Brian #189, 2010

Today I am a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Last night was a very sleepless night and I woke up not feeling very refreshed. It’s going to be another hot day. I should be elated today because the project has reached 50,000 visits since it began a mere seven months ago. Somehow this feels like this should be a major accomplishment. I have been obsessively printing the past couple of days and I lose focus on everything else around me. This is good I think. I have never been this focused on something so intently in my life. I have been ignoring all other things around me. It almost like my entire life has culminated in this moment of existence. So many things hang in the balance. Will the funding come through and this project find a destination? I still have doubts and fear that this is all still my own delusional fantasy, but I have managed to up the stakes and now have so many others involved on which I now must rely and it all seems to hang in a precarious balance. Friends have sent me amazing reviews of me, my passion, my vision, and there has been an awesome support so far on Kickstarter. I guess it’s all so unnerving coming down to the wire and soon the entire balance of what I am doing will be placed on my shoulders and be watched and possibly judged. I am really a simple man, compassionate, considerate, up front, and now terrified. Hence the need to print in such a compulsive manner. Yesterday, in the middle of all this the phone rang and it was UPS wanting me to come in early to cover someone on vacation. I thought it had been worked out so that I would have this time to remain focused. But I ended up going in anyway and it just shot a hole in the middle of my process. By the time I got there I was so buried in work that it took me 75 minutes to just get up to speed. I love my job, but when I have to cover someone else it can become a frantic mess. I came home after my 5 hours and jumped back into printing until it got so dark that I could no longer see what I was doing. I still have seven pieces to print. I can no longer juggle all that I have and it feels all the balls are beginning to hit the floor. I have neglected my beautiful garden outside and with this heat it is beginning to wither and everything around the house has been neglected. I have never been so focused, yet so unfocused at the same time if that makes any sense at all. I am having a hard time communicating with people, and certain levels of my comfort have been compromised.

My boyfriend must think me mad as he watches be spiral out of control. Last year I applied for a job that I was absolutely perfect for. Something I loved and desperately wanted to do. I put my entire soul into that process and thought for sure I would get the position. I even got down to the final interviews, but in the end it did not happen. I never knew what happened, but I figured it was for the better, as I moved on to this. I was devastated. The terror of putting oneself fully out there to only fall on your face is overwhelming, especially when you believe in it so desperately. In the end don’t the good guys always prevail? Perhaps I will leap and the net will no longer appear. Am I on the merge of my own creative self-inhalation? I keep forgetting we live in a precarious world where it is OK to be normal.

Today’s image is focused on the detail. I always shoot a series of close ups of my subjects looking for my perceived sense of balance. They don’t always work, but every once in a while something just jumps out at you and when you see it you know it works. This is one of those images, that I feel and not entirely sure why.