was about a man without a head trying to get his head back. I drew a (bad) cover for my story, of a man's bloody head coming out of a paper bag. And I made a diorama with little dolls running around a haunted shoebox, away from the headless doll. The doll was actually headless. His disability inspired the original story.

The diorama was for illustrative purposes. So you could really immerse yourself in the action.

X years later and I'm still fighting with which half of me wins: photography or writing. Recently, I combined the two and wrote a review of a few camera bags, with roughly 28 pictures attached.

This morning I woke to find hundreds of people had visited the page even before I had my coffee. So that was pretty cool.

Sometimes I think of myself as split in two, and then take a mental tally to see which half is "winning." Did photography win today? Or was it writing?

Hard to say. I'm grateful to have all those new eyes on my work, but I know it won't last. Just have to keep plugging along and find new headless dolls to write about, new shoe boxes to corrupt.

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