vocation or calling?

i had a good bit of craic yesterday with a friend on the topic of finding one's vocation. vocation, that's a big word, isn't it? sure a guy like the pope or someone like mother theresa has a vocation, or a calling, but an everyday person? hmm, i wonder if we modern humans find our vocation these days. or if we don't flit too much from one thing to another with our short attention spans to take the time to find out what our vocation might be. would we even recognize our vocation if we saw it? or are we too busy looking to the next thing to even notice it?

i've had moments of feeling that i found my vocation - but what i think they really may have been were moments of flow.  intense concentration in a library, writing when the hours melt away, the words just come and you look up and can't believe how much time has passed. sewing the seams of a quilt. flurries of productivity on a long-haul flight. giving a presentation where you're suddenly aware that it's going well and you can kind of stand apart from yourself and watch. but does it all add up to a vocation? so far, it hasn't, as i'm still not sure what i want to be when i grow up. i've ruled out a few things (after trying some of them for far too long), but the field is still pretty wide open. i'm trying to learn to place myself in those situations where i will feel that feeling of flow, because a vocation has to be related to that. but i think it's hard to sustain.

have you found your vocation? did you follow it? do you even think it exists outside of the vatican?

standing apart from the crowd

the coolest new zealander i know, stacey (remember discounderworld and shoe per diem - those are her brainchildren), has a new blog to go with her new job and already she's making me think. this morning, i read her post on the word entrepreneur and found myself nodding.  as you know, i often ponder language,  and stacey's thoughts on entrepreneur not really being the right word for someone who is starting a little business had actually occurred to me of late.

entrepreneur seems to be a whole lot bigger than small business owner. and while i admire anyone who has their own little company, whether they be a plumber or electrician or specialize in communications in english, there is somehow a difference between daring to go out on your own with a small business and true entrepreneurship. i find entrepreneur as word laden with the notion of a unique invention or The Next Big Thing. i find it interesting stacey also associates it with time and how you as an entrepreneur build up your business in order to spend less time at it, so you can move on to the next thing. i would actually call that investment, rather than entrepreneurship, but i find the thought interesting.

in danish, there is another word for entrepreneur - iværksætter. literally - one who sets work in motion - i like that, as it feels to me like it applies better to the business i'm setting in motion. we've not invented a smart new wheel or the answer to twitter or a truly good battery for storing wind power (whoever invents that will be rich) - we're providing high quality communication services in english for other iværksætter in denmark, who want to grow their businesses globally. and iværksætter seems like the perfect word for it. i guess that's the advantage of living in two languages, you can take the best words from both to express what you would really like to express.

it strikes me as i think about entrepreneurship and read advice about it (and there's a LOT of advice out there), that it's all glowingly positive, evangelistic and rather cheerleader-y. i'm slightly disappointed that no one really talks about all of the fear and night terrors associated with it. because while it's exciting, it's also a tremendous amount of pressure to place on yourself - because the success or failure is all on you - there's no one to blame. and whether or not you get a new kitchen anytime in the near future may be resting entirely on you. 

the first star

in honor of tonight's oscars, i thought i'd share asta nielsen's very racy dance (shockingly so for the time) from the abyss (afgrunden), an early danish silent film from 1910. did you know that asta nielsen was the first person to be called a film star? the term was coined about her. this film, plus a couple of others where alternate sad endings were made for the russian market (russian audiences wanted everyone to die or be ruined in the end), were all i knew about denmark the first time i visited. both film and i have come a long way.

much ado about pinterest

there's a lot of chatter going on out there about pinterest. first, it was about the pinterest business model. and then it was about copyright issues.  today, flickr blocked all copyrighted images from being pinned. which is actually kind of a shame, because as i see it, pinterest is flickr faves categorized. if flickr had kept up with what was happening, they would have given us the ability to categorize our faves long ago, without leaving their site (but i digress).

in my view, it's all much ado about nothing. i pin because i want to find images again. because i am inspired or prompted to think or cook or drool. or because i think something's clever or beautiful or shocking. i'm not using a single pin for commercial gain, and i always leave the link to the original pin intact (if i'm originating the pin and not repinning, i don't always have control then). plus, i am flattered to be pinned, even if don't feel the prick itself.

here's the deal, people, if you're putting your work out there, whether it be words or images, someone is undoubtedly appropriating it. if you don't want that, don't do it. in my experience, the rewards are far greater than the drawbacks. my photo would never have appeared in the moosletter, my kitchen never been on apartment therapy and i'd not have been asked by multiple ikea publications if they could feature my house if i hadn't been sharing those things online. so get over it. and get pinning. i am.

when you put ideas into the world, magic happens

when you start something, it begins with a few who are interested.

then it grows, as they invite their friends.

and who knows what it will become?

i am grateful for this evening. for being interviewed (if only for 3 minutes) on the radio. for being comfortable enough to spend my entire evening in danish. for those who were more charmed by my accent than offended. for those who came - some who felt a sense of duty to me (thank you!!), but who ended up inspired (thank you!!!). to the nodding and smiles and tears i saw in some eyes. to the beginning of something. something potentially special. and especially for the ideas that i hadn't thought of that already surfaced...words to go with the photos (of COURSE!) and photos already taken over the years. fantastic.

mostly i'm grateful for meeting neighbors and new friends. and the sense of community.

i love putting something out there into the world and seeing what happens. because it's always magical.

edit: i should have noted that this post is actually about the project i described in the previous one.

a community photo project

a lomo photo exhibition i saw in manila inspired my project

in recent months, i've gotten involved in a culture group in my community. funds have been ear-marked for our town to have a new "culture house," of which the only thing that's known is that the library will be part of it. right now, the culture house exists in what was the old city hall (and the library is a few blocks away in another old building). decisions have to be made as to whether that building will be renovated or a new one built. as you may imagine, there are factions on both sides and emotions run high.

me, i don't much care WHERE the events to take place, only THAT they take place, so it's quite easy for me to be dispassionate about it (the same cannot be said for many of the others). what i want is for there to be a big variety of cultural events and classes and activities going on for people of all ages. i got involved to bring new ideas to the table and, because i'm selfish like that, to ensure that there's stuff happening that i want to do!

but first, i'm putting my money where my mouth is - tomorrow evening, i'll present the start of a community photo project. the idea of the project is that anyone and everyone in the community should take photos of their life in our town over the next year. they will then (hopefully) contribute them to a flickr group and in a year, we'll have a lomo-style photo exhibition along the lines of the one i saw one time in manila, featuring everyone's photos. and we'll have documented a year in the life of our little town, as well as, i hope, having made new friends along the way.  i've planned the first photo meet-up, since it's sometimes easier to take pictures in public when you're with other people.

i'm going to kick off the project with some inspiration from my own nearly four years of taking daily photos. until i went through my three (!!) iPhoto libraries to prepare the presentation for this project, i didn't realize that i effectively started taking photos every day when i got my first nikon DSLR in may 2008. i just didn't call it a 365 'til january 1, 2010.

it has been a bit hard for me to narrow down all i want to share about how rewarding i think it is to take photos every day (tho' doing that will not be a requirement for participation in the project). it has also been hard to narrow down which photos i want to show for inspiration. i have a notion that many people think that every photograph has to include people, so i'm going to share some ideas for photos that expand people's photographic horizons...to get them thinking about light and shadows and photographing the same spot at different times of day, in different seasons. i've also included a few of my foot shots, as well as shoe per diem, just to share a bit of my own photo obsessions and prove you don't need faces for a photo to be interesting.

most of all, i love the beginning of a new project. i love the feeling of anticipation, the not knowing what direction it will go or how it will turn out. i even love the butterflies in my stomach over the thought that no one will come (all i need is a few to come). but i also want to make it clear that people can join along the way.  of course, i have some ideas of what i want the exhibition to be like in the end (see above lomo photo), but i also intend to keep an open mind and see what happens. when you put something out there and you involve other people, you never know where it lead. but you have to be willing to see where it will take you.

monday musings

i'm doing an alphabet month during february for my 366 project - this is yesterday's  photo - S is for sabin, sunset, silhouette. doing a letter a day (if i count the letters of the english and danish alphabets, it perfectly fits a leap year february of 29) is harder than you might think. we're SO bound to those standard iconic words by which we learned the alphabet - a is for apple, e for elephant, k for kangaroo - and it's really hard once one of those has popped into your head to come up with something else. and although there's a camel in my neighborhood, there are no elephants or kangaroos. but S, that was easy.

* * *

it seems that spring is coming...the horse was running and bucking like a maniac yesterday when i turned her out and the outdoor cat is in heat. poor woody, who got fixed two weeks ago, still thinks he can help her out and she's such a shameless hussy that she lets him.  we hope big brother tiger, who is still intact, gets the job done. no farm is complete without kittens.

* * *

it would appear to be possible for a chicken to have post-partum depression. one of our brown hens, who has been nesting in recent weeks, hatched her chick yesterday. but, being a stupid and still young chicken, she left the nest and it froze to death before we realized it was there. honestly, we didn't think anything would come of all that nesting, since half of them were trying to hatch plastic eggs that we had put out to teach them where to lay the eggs. but there was a perfect little brown chick (albiet dead) in the nest and she was making decidedly sad clucking sounds when husband went to close them in for the night last evening. i thought she'd have forgotten all about it by this morning, but she's apparently still in mourning, as the sad clucks continue. poor dear. i've been watching her neighbor hen all day, in case the egg she's on hatches and she wanders away. it is a slightly dumb time of year for baby chicks with temperatures hovering around freezing, but it's quite nice to know that our chickens are working (so to speak).

* * *

i find it hard at times to work at home. too many distractions and not enough discipline on my part. i need to find another place to concentrate (i'm thinking the library).  other times (like today, actually), i get loads done and am very focused - nearly too focused, actually - sitting too long in one position, not taking enough breaks. i wish there was somehow a happy medium.  do you sometimes work from home? if so, how do you discipline yourself? and those of you who have your own little company - how do you keep the terror that it's all on your shoulders at bay?

* * *

happy monday, one and all.