I wasn't sure what to do with myself today. Lately I've been feeling the need to get out every day and capture something, to continue building the porfolio. I don't feel any burnout in this regard, but sometimes I do feel like I'm not entirely sure of where to go and how much time to spend on that. As of late the portfolio work has been almost all I have been up to: I wake up, have coffee, scout some areas and venture out on a little hike and series of bus rides to a location in attempt to capture it. To which I do the same events to get back home, and then spend the evening finally eating something and uploading the footage and photographs after editing each of them. It's an incredibly time extensive series of efforts and I know it's worth it all. But sometimes I feel like I should relax a little more and focus on some other hobbies of mine. I haven't been able to draw at all lately, and I still haven't attended the life drawing sessions that picked up again here that take place pretty much daily. Any time spent sitting still tends to result in guilt. An over active mind that tells me to get up and go and work on something that would help me and improve things. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I do like the motivation and the willpower I have. But I am noticing the fatigue in attempting to maintain that pace. The heat can be intense. And my feet begin to blister from walking for so long. I get dehydrated from being under the sun, and I'm lucky I have afford sunburn entirely.
But the problem here is that I love getting out lately. I really enjoy those moments where I'm in motion and stumbling across places. Especially if it's a location in which I can just pull out the drone and start flying around and finding fun ways to capture the space. I often can't think of anything more I would want to do, and to realise that I'm working on building a portfolio that will contribute to more freedom only contributes more to that excitement.
I think it's that early phase excitement of wanting to get something going, and knowing that it will take a lot of time and effort to reach that point in which the fruits of my labour can actually be enjoyed. And the realisation of this pushes me to get things done more; after all, a portfolio doesn't create itself. It takes time and getting out there to create it. And then it takes even more time back at home to go through all of it and ensure it's suitable for a portfolio. To which after all of that, the best I can do from there on is wait while getting back out there and capturing more to upload and go through. It sounds like it is almost a never ending process, and to some degree that is the truth. The good thing is that while I build this portfolio, my spending isn't really getting too bad in the process. The bus costs about 43p or 88p depending on whether I get it once or twice to a location that I then walk around for a few hours. I don't really buy anything else while I'm out, and usually I'll find drinking fountains to drink from or take my own water with me. The only real sacrifice again is the time spent on all of this. While I do love it, by the time I am done with doing all of these things, it's late at night and I have no time or energy to do much else. I think this feeling that I need to continue with the momentum comes from a genuinely realistic epiphany over creativity and work, to establish a stronger career to which I'm more stable and with better options later on.
Even if that later on is just six months from now, having more freedom financially and creatively would keep me afloat and capable of pursuing my various interests more as things like rent and bills are not of the issue. Especially when it comes to the fact that I'm here in Georgia without a visa, and that visa time is limited to a year. Sooner or later I'll have to go somewhere else, and I want to be sure I can do that if staying here isn't an option. I just know one thing: I don't want to return to England. Perhaps that's the fear. The want to not go home.
Even so, I love getting out and stumbling across such fascinating environments. My main interest absolutely is the natural and the abandoned. To roam around elements of the Soviet Union and see the former empire for what it was once. The greatness in its designs and architecture, such beauty in it all that is sadly unkept and left to rot in most cases. I feel a bit of a race to get out there and find these places to capture and explore for other reasons: time passing. I know that the more time passes for these locations, the more likely a soulless developer will fight to get these places destroyed for something new to appear over it. And in these places are often historical items. Papers, photographs, little aspects of the past that could be found and kept. All these items from the past that in a mere few decades would actually be considered rare items sought after by museums for exhibitions. The real moments of the past in which regular people interacted with those items. Even something as simple as the original printing of paper on a desk that stated when and where it was created. The former glory the Union had for itself and how it cemented itself within time in such a manner.
It reminds me of a museum I went to in Armenia that had exhibitions on similar things. I think that put a lot of things into perspective for me, to realise how fragile time is and how many little things we consider nothing and take for granted in the present end up having some sort of meaning and significance to others later on, even now in the present. I'd consider myself one of those people with interest in these items mostly forgotten.
And I know that the more time passes, the less likely I am to navigate through such spaces, before either nature reclaims them and destroys the fragile items still there, or they're destroyed or taken in some other fashion. As these buildings are no longer containers of the past, but instead just hollow walls and hallways with nothing left but guesses to be made regarding their purpose and former stories. I think that's a tragedy. And I want to capture these spaces in a more authentic manner. Perhaps it also comes from my love for documentary styled filmmaking and photojournalism. I know I want to pursue both of those a bit more going forward.