| MONOMAD | What I am

My work can be fun, self-sacrificing, lonely, hateful, difficult, complicated, despised or praised. My work can be abstract, concrete, dangerous or super simple. My work... sometimes it drains me of energy.

It happens that we had another 1st of May, always a day of struggles and reminders. Several times I heard some colleagues say that even when it is time to rest and enjoy, after working with a lot of sacrifice, and all that I mentioned before, a lifetime, it is imperative to keep on working.

We have a record of suffering and stress but we also love all these moments and artefacts.

My retirement came but I had a nightmare where I was starving to death and I decided to look for a contract. This week I'm going out to look for another one. I plan to work in several places. As long as I have the strength, I will keep working, a friend said.

Then came some smiles and memories and a pat on the shoulder. We also talked about that other friend-colleague of ours who got sick and needed months of treatment and dialysis, and the other with a pacemaker who does not want to set aside his camera.

Few concerns like this are experienced in youth. However, there are certainly others.

I'm telling you, it's a lonely job sometimes.

Photographers, no... I didn't put the grain in the photo on purpose, it's my camera that at 800 ISO behaves quite badly. That's why I dream of one of these.

{LOL}

These are the desires of some young people... 😅 There are even those who would have asked to, at least, touch her.

(NOT ME)

😁

Who here studied semiotics, raise your hand!

But let's put technical issues aside.

Since returning home today (with my battery completely exhausted) I've been thinking that it's not the technique that counts but the eye behind the camera. This is a recurring thought, and a condescending one too.

It happens that I feel tired sometimes, very tired. And the thoughts that I am supposed to control and direct resist being controlled and directed and I start to complain about a reality that I have created myself.

It is not always so lonely. Here we can go from one end to the other with ease. Quiet noise and noisy silence. A lot of physical and mental preparation is needed for these activities in the field.

To many, it seems silly just because they're not in our shoes.

What do we mean? Are we vain or do we have some secret thrill when we look through that little hole? {LOL}

Nah. It's just a job like any other, we have a life like everyone else, with its ups and downs... why make it so complicated?

We have a lot of competition within the audience. We often wonder what we have to offer differently if anyone with a smartphone can be doing the same thing we are doing...

These are the current concerns. We are also concerned about AI. But not only us, artists, writers... there is a latent fear of the machine, let's say, the machine revolution?

🤷‍♀

This is my entry in the #Monomad Challenge. It's a bit of my day, yesterday, what I see besides doing what they do. Something about my internal struggles too, desires... and what I am.

Camera	Panasonic Lumix G10
Location	Havana, Cuba.

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_{Original content by @nanixxx. All rights reserved ©, 2024.}