Wanderers from the Tribe of the Cats
The last few years have been hard. So much loss, so many trials… I am at the end of my tether now. I feel sad, flat, joyless… but there is a glimmer.
It is time to set aside all the bad and to take the spirit of those whom I have lost and do as they would. Live my life as they would have lived theirs, and how they would have loved to see me live mine. Reinvent, renew….
The last couple of weeks have been a mixture of emotionally draining and difficult, and yet uplifting and enjoyable.
We went off to Utah to say a final farewell to my epic big brother – the “King of the Hobos” – a supremely talented, artistic and intelligent individual whom I miss a great deal. We met some of his closest friends for the first time and reconnected with another. It was good. Sad, but good.
I came back feeling buoyed up t o take on the World, to run with some projects that have been sitting dormant for a long time… but the last couple of days my self belief has just collapsed. I am really rubbish at believing in myself and promoting myself – it is one of those great personal failings that I have.
That said, my Dad is talking about doing something else with himself, and selling up the business since I have been talking about setting up my own thing and chasing some dreams. I guess he has faith in my ability… and so this is going to force my hand somewhat since I need to either sink or swim!
So… I guess it is time to start the preparations, but for now here are a few photographs from the deserts of Utah – our adventures there and the celebration of my big brothers life.
Now… I am not averse to people putting subtle signatures or watermarks on their photographs – it is something I have started doing of late after increasing the resolution of my shared photographs to something potentially “useful”.
HOWEVER…
There are companies out there that “create” signatures for photographs for you – you send them your name and they create a signature for you… so it isn’t YOUR signature, it is just a logo! It seems to be popular with the very amateur end of the market and a few aspiring pros… and I can see that it is designed to make your images “look” more professional. But to me using a made up signature is just fake and kinda devalues the work!
Here is a copy of a front page of one such service:
Yes, they all look very authentic and very flash – but they aren’t real!
Perhaps it is just me that gets annoyed by this, but hey – we are supposed to be original, artistic and creative and this just reeks of everything opposite to that!
In contrast – this is my current watermark. It has my actual signature on it!
This is going to change again though I think as I start working towards a massive rebrand and redirection of my efforts, but that is another story!
Today I made a very, very first and tentative step towards my medium term goal of becoming a qualified Mountain Leader (Summer), the longer term is to become a Mountain Leader (Winter) as well, but that will take a little longer!
I had a little clear time this morning so I decided to tackle my first small hill in a long time. Great Burney is not far from home, not particularly large… but has been sitting there “looking” at me for some time – so today I went for it. Climbed the hill, looped around the side on descent and took in the ancient megalithic cairns on the way back. The sun was shining and it was a rather nice wee diversion in the face of everything going on just now.
So… 45 minutes or so of hill work, which was “enough” for a first shake down and all is good. I think I will try and do a few more of the “up to 1 hour” type routes this month to get my body used to it, then start ramping up through June and July with the plan of starting the formal training in the Autumn of this year (perhaps) and qualification maybe in the Spring of 2019.
But I have started.
It has been a torrid time of late. Another of the clan passed away and I have not been dealing with it terribly well. In the last 8 years we have lost a member of each of the 4 generations that were here back then.
It started with my son, Callum, whose death has left more questions than answers. My Mum was next 4 years ago from cancer, then my Grandma less than a year later… although she was very old so that one doesn’t cut so much. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my eldest brother was taken from us at 48 years old. He was a big part of my life, our family and a constant source of advice and inspiration.
I really am kinda lost.
What I want to do next in my life is going to be heavily coloured by his influence. I was building up a concept for my future that I was going to talk about to him soon, unfortunately that is no longer an option… so I am talking to everyone else about it instead. Neil’s genius will be missing from developing the concept further which is going to be hard.
So… the idea… the concept.
I want to take the one thing that I am good at and develop it. My last remaining talent that hasn’t been ignored and left to wither I guess. Photography has been my passion for a long time, and I want to share it. My main forte is landscape photography, although I can turn my hand to most things successfully, and so I plan to launch this and slowly move towards a career change (aka financial suicide). The main income generator to make this happen is teaching others, running courses and guiding others to unique locations.
Quite a lot of people are doing similar things these days, but I don’t think the market is saturated. I also have a USP in mind which, to make happen, is going to involve quite a lot of training and qualification gaining for myself. I basically need to become an outdoor instructor!
Part one of this plan is going to start this year with a Mountain Leader (Summer) course my aim, I want to extend this with a Mountain Leader (Winter) qualification… and possibly a Mountain Bike Leader… and even further out perhaps heading into canoe and/or sailing too. As things progress there is more to add to this plan until it becomes a viable lifestyle and around that stage we need to decide exactly where to base it. I have thoughts on that, but given it is going to take a few years to get set up with the qualifications and a few practice runs those ideas may have changed!
It is exciting, slightly scary, and invigorating.
It has been a tough weekend for the clan – on Friday we had to say goodbye to one of the cats, he was a really lovely old boy but cancer caught him and we were left having to make a tough choice.
It was good that Dakota came down for her monthly visit later that day as it helped take our minds off things. Saturday was the Ulverston Apple Festival (with a Donkey ride and cake) followed by a visit to softplay.
This weekend was all about mini-adventures, spending family time together and generally chilling out. The weather was bad, my van has been playing up (and is being swapped out) and – to be honest – we were absolutely shattered after a hectic couple of weeks (with another one to get through before any chance of downtime!)
Jen was saying to me that we haven’t really taken many photographs of “us”, and I started looking back through things thinking… I am sure we have.
But no, she is right! I have so many of the children, the animals and photos from on our adventures. I even have quite a few of her – although most of them don’t see the light of day just hide away on my hard drive! But both of us, together….
Thinking about this, it is kind of important that I take more of these pictures – of the kids with one or both of us, the two of us together… these are things that they will remember and hold dear when they get older – when we have gone and all that is left are the memories of things that we did together. It is precious… I wish I had more photographs of my Mum with me/us/the kids.
So… another mission to add to my list is to take more pictures! It’s true that we haven’t, perhaps, been feeling particularly photogenic of late – but we are making efforts to redress that issue and… hell… if we succeed I suppose it will be nice to be able to look back on the transformation too!
This is the last one I took of the two of us – around 10 months ago.
Now I just need to ensure it isn’t the last!
Here are a few more from the last couple of years or so, just to prove that there are a few!
The last is one of my favourites!
So, although we are both rather camera shy I am going to try and take a lot more!