by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Normal people have responsibilities, and most of all things that are important to them they can lose. Usually, the most powerful of these things are abstract — things like “respect” and “credibility” being among them.
I learned a lot about the “normal” world many, many moons ago when I worked in a corporate environment. One thing I learned is “normal” people either find me interesting and charismatic or they think very little of me, if they think of me at all.
For the last decade or so, I’ve lived a life in neutral because I had a lot of ambition but absolutely zero motivation. I’ve been all talk, in other words. And if you throw in how I can come off as something of a deranged bonkers person — a crank — many, many people who may have been paying attention to me have every reason to think once a loser, always a loser.
And yet…
It’s still very possible that this assessment of me will turn out to be true. But I do know that things have changed a great deal in my life. AND as I approach a milestone birthday, I find myself very, very focused on proving the “haters and losers” wrong.
As such, my eccentricities that are either very appealing or a huge turn off to “normal” people may be my secret weapon. I have a natural talent as a photographer and I can feel myself getting ready to, at last, come out of my shell.
I keep saying, of course, that a lot –and I mean A LOT could still go wrong. But I’m hopeful. The conditions are there for something pretty extraordinary to happen — historic, even. But for some time to come it will all be very touch and go. It could go either way.
But once I have the photographic equipment I want, all I’m going to need is the opportunity and I come take a picture or two that could in, an instant, burnish my reputation. Zero to hero, as they say.
And, yet, that’s pretty much just my usual frothy bullshit at this point. I’ve lost a decade to indecision, I’m damned if I’m going to lose another.
