Wasting time

Well, that was a waste of time, wasn't it?

Whole hours spent agonizing over words, scrutinizing analogies and, yes, learning how to use that frankly ridiculous Medium website, and what was the sum total of my efforts? Not a single comment or retweet for my article on photography and visual impairment.

But it does at least raise one important question, which I shall attempt to address here: who am I writing for?

Like most people who write I do so for a plethora of reasons. First and foremost I want to do it. There is little more cathartic after a long day at work, or a particularly frustrating experience, than putting thumbs to screen and penning a few lines which encapsulate my thoughts. I suppose it is a self administered therapy of sorts, a consultation with myself, or maybe with my imagined reader.

... Which brings me onto the second point: I write to be read. Yes, I know it's obvious, a little dull, a truism if ever you saw one, but it bears repeating. How sad would it be to talk and not be heard, to present yourself well but never be seen? Whilst much of the pleasure in writing can be found in wrestling with ideas which won't form words, or words which appear intent on standing out of line, breaking rank and not following orders, much too lies in imagining the reader's reaction, and knowing that thoughts once locked inside your head are being set free to blend with others, contributing to the rich discourse of life.

And there's a third reason, one which may not be new in and of itself, but which has surely been given greater momentum by the social media explosion over the past decade. For some, writing for oneself, being read occasionally is quite sufficient, but for the tweeters, flickrers and booers on the right side of the digital divide only world dominating viral notoriety will do. And whilst my ego is insufficiently bloated, or my talents adequately exaggerated to expect a worldwide following, like so many I cannot help but want a piece of the action. It isn't enough to know that my words are out there for others to read, passively waiting for somebody to pass by with the time and inclination to pause and absorb their meaning. In a world where everyone blogs, where noise frequently drowns out those who are truly worth listening to (amongst whom I certainly do not count myself, just for the record! ), an article or account will survive to be read only if it is publicly liked, shared, served up on a plate and pushed in people's faces. There must be countless people who, like me, have had a go with websites like Medium, but whose carefully crafted prose will never make the daily email or be featured on the front page, and is therefore destined for eternal obscurity in a lost corner of the web.

In truth, being noticed comes down to three factors, talent, hard work, and a healthy dose of luck. I can think of several bloggers I read on a regular basis who truly embody the first two of these, people who sit down every evening of every day and pen a fifteen hundred word essay, or who have the kind of writing style which flows naturally from head to screen to the reader's mind. I neither work hard at my writing, nor am especially good at it, and so realistically shouldn't expect the world when clicking "Publish". But then there is luck, that mysterious third factor, lurking unseen in the corner of the room, waiting to pounce on some unsuspecting writer, delivering a positive push up the rankings or highlighting a slip, mistake or ill thought out point and posting it high for everyone's attention. In other words, the chance of writing something which captures the attention sufficiently, or strikes a note apt for the moment, is tempered somewhat by the risk of having one's mistakes showcased in a similar way.

So, perhaps I should actually be grateful for the relative obscurity that my posts enjoy. I don't have the external pressure of living up to expectation, of writing so often that blogging begins to interfere with the other things I hold dear in life, and by keeping my head down I avoid the considerable risk of having it shot off. And I can still enjoy writing for myself in the knowledge that the small group of people likely to read it will appreciate the effort and think about the points made.

So, was it really such a waste of time taking time to think about my experience taking photographs from a different perspective to most people? Was it really so taxing to mould an account which conveyed my thoughts adequately? No, writing is a pleasure, having it read is a bonus, being understood is the real holy grail.

The light at the end of the lens (Medium Article)

Apparently dissatisfied with the experience of blogging periodically on Blogger I thought I've give the text-centred writing platform Medium a shot. My For a service meant to put words up front and make the process as painless as possible it was a remarkably difficult interface to use. But enough of that, I still managed to publish a post to be proud of, which I embed below for your reading pleasure: The light at the end of the lens

An ode to the Scots

It is Destiny Day for our friends the wee Scots,
The hour is here to place a cross in the box,
We'll love you no less if you choose to say bye,
But we may shed a tear when cutting the tie.

It has been quite a tale, the story to date,
And there's more to come if you've got time to wait,
But your moment is here, we're holding our breath,
Are you signing the warrant for our Union's death?

Was it really so difficult, that promise we made,
To love one another until in coffins we laid?
Weren't we there for each other in good times and bad?
Does the thought of maybe leaving not make you feel sad?

This island was our's for three hundred years,
Building industry, commerce, sharing high hopes and fears.
Repelling invaders, welcoming new friends,
What kind of message will our divorce send?

But we know you're proud people with your own history,
We're cramping your style and you want to be free.
With brave hearts and big dreams to the polls you will leap.
I hope the result is what you want, and cool heads we'll all keep.

You see, whatever your preference when picking your fate,
We'll still love you dearly, our best friend and mate.
And despite all the cruel words, despite all the muck,
For this difficult day we wish you good luck.

BiH 14: The joys of flying

It has just gone twelve midday and I'm sitting in a rather dingy corner of Cologne Bonn Airport waiting for the assistance people to return. We hadn't originally asked for help changing planes on our way to Sarajevo but the offer seemed too helpful to refuse, particularly given the stresses of our departure from Heathrow an hour or so previously.

German Wings is a funny sort of airline. Closely linked to Germany's flag carrier Lufthansa it has many of the hallmarks of a legacy airline, with light snacks and complimentary coffee still served to most passengers and staff who actually want to help their customers. Yet it also appears to have acquired a number of similarities with the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet, including low prices and a check in process to match. Having arrived safely from Richmond, save for a my knee taking a severe bashing against a metal girder apparently holding up part of the soon to be demolished Terminal One, we entered the departure hall to find a vast gathering of people around a clutch of check in desks. It seemed that, despite checking in online several days previously we were destined to spend a good part of our pre flight time waiting to be relieved of our luggage. To make matters worse, fifteen minutes before the final call for each departure's check in passengers yet to be served were invited to queue for a different set of desks, the outcome of which being that those arriving last were served first and a state of perpetual confusion existed in the main queue.

Formalities completed and bags dispatched we looked forward to a coffee, and perhaps a paracetamol for me, but alas, by the time we had passed through security, filling plastic trays with everything that might conceivably contain a sliver of metal only to spend five minutes putting everything back together again, we had just five minutes left before we would, presumably, have been unceremoniously unloaded from the flight we had queued so long to join.

Thankfully this was where we left behind the less favorable aspects of flying and were able to enjoy a speedy and efficient flight southeast from London, across the Channel and onto the continent. Onboard service was of a good standard, and the help we received upon arrival, from Thomas, a member of airport staff who spends his days ferrying disabled passengers disparate areas of the airfield, was some of the best I have experienced. A little early confusion over how exactly we should be transferred from one aircraft to the other, without officially entering the Schengen free travel area, was quickly resolved by stamping us (figuratively) into Germany, before checking us straight back out again before a wander through a pretty deserted departure lounge led us to where we sit now.

As a child I adored flying. Without the responsibilities of adulthood and more recently introduced security measures, the whole experience was one big adventure. Large airports with their intricate networks of corridors and moving walkways captured my imagination, offering as they did, a vast array of possible routes and destinations. Everything was exciting and shiny.

But now, with documents to keep track of, deadlines to meet and obstacle courses to navigate, it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. To some degree this explains my preference for travelling by train wherever possible. The simple departure processes and freedom once on board, to my mind, make for a much more pleasant experience, allowing the travel to and from the ultimate destination to truly become an integral part of the trip. As a visually impaired person too, airports are so difficult to navigate without help, whilst stations and trains facilitate a much higher level of independence.

So, come my next holiday, wherever that will be, in addition to weighing up the usual factors when determining where to go, I will be considering seriously the travel options available and the degree to which they contribute to or detract from the whole trip. In the meantime however, we have another flight to catch, the uncertainties of baggage reclaim to look forward to, but also the arrival in a new and hopefully interesting city to look forward to.

So you're going to Bosnia?

Since low cost flying really took off in the early "naughties" European city breaks have become the travel version of the power nap for time pressed tourists.

I've done a fair few in my time, whizzing off to locations as diverse as Paris, Vienna, Bordeaux, Aachen, Munich and Venice - only to whizz right back again just a couple of days later. To date most of the destinations, where not squarely on the usual tourist trail, were at least places that others had been to or were thinking of visiting. Bordeaux is, of course, world famous for the wine lands which surround it, so even if people hadn't thought of going there themselves it rarely seemed to strike them as too outlandish an idea to go.

But try telling people that your next mini holiday is to bosnia and Herzegovina.

Silence seems to be the first reaction of most, followed by a somewhat mystified enquiry into the purpose of such a trip, concluding inevitably with a sincere yet misplaced urge to be careful in such a "dangerous country".

Granted, BiH, as I shall refer to the country henceforth for the sake of brevity and to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to the inconsistencies in my spelling, is no stranger to conflict. However, the scenes of snipers in the hillsides and international boots on the ground are now over seventeen years old, and the biggest threat to the majority of tourists is petty crime, sun stroke and over indulgence in Bosnian hospitality.

So, what exactly are we expecting BiH, and especially Sarajevo and Mostar, to offer us in return for our hard earned time and money, and what can we do for BiH? First up, this is an incredibly scenic country, with steep mountains and shimmering streams providing the perfect backdrop to many a photograph. The country also has huge historical and political interest, having stood on the road between west and east, Christianity and Islam, new ideas and long held wisdom, for all of its existence. But most importantly of all, BiH is, as far as the literature I have read is concerned, a friendly and hospitable place, where travellers are welcomed and looked after, and where the most important task of the adventurer can be realized, namely the sharing of knowledge, the identification of similarity and the celebration of diversity.

And what can we do in return? In the very least we can tell the world of our travels, of the nature of the country, and help to chip away at the two decades old myth that this is a state to be avoided.

But, before any of that, we need to get ourselves packed and on the plane.

Unfinished articles: Abandoned stories

Rather ironically I wrote this post a little while back, bemoaning my inability to finish and upload my posts, and then failed to finish it.  I publish it now, worts and all, for your interest.

Oh dear, somehow I knew it would end up like this. That, no sooner had the metaphorical gangplank been raised, signalling the start of my adventure on the Clyde, and the knots and cleats of sailing reality replaced the hopes and dreams of imagination, then my enthusiasm for dedicating an hour or two to penning interesting prose would fade away irreversibly. And somehow, despite being aware of the danger, the risk that the anticipation I had built amongst my readers would be dashed against the rocks of disappointment, I allowed it to happen.

I lie here now, tapping away on my iPhone screen in the middle of a late Spring night, I could make myself feel a little better about the situation by telling you that it always was an inevitable outcome. Sailing is a demanding activity, physically, mentally, and occasionally emotionally, and there simply isn't sufficient capacity in the human mind - I mean my very human mind - to dedicate to the rather frivolous and peripheral task of charting the days events in writing. But, whilst it is certainly true that the time available to me for blogging was a limited commodity, usually eeked out from moments otherwise reserved for sleeping, eating or engaging socially with one's crewmates, the form of writing used, and the expectations made of myself, were a conscious decision for me. By this I mean that I choose to write long, hopefully expressive sentences, carefully conjure images in the mind of the reader, and generally sweat and squirm over every word and clause until I'm absolutely happy, or at least as happy as I ever will be, with the results. It is me who chooses to write in a manner which takes time and effort. Me who eschews brevity and embraces verbosity. I am my own worst enemy.

And so it was, that I found myself stirring in the early hours as the good ship Avacet rocked gently on her moorings, exploring my immediate environs with pensive finger and gentle touch in search of my elusive virtual notepad, and indulging in cerebral gymnastics, painting pictures of sight and sound with the humble English word.

It was by no means a shore. Indeed, writing has long been a release for my thoughts. However, that isn't to say that capturing a day's worth of senses recorded in my head, and translating them into script which conveys adequately the holistic experience, is a simple and uncomplicated task. As something of a persistent apprentice in the profession of perfectionism, I am inclined to interrupt the writing process every sentence or so to correct a misplaced word or rework a clunky passage. I'm doing it now in fact, stopping in my tracks to consider how the informal "clunky", set amongst more greater eloquence, might prove abrasive to the eye or ear, and stop the reader dead in their tracks. And, as I rummage for the right words or rhythm the story I am attempting to relay ebbs gently from my mind.

Lying there flat out in the coffin like space between the central bulkhead and the wall of assorted belongings constructed between my cabin companion and myself, I fought a constant battle between the forces of imaginative writing, accurate storytelling and a creeping fatigue which frequently threatened to immerse my body in creativity sapping lethargy. The previous day's events - the powerful gusts which began striking our sails with relentless regularity, the apparently permanent list of the saloon which made tea making a perilous activity, and the sheer joy of peering through a porthole to see conical silhouette of the Scottish Holy Island rising steeply from now calmed waters - loomed bright and bold in my head. The words too, which would bring them to life when applied to a webpage were not difficult to find. But their relentless refinement taxed my already depleted resources, resulting in stunted stamina and a growing impulse to succumb to sleep so as to be refreshed for the morning's tasks.

Pushing back against the urge to close my eyes and rest my mind, I ploughed on for another paragraph or two. But by now the pressure was becoming too great, and the very real need to put down my pen was becoming fixed in my brain. The sentences became shorter. Workmanlike reportage replaced evocative imagery, and the very foundation of my writing, the enjoyment of playing with words to enact scenes from memory or imagination, began to shift in the sand. And before long, that mind, once active with thoughts and ideas, would relinquish its burden and relax into slumber, leaving the stub of a story hanging lifelessly like a beautiful bridge to nowhere.

Oh to not care

Months and months ago I set out to turn over a new leaf in the documenting of my life.  Sounds grand, doesn't it?  Well, it might have been grand had the perfectionist inside of me not scuppered everything.

You will surely not have overlooked the fact that, since putting finger to (virtual) keyboard back in those heady days before the coming of Easter ... or the Tour de Yorkshire ... I have failed to publish a single blog entry.  This is pretty poor, even by my standards, but really isn't for want of trying.  I've now lost count of the number of articles I've written.  Articles on my sailing trip in the Clyde, articles on journeys in the past, and even pieces - just like this one - bemoaning my complete inability to finish and post a post.

I'n pretty sure that virtually every non-perfectionist thinks that to be one means to be perfect.  Nothing, at least in my own experience, could be further from the truth.  To be a perfectionist is to write every sentence ten times; to review and counter-review; to dot every "i", cross every "t" and ponder eternally over the merest hint of a split infinitive.  The perfectionist is cursed to spend their lives in search of the very best metaphor, whilst worrying that it might actually be an analogy; to search deep in the recesses of their poor cluttered brain for a certain word, as only that one will do; and to not stop writing, editing, or worrying until they are absolutely, completely, one-hundred-and-ten-percent positive that everything is absolutely perfect ... which, of course, it never is.

So, this is why, I have umpteen unfinished articles sitting in a little bit of cyberspace, just waiting for hell to freeze over and my resolve to slip, allowing them to be shown to the world in all their 99% perfect glory.

But that isn't the end of the story, as you will have guessed from the appearance of this not-quite-perfect-post.  I simply cannot go on like this.  I need to write!

So , here is my plan, not my first one I should say, but let's brush over that.  I'm going to do a little deal with you, my dearest and most valued reader.  I will write more posts, tell you a bit about what I'm up to now, and what I've done in the past, if you promise solemnly never to comment on the inadequacies of my spelling or grammar, the structure of my prose, the lack of imagination in my storytelling, the factual errors and blatant, omissions, the things I shouldn't have bothered with and those I should have but didn't, or the fact that I am about to break my original promise of writing only about over there and not the here and now at home.  This is a rebirth or sorts, a freeing of the self-imposed shackles with which I had previously constrained my own thoughts.  I will now write about anything and everything (within reason...), and enjoy it.