Ask Questions.

I regrettably bought myself a tripod at a store I knew little about. Upon closer inspection, I realized this isn’t the tripod I wanted.

My previous tripod before I bought this new one was a metre high. Almost everything besides the screws and legs are made out of plastic. It’s still a nice little tripod that I got as a gift but as I kept shooting with it, I found it very restrictive since there were some shots I wouldn’t be able to do at that height. Not so recently I bought myself a new tripod hoping it would be better. It is, however I wish I asked more questions about the type of heads and their advantages. The old one I have is a pan head, which has two screws to control the pitch (up and down) and pan (left and right) as well as one knob for tilts (closest I can describe is the level of the camera). That’s a pan head, which I’m very familiar with however the new one is all light metal and designed as a ball head. From what I’ve learned, a ball head has one knob to control pan, tilt and pitch. Then one to control the rotation of the ball mount? I seriously don’t know what that one knob does besides to stop the mount from rotating. (Anyone who’s experienced with ball head tripods, leave me a comment and help me out. Thanks!)

I guess the one lesson to learn here is ask questions, even when you think you’re sure…ask anyways.

Okay, maybe a second lesson here is don’t make impulse purchases over 10 dollars, you will be screwed on the return policy (which the store does not have, unfortunately.)

 

Not Going to Say It

My head is hurting so bad as I’m writing this, but I’m going to try so hard to pound out this post and hopefully someone can learn from my pain.

Recently I wanted to feel a bit youthful and a friend of mine invited to a party. Long story short, I woke up with a headache and feeling very ill.

This one is going to be super short since my head hurts so much from the rapping and tapping with the whirring of my case fan in my desktop.

So now I’m a bit too old and dorky to party. I’m going back to the bed and stay in the dark with little to no noise as possible.

Full Circle.

With time on your hands, we usually default to doing something pleasurable on our spare time. I know when I upload videos to YouTube, I don’t have the luxury to play video games. The irony of having and internet connection yet only travelling at a speed close to pre-2000 DSL. Bottlenecked, it gives me time to evaluate my life. At first there were things I don’t want to revisit, now I am ready to face them. Replaying my life the past few years and try and organize everything neatly to figure it all out if I’m init for the emotional trip.

Flawed as I am, I realize I am not the cookie cutter individual. Turns out I am both a academic and social underachiever, or I choose to be it. I can’t shake the feeling I have missed a lot of opportunities I could’ve taken if a was just a bit of an extrovert. I was stuck being the timid and shy nobody which has regrettably backfired in recent days of my life and it all roots back to all these things I regret to do when I was young. Unfortunately youth is for a limited time, just like someday I will reach middle age and my health will slowly decline. The toughest things I put myself down on is my sociability. I never really communicated with people in high school. My teenage self never had a chance to enjoy the high school scene and do the teenage things. Falling in love, having a proper graduation, prom; these things I never attended because I was just socially awkward. In the end, playing catch up as an adult sucks and there are some things that will never be replicated directly in adulthood.

We are our own collection of regrets. There is no sense to run away and hide from yourself. It’s good to take stock and see what actions you can take. For me, I can never relive youth but I can be as youthful as possible.

Mistakes

No matter who you are, you screwed up at one point or another. Whether you forgot to take an exam, broke your leg that time you jump off a building, or you go arrested for possession of marijuana when you were actually holding it for a friend; you got in trouble and you had to pay the price for your own stupidity. No matter what the case, “mistakes happen” said every teacher ever but they don’t tell you that being an adulthood, mistakes get you into really big trouble (at least 75% of the time).

As kids, we all got into trouble at some point to some degree. Most of the time, the worst we get would be a beating because back then there weren’t child abuse laws like there are now. So we got our asses literally handed by our parents for everything we did. If your parents didn’t beat you, then well done because either you were smart enough to get someone else beat or your parents didn’t care about you and you’re probably needing this weekly blog post more than me. When we were kids, consequences were consistent. It would be a slap on the wrist, being grounded, or for some, get hit. If you are fortunate, your parents would be the main source of your consequence. As you grow older everyone else, including you, will put out the pain. In high school, your consequences would include the most easiest of consequences but they would hurt physically or emotionally just like how your parents raised you. Low grades? Consequence for not learning. Not going to rehearsal to see a movie? Well you can kiss your shot at the talent show next spring goodbye. Accidently got someone/yourself pregnant? Congrats, you are now a parent. It would seem like the you are either screwing up pretty badly or just feel the world is never giving you a break.

As with growing up, things get more complicated and the consequences to your mistakes regardless of how small are now amplified. Why? Because society thinks being an adult is knowing everything. In reality, adults know nothing. Seriously, I know some people including myself; we still don’t know what we’re doing. We’re always getting into trouble either in our own little ways or after two decades of getting beat down, we’re finally learning to cover up for our mistakes. But even when we cover up our mistakes, being adult has it’s curveballs. Even if you cover up, it might come back to bite you back whether you learned your lesson or not. So to really enjoy adulthood as society places it, is to really never do anything wrong or against society itself. Discussion of fascism aside, I don’t think any of us can really be capable of never screwing up and usually if we do, we would either get in trouble personally or professionally. Legally would be the beating your parents gave when you were a child, but as an adult legal troubles are the worse because this can just ruin in one hit.

Though as badly as your parents, school or society puts it; we all get into trouble regardless of degree. You could be a millionaire having an affair or a teenage girl with an unfaithful love in your life. Just know before you realize it, everything is a mistake. Everything we do or experience is a mistake. Regardless whether we want it to happen or not, something started us along these path of choices and we travelled the best we can here. Even then, we will travel down the wrong path, make the wrong choices, even tried to go back and try again. Doesn’t necessarily make mistakes a bad thing to do, in fact mistakes can sometimes be the best thing that can happen. Getting into trouble for me usually taught me more than school, which is pretty irony but true. The choices I made that never panned provided me some perspective. School can tell you about experience and things that went on with the world and things that might help you with your job. There is no substitute to learning stuff on your own, even when you screw up you learn what would happen when you screw up.

We are not all perfect people, we don’t fit in to any description quite perfectly. We all make mistakes, the best we can do is learn from them and be comfortable with those mistakes because what you did with your life makes your life unique. People might scorn you for them after and you might get into more trouble, mistakes happen but they always happen. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s recommend to make mistakes. When you can do something wrong, sooner or later you will learn to do something right. That’s how evolution happened and parenthood happens because no one learned to evolved or became a parent, you learn from what you know and how badly you screwed up.

Until next time, screw up a little. You’ll live a little, maybe learn something from it.