Learnt helplessness, our cats & flowers

Hive is really all the about the opposite of what I'll write for these images, let that be clear!

Hubert today

I've spent so much time the past years uncovering learnt helplessness in myself... And that comes after doing downright wild and dangerous things since I was a teen!

So how does all of that work?

Since Hubert the random flower can't talk, I'll have to do it, with our often hapless cats as examples. He did look good today, though!

Help me!

I started the day climbing up to get Lynx down from the roof next door, he spent forever sniffing on the plank I extended, running back where I could not reach him several times. Eventually I got hold of him, and sort of forced him to walk across the plank.

He is excused actually, he is missing Leica... I guess he has been looking for him all over, and then he got mentally trapped up there.

The white ones, however, are totally into trying to bait me, trying to make me climb up to get them for no reason!

Hanging around up there

They'll meow incessantly until they get some attention. I've tried not to help them getting down at all, since that will simply teach them to depend on me...

When I started doing these pictures she totally went into that mental trap, maybe even trying to show me why she needed help haha!

Looking good

She did look good up there, so for that reason only I'd not even consider helping 😁

I did help the others in the beginning, but quickly it became clear that that is not the thing to do, unless they spend a day or longer stuck of course. Which happened to Zimba a few weeks ago

Zimba this morning

I do worry about Zimba... He is far too dependent on me, but not taking care of him won't work either...

Hopefully his hormones will transform him into a powerful male later!

Still up there

Actually something happened to the memory card in the Sony A900 which made me get another one, Zimba spent the time I did these images just waiting for me.

For myself a fascinating thing about getting 100% into open source software for photography has been uncovering a lot of tiny bits of learnt helplessness. Now, I got started with IT in the mid eighties, and have been running something on Linux most years since 1998, but still there are all of these tiny moments where I think that I might not be able to do something.

Or that I need to look something up, rather than using my memory and the built in man pages or help functions in the command line. Which is weird since I started that out by getting a huge book on Linux commands back then...

Colour version

Actually doing these edits specifically for Hive the past weeks or months has been very useful. Now when it comes to photography I seldom feel that there is something that I cannot do, or that I haven't learnt how to get done in the past, even if all the tools have changed.

Using Pinta in a very simple, almost brutish way has been very useful. And it seems to work too, since I get some traction and upvotes, thanks for that everyone!

I've also been testing out lots of ways to do things that match the rough style I'm working towards, I would never have treated a colour images this way before.

The basic, real self teaching that I did a couple of decades ago soon has come to the fore, though. When I started running the shared studio space I also bought a kinda radical book on Photoshop, which was all about daring to cut hard in levels, curves and so on.

It has helped me a lot to this day, but with most of my belongings being swallowed up by 2020 I'll have to somehow find it again online, so that I can share it here.

A sort of portrait

Eventually she got the point of course, that I would not help at all!

When I came back with a new memory card she was already back on the ground, so hopefully she's learnt that she is on her own when it comes to trees 😁

A tiny bee

How does the world look after I've worked on this for a while? When there are so many challenges and real risks to handle?

Well at least I know one thing for sure: doing this sort of content on Hive makes a lot of sense across everything that I know & have to deal with every day!

Perhaps also for the more risky things I'll have to handle now that Europe definitely is going down a super dangerous path...

Hopefully I can be a sort of creative worker bee, earning what I need to eat on free & totally uncensorable platforms like Hive!

The bee is still there!

Actually its been my experience that the world outside of the technocratic nightmare that especially Europe has become is much better, natural and sort of possible to handle.

The problem is of course that problems like extreme use of resources to fuel the emptiness inside is a global problem...

But the banana plants in our garden are still doing their thing, together with the bees of course.

Zelda

Zelda is the cat that I find the hardest to understand. She complains all the time, and has her own way of meowing that is easy to emulate. So often I keep talking to her in that way, sort of dismissive grunts.

She has a good chance at growing old I think! She is grumpy and not impressed with the others when they're indulging in weakness haha!

Zelda and Marigold

Once I started seeing that side of her our dialogue and interactions changed in so many ways, and now she seems to be happy actually.

Yeah she keeps complaining even when I give her the best food, but after I started brushing her off now and then she has become happier it seems!

That is very much the opposite of especially Marigold and Zimba, who are totally dependent on me.

I think Zelda has gotten the point: the world out there is a jungle, and the cat that want to survive has to become a bit rough...

Maybe Zelda has totally stopped learning helplessness, from herself, us, or anyone! I sure hope so, since I want to have her around 🙂