Well, Christmas didn’t exactly go as planned.
We planned to travel to go see family in Kansas City and Nebraska for the next ten days.
Yesterday, we made it as far as Oneonta, Alabama before we decided we should stop at an urgent care for Covid, flu, and strep for Porter because he had a sore throat and no one we were going to visit needed to be exposed to sickness.
Sure enough, Porter has strep. So, back home we went. Interesting 5 hour drive at least. And I’m glad we found out before we made it all the way to Memphis, which had been our original plan for seeking out an urgent care. The drive back from Alabama was much shorter than the original idea.
Still, Christmas plans being thwarted is rarely the end of the world.
Today we slept in and Jared and I went to Costco and Trader Joe’s for goodies. And boy, we did come home with goodies.
And then tonight, after a predictable meltdown, I returned to creative brainstorming. Because: the gear puzzles in my brain will not stop turning. My brain naturally turns to creative problem-solving when left to its own devices, and my photography gear has been a problem for the last six months.
When I sold off the second Fuji GFX 50sII and several lenses, and purchased the Fuji X-S20 and started contemplating moving more seriously back to the X series ecosystem, I hit a major creative wall when the first attempt to adapt the Cinelux 37.5mm lens to the X-S20 failed.
It’s a technicality: When I originally cobbled together the adapter, I could not find a M65 to X Series adapter. I had no idea there was actually a company making them.
So instead, I bought a M65 to M42 step down lens filter ring, and an M42 to FX adapter.
And, I proceeded to have a massive meltdown when the lens wouldn’t focus on the X-S20 because the focal point was closer to the sensor than my lens could get. And I gave up, assuming the 37.5mm would only work on the GFX forever.
However: there is a company making these adapters, and I have one on the way now.
Which means, my dream of making my GFX be an exclusively monochrome camera while the X-S20 is the color version, shooting Cinelux lenses simultaneously……well, that dream is alive again.
In my brainstorming, I have also realized exactly how stunted my creativity has been most of the late summer and Fall.
And I know why that is, and I take it as a very good sign that my creativity is returning. Even if it is only taking the form of creative problem solving thus far, it makes me extremely happy to realize that maybe I am making substantive progress to leaving the past in the past.
Even if the meltdowns have not completely stopped just yet. The meltdowns may never stop completely; it occurred to me that they may actually be a symptom of the PTSD. But today, I recovered enough to get excited about my art again and that is enough.
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