A few rueful words from The Chairman of the Board, dedicated to my two favorite downtrodden artists -- Me and Toots

Toots has been going through a bit of artistic anguish, as related in a thread below. And tonight, through a variety of events I won't bore you with here, I helped a bunch of people get their photographs published. Except me.

I'm frustrated, folks.

This song came on the iPod just after I tossed my Crackberry down in a fit of pique after reading the relevant e-mail.



That's life. And I can't deny it.

But if there's nothing shakin' come this here July....

Earthblogging: Enjoy it while it lasts

So, today is Blog Action Day, where everyone writes about the environment.

Originally, I thought it might be a bad time for me to do this, to the extent that I'm supposed to write something uplifting. After all, I recently had a hissy fit about tigers in India, and I just spent this weekend photographing these:


Clearcuts.

So I was wondering, as I am wont to do when I get all maudlin, what good it would do to write another post about the environment.

And then I remembered that isn't the point. I didn't have the power to kill the earth all by myself, and there's no reason to expect myself to save it singlehandedly. You talk about it and write about it because you can't do otherwise -- not because you actually expect it to help anything. At least not in a world where the company that brought us a wildly popular hybrid is lobbying against tougher CAFE standards, anyway.

So, my suggestions? Enjoy it while it lasts. Here I am, back where I'm closer to the bears and the wolves, having climbed halfway up the mountain yesterday to look upon the valley below, and I suggest you all take some time to revel in something not created by a human hand. Whether it's a tamarack painted gold by the fall, a wilderness landscape, your cat or your kid, enjoy it now, unburdened by worry, guilt or urgency.

And then tomorrow, sign up for green power.*




*Believe it or not, my power company will not let me have green power because I made two late payments a couple of years ago. So I have to wait until they deem me worthy of the privilege of not befouling the earth to run my coffee maker. Bastards.

I used to think it was a quarterlife crisis, but it turns out its a whole life crisis

The Imagine post has taken an interesting direction, with commenter Toots taking a new look at the fantasy issue. Then, Michael emphathizes with my angst-ridden birthday post from a few weeks ago. Read the comments first. I think I see a theme emerging.

I graduated from law school almost ten years ago, and it look me a long time to admit fully to myself that I didn't really like it that much. I did enjoy law school and I did well. With one parent and a sibling practicing law, I just couldn't convince myself that I ought to be doing something else. Plus, I'm actually pretty good at it. So it was easier to simply blame the atmosphere at the law firm I started at, or the type of law I was practicing. But after five years of the most flexible practice imaginable, with work that is about as interesting as it gets in my practice area, it still feels like I'm wearing a shoe that's too small. So for the last ten years, I've been hanging between practicing law on the one hand and nature photography and writing on the other -- never committing fully to one or the other. And this lack of integration had me alternating between valleys of despondence and inertia and then the impotent panic that comes from a sense that one is wasting one's life.

But recently I think I'm seeing things a bit more clearly. The law, like any job, can be a tool (at least the way I'm fortunate enough to practice it) -- and an extremely valuable tool -- to create some semblance of the life I'd like to have. And that's the best way for me to look at it. Inflexible, binary thinking was doing me in. So as soon as I stopped being surprised by the fact that I'm not interested in devoting my entire life to the law, the more it was possible to become exactly how I described myself a few posts ago:

For those who don't know, I'm licensed as an attorney and I use that work to finance my travel, nature photography, and nature seminars, like the one I took this summer on climate change and glacial recession in Glacier National Park, Montana.)

Anyway.

That's my story, which doesn't interest me as much as hearing yours. Toots already told us her story (her? his? Let me know if I have the pronouns wrong, Toots). What's yours? Are you content? Have you created the life you want or is there still more to do? For what it's worth, I think you can be content and still imagine things you'd like to do or rather be doing. I also think one's degree of contentment can change over time.

Thirty-seven years old today and she can still find deep meaning in a Jimmy Buffett song

A few years ago when I started to panic before every birthday because I hadn't accomplished enough, Jimmy Buffett was kind enough to release License to Chill, which contained this song:



If there's one thing that I've learned from all this living, it's that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go.

Not a damn thing. And it's that way no matter who you are or what you've done, really, at least over the grand scheme. So let's just enjoy the ride, shall we?

That's not to say that years of family pressure and self-flagellation haven't dented my determination to merely live "an interesting life" -- as a dear friend put it in the first birthday greeting I got this morning -- but every time I start to beat myself up for not becoming a hot shot lawyer, publishing a book or making a living off only my photography, or just generally doing something fabulous, I listen to this song and I calm down. I have other priorities, at least right now and perhaps forever. And that's quite all right. I like the wonderful melange my life has become.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's 7:00 a.m. and the tree in my front yard is turning gold from the sunlight, and I must go watch it.