Although the temperatures went below freezing during the night, my wife and I had an excellent time camping with friends at Boyd’s crossing in the Kanangra Boyd National Park over the weekend.
The photo above was taken in the morning while there was still frost on the ground. People were starting up their fires to cook breakfast. It was such a beautiful setting to share with friends and to have our favourite breakfast, huevos ranchero.
It doesn’t get much better than that!
Epicurus once said, “We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf”
I was discussing with Pat (via e-mail) how I like loud music, bright colours and spicy foods. In short, just about anything that couldn’t be described as moderate. We were also talking about consumerism, mental health (Pat is a retired psychologist) and cultural dissonance.
To me this song is a great adjunct to our conversation.
The singer Poly Styrene (real name, Marian Elliott) in the video below was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and sectioned (put in a mental hospital) after having a vision of a pink light in the sky and felt objects crackling when she touched them. Turned out she was bipolar.
Turn the sound up and brace youself for one of the best songs to come out of the whole punk movement!
I clambered over mounds and mounds
Of polystyrene foam
And fell into a swimming pool
Filled with fairy snow
And watched the world turn day-glo
you know you know
The world turned day-glo you know
I wrenched the nylon curtains back
As far as they would go
And peered through perspex window panes
At the acrylic road
I drove my polypropolene
Car on wheels of sponge
Then pulled into a wimpy bar
To have a rubber bun
The X-rays were penetrating
Through the laytex breeze
Synthetic fibre see-thru leaves
Fell from the rayon trees
Over the Easter long weekend, I met Shawn who is visiting Australia from the US. Shawn is an old friend and fellow anaesthetist of a friend of mine, Peter.
I always find doctors entertaining in social circumstances, and I love pumping them for information about things I probably shouldn’t know about. As a consequence, I had what I thought was a pretty interesting conversation with Shawn and Peter while we were hanging out at my in-law’s holiday home in Tallong over Easter.
Me: “So, Shawn, how was the flight over?”
Dr. “Shawn: Cattle class always sucks.”
Dr. Peter: “You should’ve flown business.”
Dr. Shawn: “I know, I know, but I just can’t justify it to myself, even though I can afford it.”
Me: “I hate economy and I dislike the fact that I can’t afford first class even more.”
“It’s so cramped and after a few hours my joints start to swell and ache.”
“Not to mention the tedium.”
“Surely as a doctor, you’d be able to prescribe something to make economy more like first class?”
Dr. Shawn: “Well, you wouldn’t be getting a script from me, and that’s for sure.”
Dr. Peter: “Or me for that matter!”
Me: “Don’t go getting all high and mighty with me you glorified meat plumbers!”
Dr. Shawn: “Look, the trouble is that probably the best drug to control the general pain from sitting in a seat for so long would be a narcotic like Endone.”
Dr. Peter: “That stuff is hillbilly heroin!”
“Although we may be friends, you won’t get me writing you any prescriptions for narcotics just so you can fly in comfort in the cheap seats.”
“Anyhow, the Endone would constipate you.”
Dr. Shawn: “Metamucil would help out there.”
Me: “So it’s only the rich and famous with their pet doctors who get to travel by air comfortably?”
Dr. Peter: “They’d have enough money to travel first class anyway.”
Dr. Shawn: “Having enough money to keep a doctor or two in your pocket can lead to death.”
“Look at Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger.”
Me: “So you wouldn’t help out about the general pain, but what about the joint aches and swelling?’
Dr. “Shawn: A Voltaren patch would work well.”
Dr. Peter: “You can’t get those here in Australia.”
Me: “So I guess you’d have to take the pills?”
Dr. Shawn: “Yes and I’d also say it would be worthwhile to take some Aspirin to counter the risk of deep vein thrombosis.”
“Trouble is that the Voltaren and Aspirin are hard on the stomach so I’d say Zantac would be worth taking too.”
Me: “Well, all that leaves is the boredom, and adjusting to the jet lag.”
Dr. Shawn: “The best way to pass the time would be to sleep and for that I’d take Stilnox although Lunesta might be better.”
“Stilnox lasts for about 4 fours Lunesta works for about 8 hours.”
Dr. Peter: “You can’t get Lunesta in Australia but Stilnox is ok, and no, Razz, I’m not going to help you out there either!”
Me: “O.K., O.K. be that way!”
“But as a matter of interest, how much would this Pharmacological First Class upgrade cost?”
Dr. Shawn: “Under ten bucks.”
So there you have it, people. There is a way to fly long distance, comfortably and cheaply.
For my wife, Engogirl, an interest in photography started as an act of retaliation to my photography. Let’s face it, photography is a crap spectator sport. My wife is as close to perfect as one could hope for and she indulges me in just about any way one could wish for, but watching me photograph things was beginning to pall.
I sensed Engogirl’s frustration in having to wait around for me to take my shots, so when I bought my SLR, I gave her the little compact camera that I’d been using to keep her amused.
Engogirl isn’t afraid of technology, as a matter of fact she actually likes reading instruction books (what’s that all about?!), so it wasn’t long before she was off and taking her owns shots. At first, I think doing something with a machine was what Engogirl found more engaging than the resulting images. I don’t think the images were as important as having something to do. After a while Engogirl discovered the pleasure of sharing her pictures with me. Luckily for me, my wife has a good eye and it was a joy to see her images improve over time.
By the time we went on our trip to Europe last year, Engogirl was really enjoying taking her photos, but then a fly settled in her ointment. Engogirl discovered the short comings of her camera. How come her clouds were all blown out and mine weren’t? How come, my shots had better colours than hers? Why was I able to get shots she couldn’t?
As technically minded as Engogirl is, being an engineer and all, she wasn’t all that interested in educating herself in yet another discipline. The idea of humping a big heavy SLR with a few lenses around with her all the time didn’t appeal either.
About one and half months into our trip, my wife’s camera started to play up. Many shots were coming out with thick magenta stripes through them. By this point, Engogirl wouldn’t dream of going out for the day without her camera, even though she was becoming disenchanted with it’s lack of capabilities. I though this situation was a good opportunity to lure my wife further into sharing my love of photography. I mentioned that I thought it was a good time for her to upgrade to a better camera.
Engogirl said, “but I don’t want to be lugging around a heap of gear like you”
Me: “We’ll get you something that is smaller”.
Her: “But it’ll be crap like what I’ve already got”.
Engogirl had a point. Most smaller cameras are aimed at “happy snappers” who would have a brain aneurism if they had to think more that a nanosecond before they took a shot. I then remembered my friend Paul raving about his Canon G9.
You name it, if Paul is interested in it, he’ll research the hell out of it and buy the best thing he can afford. I respect Paul’s opinions about equipment, be it photographic, camping, cycling or woodworking. So I suggested we get the G9 for Engogirl. We were in Nimes in France at the time and we went into a camera store to get the G9 but it was out of stock because it was discontinued ( I found out later that the G10 which followed the G9 wasn’t a very successful design) and the new model G11 was coming out soon.
“How soon?” We asked.
“A few days, would you like us to order you one?”
Nice try, sales guy, but unfortunately we couldn’t hang around and wait. So every town we went to, we’d check to see if the G11 had come in. Every time I took photos when Engogirl didn’t have a camera, I felt guilty. I even went so far as to hand her my camera to take photos with (no greater love), so she felt like she was getting shots of things she found interesting.
It wasn’t until about two and half weeks later that we were able to find a shop in Lisbon, Portugal that had the new G11.
What can I say? Other than my wife is totally thrilled with her G11 and now is actually interested in printing out some of her shots.
As for me, I’m constantly amazed how my wife’s photos are so different from mine. We often take photos in the same places but they couldn’t be more different. I often take very wide angle shots because I’m interested in context, narrative and interaction, whereas Engogirl is into recording detail and objects. Often when I see my wife’s shots, I find myself thinking to myself, “why didn’t I take that?”
So together, we’ve got a very broad record of our trip together.
Several years ago I was having a bit of a moan to a camera salesman about the limited tonal range that digital cameras could capture. I complained about how the clouds were always blown out and shooting into the sun was pointless because most of the sky would go white. I also mentioned that I thought that even the high end digital SLRs still had a long way to go as they weren’t that much better that the little compact point and shoot cameras.
Luckily the guy I was talking to, unlike so many sales clerks, actually knew what he was talking about and he said that I should take a look at the Fuji Pro S3. The Fuji is basically a Nikon body with Fuji’s super CCD in it. The store where the salesman worked didn’t sell the Fuji and at $3500 AUD without a lens it was way out of my price range. Like a lot of things that I can’t have for whatever reason, I sublimated my desire for the Pro S3 and put it on the back burner of my mind.
Some more time passed and about 9 months before I went to Europe last year I bought a second hand Fuji Pro S3 body, over the internet for $650 AUD. I was pretty happy with the results I was getting with my new camera and I took it on my overseas trip where I took over 4000 photos with it.
About a month ago, I helped out a friend of mine (Mark) who owns a Nikon D200, get his beautiful landscape photos from a recent tirp to California, ready for an exhibition. Mark was a bit concerned about some of his shots because the skies were blown out and the clouds had lost their details. I asked Mark if he’d shot in RAW and he said “yes”, so I said to him, “don’t worry, you’ll be amazed at what information we will be able to pull out of a RAW file”.
I was looking forward to showing Mark how much detail we were going to pull out of his skies and clouds. I got quite a shock when I opened up Mark’s images in Photoshop and there was much less detail than what I expected. I’d become so used to the extended tonal range of my Fuji, that I thought it was “normal” and I was really disappointed for Mark. Although we got some nice results for Mark’s exhibition, I knew the Fuji would’ve provided much better results.
A while back I’d been talking to Mark about his decision to buy the camera he did, and he said he’d been influenced by Ken Rockwell’s camera reviews
To me Rockwell is one of those guys who would have people believe he knows all about cameras. From where I stand, I’d say that he still has a lot to learn. Here is an example of what he has said on his website:
I think what people like Rockwell are lacking, is an understanding of how important post processing of images is.
Just like in the old days with film, one couldn’t get a really good image until they’d figured out how to develop their own negatives and do their own printing. Darkroom skills used to be essential to get images to look like they did to the photographer when they saw the scene originally.
“What!” I hear you cry.
Yep, cameras don’t tell the “truth” as we know it. Cameras, film, CCDs only approximate what we see. The huge difference between an image taken with a camera and a scene seen with the human eye is that the eye has a brain behind it that makes all sorts of decisions about how the scene is going to be interpreted by the viewer. Cameras, for all their electronic wizardry are basically very, very, very dumb.
Have you ever noticed how flat and boring so many photographs are when you get them back from processing or look at them on you computer monitor in comparison to when you were looking at the original scene? The camera has no way of prioritising what is important to us; what should be emphasised and what should be ignored. To a camera, every scene is made of elements that have no meaning or aesthetic weight.
Your eye has a far wider acceptance of tonal range than any film, camera or CCD. Plus our brain automatically adjusts to what we are interested in, whereas a camera has no way of knowing what is important to us. Now I know there’s bound to be some smart arse reading this, who will pipe up and say, “oh yeh, what about exposure compensation?” The trouble with exposure compensation (particularly with digital cameras) is that if you expose to retain detail in your highlights, your shadow detail will be lost, and vise versa if you expose for the shadows.
Back in the days when film was king, the maxim of, “expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights”, was the catch cry of the masters of the darkroom arts like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. The old photographic masters knew that most of the tonal information could be captured if you knew how to control the process.
Nowadays in this age of digital cameras, the darkroom has been just about replaced by Photoshop.
Now many people think Photoshop is for “jazzing up” images and that somehow using it is “cheating”. These same old purists would think nothing of selecting a particular film stock for it’s saturated colours, or printing papers for it’s rendition of flesh tones or ”pushing or pulling” colour film to affect its colour balance, etc.
Back when one worked on an image in the darkroom, it was accepted practice to dodge and burn a print, because of the fact that film and the paper being printed on couldn’t deal with the complete tonal range. The same goes for the printing industry. The highest quality fine art books, especially those with high quality black and white images, use a process called “duotone” to get a tonal range that is close to a hand processed photographic print. A duotone is basically two images at either extreme of the tonal range that are printed on top of each other.
So in a long winded way, I’ve tried to point out that it is necessary to have as wide a tonal range as possible so that the end product image, can be as close as possible to the scene first seen by the photographer. The wider the tonal range, the wider the options are when it comes to how one wants an image to look in long run.
The trouble with reviewers like Rockwell is that they seem to have limited knowledge about what’s really going on when one takes a photo and what’s really important. So many of the specifications that people masturbate over, are in the grand scheme of things, not that important. Unless you’re a sports or wildlife photographer, who cares if your camera shoots 5 frames a second, if your tonal range is crap and it causes highlights to be blown out, while your shadows are just black blobs?
When it came to the misrepresentation or misinterpretation of facts, my grandmother used to parody an unscrupulous cloth merchant, saying, “never mind the quality, feel the width”. Just to emphasise how ridiculous, whatever illogical or misleading thing was being said.
Much of what is in reviews isn’t all that relevant to the photographic cognoscenti. Knowledge is power, and it pays to be an educated consumer. The trick, and this goes for just about everything in life, is to pick the right people to listen to and learn from.
Yes their reviews are very in depth and require a fair bit of technical knowledge to interpret, but I’d say just take a deep breath and look up the terms that you don’t understand as you go. Eventually you will build up enough knowledge to make informed decisions on you own instead of being misled by people with big holes in their knowledge like Rockwell.
Oh!
One more thing, if you are shooting to save your files as JPEGs, do yourselves a favour and stop it. Start using RAW because you will get far better results because the RAW file format is much more versatile as it contains way more information.
Here’s a video tutorial on how to adjust RAW files as they are opened in Photoshop.
This next tutorial is on another important Photoshop technique, “masking”, by the god of Photoshop, Russell Brown.
My wife Engogirl and I, decided we wanted to get out of town for the weekend so we invited some friends to come camping with us up at Kandos Weir at the Dunn’s Swamp campground which is in the Wollemi National Park.
Kandos is about three and a half hours drive north east of Sydney. Although the weather forecast was for rain we left on Friday night anyway.
Just about everyone we hang out with is fairly experienced with the outdoors and they all have plenty of camping gear for just about any circumstance, so the weather was of no real concern for any of us. As a matter of fact I always feel good when it rains at night and I’m in my tent as it seems to justify bringing all the equipment.
Engogirl’s uncle Ray brought up his kayaks so we could get out on the water and have a look around the lake created by Kandos Weir. The kayaks were quite nice sleek things that were designed for better kayakers than me. Being so narrow made them not only fast but also a bit tippy. I felt a bit nervous in them although I’ve done quite a bit of paddling in wider, more stable kayaks. Whereas, Ray and Paul (in the photo below) were quite home in them.
Although I was in constant fear of falling in, Engogirl and I went out for a couple of kilometres to paddle about the lake. It was absolutely beautiful and if I hadn’t been so afraid tipping over and getting my camera wet, I would’ve taken some shots while we were out in the kayaks.
The Weir was built back in the late 1920s to supply a cement factory 25 kilometres away and it flooded a narrow valley of sandstone pagodas. I’m pretty sure such a structure wouldn’t be allowed to be built in a UNESCO world heritage area (due to the biodiversity of plant and animal communities, including the recently discovered Wollemi Pine) with Aboriginal cultural sites nowadays.
The name “Dunn’s Swamp” doesn’t sound very promising but I’m sure it comes from before the weir was built. When ever I hear the word weir, I think of one of those low walls in a stream that the water flows over. Kandos Weir is more of a dam in the real sense of the word being about 30 metres high (about 90ft).
When Engogirl was at university she did an assignment on the weir and we went to the cement works to meet up with the engineers who run it now, to have a look at the original drawings. It was a bit of a shock to see that the plans for such a large structure were in pencil and seemed so simple and yet the weir is still there working just fine.
One of the things I love about my country is that places like Dunn’s Swamp have been made available for public use at a very reasonable cost. Only $5 a day per person and firewood is supplied plus there are environmentally friendly composting pit toilets, but there is no potable water so you have to bring your own.
All around the lake there are various walking tracks and on Sunday a few of us went up to a look out, which gives a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside.
Because of all the rainfall lately, the vegetation was lush (by Australian standards) and I can’t remember seeing the area looking so beautiful and green in the past 15 years I’ve been going there.
It was just so beautiful that it came as a surprise to come across a large group of people (foreign university students) who were out there drinking and leaving their beer bottles lying about, discarded on the track. I went up to them and said, “hi, it’s a beautiful area isn’t it?” They all smiled back and said yes. Then in a polite and gentle way, I suggested to them that the area looks better without the bottles and they agreed.
From a distance I watched them leave and the guys who had been drinking weren’t carrying anything back with them.
It’s funny how people will say one thing and do another.
When we came back to the area we found a bunch of bottles hidden behind rocks and under bushes so we collected them up and took them back to the campground. On the way to our tents we passed the students, so my friend Joseph and I went up to the group of about twenty with smiles on our faces and I said, “Hi! How are you all?”
Smile and greetings of “hi” came back to us.
I walked up to one of the guys who I had seen drinking the beer and I pulled out one of the bottles from my coat (a Gore-Tex with large cargo pockets) and said, “here, I think this is yours”.
He looked embarrassed and his friend stepped forward and said, “oh thanks, we were looking for them but we couldn’t find them”.
I said, “yeh right!” and then I handed the other bottles back to various other guys, “saying, here, I think this one might be your’s” until I was rid of the rest of the bottles.
Sheepish looks of embarrassment all round. I then dug out all the bottle caps that I’d also picked up on the way back and said to the group, “these are so small you can just put them in your pocket and bring the back with you”.
All the while I was making sure I was smiling and speaking in a polite and gentle manner. I was into winning hearts and minds, not getting the crap beaten out of me.
I went on with, “it’s great to share these places with you, but let’s try and keep it nice for each other” as I patted the biggest guy in the group on the back in a friendly and brotherly way (I’ve read that touch can help make people more calm and co-operative). Much to their credit, the students seemed to be taking what I had to say on board, and there were mumbled apologies (which I hadn’t come for) and smiles.
Hopefully that will be a group where some of the people will think twice about littering in the bush.
Yesterday was the last full day we were in Paris and it was the day that fellow blogger, Epicurienne caught the Eurostar over from London for the day to meet up with us before we left.
As a happy coincidence, I’ve been able to make sure that my landmark 500th post could be about my wife and I meeting up with Epicurienne, who like us comes from the southern hemisphere, likes to travel, eat good food (who doesn’t!) and of course is also a blogger.
The plan was that Epicurienne was going to show us around Paris a bit, but it was a little cool and drizzling rain.
The great indoors looked far more appealing so I piped up with, “why don’t we find a really nice little restaurant and have a fabulous meal with some lovely wine and blow heaps of money doing it!”
Epic ruminated upon the question with great deliberation for about a nanosecond and replied, “sounds like a plan!”
So off the three of us went to wander around Ile St Louis on our quest, where we stumbled across an absolute gem of a restaurant called “Sorza”.
The Sorza provided the perfect setting for a day with Epic who often writes about restaurants and the cusine she has had around the world. The food was excellent and the wine that Epic picked was perfect (I know nothing about French wines).
Just like before when I met up with fellow bloggers Cashmere Cafe, Grasswire and Robert in Slovenia, it was remarkable how easy and pleasant it was to talk to Epic. We came to the conclusion that we felt we’d know each other for ages through our blogs which made the conversation so comfortable and fluid.
Also, just like in Slovenia I felt I had met another person that I wish I lived closer to. I would love to cook for Epic some time. I can’t even really begin to describe what a nice day Engogirl and I have had.
To be in Paris on our last day and to spend it with such a delightful and lovely person such as Epic would have been more than good enough, but the icing on the cake was our meal together.
Meeting up with fellow bloggers has been so pleasant that it is something that I’m going to have to do more often. It’s just a pity that Australia is so far away from where the bloggers I read, come from.
By some kind of strange coincidence, a disproportional amount of blogs I regularly read are from Slovenia. I say disproportional because Slovenia has only two million people and I regularly check three blogs from there whereas I only read five American blogs regularly and there are 300 million people there.
This first photo is of Grasswire and his two and a half year old daughter.
Engogirl and I went to a huge traditional Slovenian lunch today with Grasswire, his wife Cashmere Cafe and their daughter. What a pleasure it was for both my wife and I to meet such nice, erudite and like minded people. Our short time together just flew by with animated conversation and great food, and before we knew it was time to part our ways. I just wish they lived near by so I could include them in our regular circle of friends because they are the sort of people I like to surround myself with.
Robert and his wife Marjeta have been fantastic. So warm, welcoming and hospitable. Both Robert and Marjeta had just come back from Greece on Monday and left today for Norway (to give some seminars). In the few days they had to get their work together and prepare for their next trip, they invited us into their home and spent as much time with us as they could.
Robert’s background is very similar to mine, in that he left home at 17 and went travelling with almost no money. It’s not very often that I meet someone who has a many travel stories as me and he is a fabulous guy to shoot the breeze with. Robert is so alive and full of joie de vivre that one can’t help but be swept up in some kind of contact high that makes one glad to be alive. It’s been a long time since I’ve been introduced to so many new ideas from such a bright mind that we were so often in deep conversation that I didn’t even take any pictures of him.
Talk about being in the moment.
Marjeta, despite the fact that she was so busy getting ready for the seminars she has to present, was a very gracious host and together with Robert, we were made to feel so welcome.
I could just rave on for ages about what an amazing couple Robert and Marjeta are, but I will give one example of how generous they have been to us. Although they left for Norway this morning they said we could stay a few more days in their house while they were away. What an incredible act of trust! It touches me deeply that there are such good people in the world and I feel honored and lucky to have met them both. I really hope there is such a thing as karma.
Yep and I’d love it if Robert and Marjeta lived close by as well, as I know my other friends would love them and I’d like to see them more often.
So far, I’ve been really impressed by Slovenes. By the way, the only reason why there aren’t any photos of Marjeta and Cashmere Café is because I was so caught up in the brilliant conversation that I hardly took any photos at all of anybody or anything.
Engogirl and I have been taking a bit of a break from our travels by staying with some Slovene friends, Robert and Marjeta in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Marjeta told us that now is right in the middle of mushroom season and that porcini mushrooms were available. In Australia, it’s impossible to get fresh porcinis so the idea of getting my hands on some fresh porcinis got me all excited to do some cooking.
Robert had shown us on our first night in Ljubljana where the fresh vegetable and mushroom market was and in the morning Engogirl and I went and did some food shopping. I have to say that I was really impressed with the quality and variety of the produce.
I bought a celeriac to make some soup; the ingredients to make a porcini risotto and arugula, baby spinach, pear, walnut and parmesan salad.
The selection of mushrooms was also much wider than we get at home and there were plenty of mushrooms I’d never seen before.
Everything I bought tasted better than at home and it was really nice to be able to cook something up for our hosts.
I could get used to living in Ljubljana as it’s so lovely. The people are great and the city is so beautiful with such a lively vibe. I find it surprising that I’ve heard so little about Slovenia, considering it’s such a nice place. I guess I should be thankful that I’m here before it is “discovered”.
My new lens has just arrived. It’s a 50mm to 150mm f2.8 and it’s the closest lens I could afford to my old 135mm f2.8 Nikkor lens that I loved and used so much back in the days when I shot film. I’m going to Europe for three months in 9 days and I’m particularly looking forward to using my new lens to take photos of people on the street like I used to, years ago.
A very wise old friend of mine, the composer Edward Arteaga, once said to me, “if you want to kill your love for something, study it”.
I first took up photography when I was about 14 and for years I had dreams of working in the photographic industry. Years later when I was 30 I went to Art College for 4 years to study photography and then I went on to be a photographic assistant for 2 years to one of the best commercial photographers in Australia.
I got to see what it was like at the top of the game. Lot’s of grinding work, long hours, high stress and frightening overheads. After a while I realised that I was being turned off photography and of trying to make a living from it. In the early 1990s, I totally lost interest in photography and in particular, commercial photography. I’d come to the conclusion that it was a cosmically worthless profession and I didn’t want to be involved with it any more. I put my cameras down and didn’t take any photos for about 15 years. It’s only recently that I’ve returned to photography.
I replied, “I don’t want to do that because it would take all the fun out of it and turn it into a grind”.
Mark then said to me, “you are such a waste of talent, you’re good at whatever you turn your hands to (flattering but untrue), but you choose not to continue on with things”.
I explained that the only reason why I do any thing is because it’s the only way I can get what I want at a reasonable cost. If want a schmick cabinet, I have to make it myself.
If I want nice food, I have to cook it myself and the same goes for photography.
People are constantly saying to me, “why don’t you do, such and such for a living, you’re so good at it”. The trouble with me is that I can quite easily visualize where such things lead. In short, I know it would kill my love for whatever is that I like doing.
I don’t want to specialise, I’m a generalist.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is actually important in my life and how do I want to live to be happy. I keep coming back to Epicurus. Epicurus thought that there were three types of desires.
Natural and necessary: Such as, freedom, friendship, food shelter and freedom from pain.
Natural but not necessary: A big house and other luxuries.
Not natural or necessary: Fame and power.
If you’re interested in what Epicurus has to say about happiness here’s some a good video (in three parts) by Alain de Botton.
