Author: Jessica

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Why I Won’t Allow the New Popularity of Film to Take My Love of it from Me

I think we’ve all been there. That place where something you love because of its obscurity, its uniqueness, and how it makes you feel, gets co-opted by a celebrity. All you can do as their image flashes up on every gossip and news site is just utter curse words and hope that it doesn’t become a trend with all of their followers and fans because somehow you just KNOW that when your hobby or love goes mainstream it will just be ruined… taken from you and then rubbed in your face by people who you KNOW can’t possibly love it as much as you do.

My unique and used-to-be obscure love is film photography.

Years ago I fell in love with a set of photos taken by a Diana camera.  They were these pink, dreamy photos of some carnival rides (what else, amirite?) and they stayed with me on my mind until one day I decided I wanted to be the one to take photos like that!  I was sure I could do it, bought a Lomography Diana F and kit off of eBay and away I went snapping!

 

The closest I ever got to replicating those carnival photos

 

Recently, The Lily published a post called How Kendall Jenner is Bringing Back Film (and ruining it for some).

In the vein of being honest, I’ll admit when I saw the title and post featured by the Japan Camera Hunter Facebook page, my heart hurt.

I don’t watch the Jenner shows (Kardashian?) and I don’t know which sister is which (I spent 15 minutes searching for Kylie Jenner in order to link to the article), but I do know the amount of people who watch and follow their every breath is ginormous!  Kendall Jenner alone has 86.4 million followers on Instagram!  SO many of those people copy the family… and I know that means people all over the world are going to be buying MY film cameras, using MY film and driving up prices.  I don’t want to share.

I want to shout from the rooftops that “it’s mine it’s mine it’s mine and you can’t have it!!!”

One of the things I love so much about film was how many flaws there were.  I started to realize my favorite photos were the ones with something so very clearly wrong with them. They had scratches from the camera, the film was expired, I opened the back too early and exposed half of the film to light, and were so often misaligned because truly, I had no idea what the difference between all of my Diana lenses really was.

Annnnndddddd in the midst of my pouting about film becoming so popular, I had a surprisingly mature (for me!) thought.  There are those who fall in love with these outdated items and hobbies, film cameras, vinyl, cassettes, and so on who give it up the moment it becomes mainstream.  They are the ones who cry “I did it before it was cool!”, and then pack their hobby or collection away because gosh forbid they do the same thing as a celebrity.  They aren’t in love with any part of it, other than they can say to their friends, family, and strangers online that they are unique because they do something that most people don’t any longer.  They like the confusion it generates among their peers, answering questions, and having it and them, be the center of attention.

They just don’t love it.

I’m a pretty OCD person, and I don’t mean that in just the “ha ha my house is spotless” kind of way, I mean… I have some pretty serious obsessive compulsive tendencies that I’m working through with a doctor.  My photos are really one of the few areas in my life where I can see a mistake or problem and it makes me love the photo more.  I don’t question myself, or attempt to get a perfect photo.  I don’t spend more than two shots on one subject trying to get the right lighting and exposure… because for some reason, I’m okay with the photo not turning out.

I love my film, my cameras and my photos.

So, I’ve put my big girl panties on and after self-reflecting on my poutiness, my feelings, and my new Polaroid cameras I just got… there are some good things about film becoming popular again.  The odds of companies producing film again that was once discontinued just grows!  For those who stick with hobbies through the times when it becomes popular, we can only benefit!  Maybe someone like me, who sets several alarms clocks, apologizes many times during the day for not providing a perfect whatever, and counts their steps could find some kind of acceptable and unknown chaos in film photos as well.  Maybe, that celebrity who is drawing their followers to an Instax, SuperSampler, or a Contax T2, should be acknowledged as showing everyone a new outlet for creativity or a new hobby.  Maybe some child is going to pick up a camera and create the next art movement.

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“Prayers”

If you’ve ever posted online about feeling ill or just having a really crummy day you are more than familiar with the replies of “prayers” and “praying”.  We get these on a regular basis through social media or even text messages when I give out updates about my spouse.

While we are an atheist family, these responses made me uncomfortable long before I decided that religion and belief in a God wasn’t for me.  It was only after Jason got really sick though that I’ve been able to pinpoint more and more why these type of responses irritate me so.

So first and probably most obvious, prayers just don’t work.  I don’t feel as though I need to expand on that as it is very straight forward.  If you would like read more though about prayers simply not working, I would recommend the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer.

Second, how many times have those who have written “prayers” or “praying” to someone actually reached out to help?  In my experience, it isn’t often.  Simply replying with those words seems like a cop out to me.  It allows an individual to acknowledge the sickness or feelings of someone without having to do anything or ask any questions.  A simple search on Facebook of “feeling depressed” leads to open posts of those who just aren’t feeling good about their lives right now.  The comments of those they are connected with a filled with “prayers” and “praying”.  It isn’t filled with questions, love, offers of phone calls or help, or even a comment that with time it will be okay.  These commenters are using their religious belief to do a drive-by “praying” comment and then immediately forgetting about the person who may need help.

Other articles and blogs have pointed out the arrogance and manipulativeness of the frustrating phrase.   I’m not for sure I find the phrase arrogant or manipulative (there are exceptions to this one though), but I do find it frustrating.  The phrase generally signals the end of any actual support, it says to me  that the attitude of the poster is “Well, I did my part now I need to get back to my laundry.”

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IKEA Besta Refresh Project

iconIt sounds easy; using temporary wall paper and such to give new life to old furniture. Just cut and apply!  Anyway, that’s what Pinterest and craft bloggers say anyway.

I’ve been wanting to try this for awhile. We are a family that moves quite a bit and IKEA furniture is cheap, it doesn’t matter if it gets slightly damaged in the process of a cross country trip, and it actually holds up quite well. The problem is that it generally looks very manufactured and temporary.  So when we were replacing our TV it meant we needed a larger entertainment center.  Instead of spending a few hundred dollars on something that we weren’t going to be happy with, we expanded our current tv stand by spending about 100.00 at IKEA and getting one more Besta shelf and about 100.00 on various temporary paint and wall paper.

This is our after picture.  Instead of rebuying IKEA Besta in white, we opted to use TemPaint in the color white.  We also chose an old style wood temp wall paper.  The TemPaint product has some texture to it and the temporary wallpaper is pretty matte.  I was worried it would be shiny or too vinyl feeling, but it surprisingly isn’t.

After Alone

Here is a before and after photo.  If you plan on doing a large craft project, make sure to take before photos or you’ll end up searching your hard drive for hours for any before photo you can use.

Before and After

If you opt to try something like this yourself, make sure you have something to act as a squeegee to push the air bubbles out as you go.  Don’t believe anyone who tells you it is a one person job.  It takes a long time.  If you read something that tells you it takes just an hour or two, they are LYING TO YOU!!!!!   This took us three days.  Finally, don’t count on IKEA to not discontinue the product you love.  We ended up getting a different door for the third shelf and we had to find the extra legs on Amazon.

I’m not going to provide step by step directions for this project because that sounds exhausting to write, but I will provide you some of the links I used for inspiration and help.

Two Story Cottage: Wallpaper Dresser Tutorial Complete With Don’ts

Spoonflower Blog: Dresser Refresh

Apartment Therapy: IKEA + Contact Paper = DIY Magic

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Prednisone

I wanted to use this site to talk about out lives and the changes we have gone through.  One of those changes unfortunately was working two jobs at once.  Two FULL TIME jobs at once.  I just haven’t had much time or energy to be quite frank.

In October, Jason got incredibly ill due to the Ulcerative Colitis.  At midnight on October 17th, he started feeling sick and by around 6 am the next morning he had gone to the bathroom 16 times and was bleeding.  He was so exhausted, so after getting him back into bed and promising I wouldn’t call his doctor…I called his doctor!  That day the doctor explained that it was either get it under control quickly or Jason would have to be admitted to the hospital.

So, that day, Jason started a very high dose of Prednisone.

Side effects of Prednisone include:

  • Confusion
  • Weight Gain
  • Excitement
  • Acne
  • Nausea
  • Headaches
  • and more serious side effects like Adrenal Fatigue

But within just a few days Jason was already seeing an improvement.  We are into January and it seems as though he is making a turn for the better.  I think both of us are scared because every other week his dose of Prednisone is lowered, but at least right now he can eat!!

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Starting Point

My name is Jess.  The reason for this site was to give my husband and I a place to write. Just random stuff. It doesn’t have to be important, ground breaking or stuff we expected to be read by hoards of Internet users.

It is just a place for random.

Random may come in the ways of posting random pictures, talking about food, sharing a recipe and I think mostly for me, using it as a place to vent?  Maybe that isn’t quite the right word. A place for me to express my thoughts when I need to write them out.

Like tonight for instance. I’m in love with my husband. More than anything, and life has been pretty scary with him recently. In the last six months everything has been turned upside down. We have almost normal days and then days or just hours where all hell breaks loose in our house because of disease. There will be posts about that as well. Jason has thyroid cancer and ulcerative colitis.

People hear ulcerative colitis and think “oh, so he uses the bathroom a lot”.  It’s okay, it’s what I thought also. It actually attacks his skin and can lead to very serious skin infections. It attacks his joints and on bad days we’ve found he can barely walk. The medicines are scary, have some rough side effects and lead me to worry about his future with cancer. It makes him not just exhausted, but fatigued. I love days where he can dance through the kitchen, but so often right now he’s just too tired.

And as I’m new to these diseases, I’m exhausted also. I’ve taken worrying about my husband to a level perhaps not seen on earth before.

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The last couple of days were almost okay but I think he pushed himself too far the last couple of days. I hope to eventually add some of my anxiety homework into these posts, but for now I’m going to sleep and we are going to take tomorrow one hour at a time