Reboot For April

As I mentioned last week, March was a bit of grind, health-wise. In fact, my theme for April is “re-boot,” since I’m restarting, or reconfiguring a lot of the projects I started in January and February. Last week was a bit of a mess, but the pieces are starting to fit together and the next three months are pretty much mapped out.

I’m doing this because I’d like to take a dramatic break when summer holidays roll around in July. I’m planning to go totally offline (including blogging and email) for at least two and possibly three weeks. Partly, I want to do a GTD style “50,000” feet review (for more on that, check out this excellent review of David Allen’s book, Making It All Work). But mostly I’m keen to write a new manifesto for my work. That sort of thing can only happen (for me) a long way away from electronic distractions.

Writing a manifesto does sound kind of pretentious. The truth is that I wrote one for myself in 1997 that, with minor revision in 2001, drove seven years of great writing and research. This blog exists because of that manifesto and, more importantly, the ideas I penned led to changes in career and moves to different countries.

But, my work and circumstances have evolved and it is time to dream some new dreams and articulate some different beliefs and ways of working. One of my longtime favourite bloggers, Hugh McLeod has started writing a new manifesto and that’s inspired me to do the same. The world (and my small role in it) has changed a lot since 1997.

Until then, there is lots to do. For the first time in my life I applied for medical leave on an academic course, which means I’ll restart the BerkleeMusic Composition For Film & TV course today. This is a great course and I’m looking forward to investing a couple of days a week making the most of it.

I’m also well into the design stage for a new music studio. For the past few years I’ve housed the studio in the smallest bedroom of my apartment. I called this studio “The Cloud” although I never really advertised that name (my studio in Delhi was similarly called “Pooja,” the Hindi word for the daily ritual of prayer). These have very much been personal studios, but what I’m planning will be a bit larger and more ambitious.

Photographically, there are some interesting things coming up. I’ve sold a couple of prints in recent weeks and hopefully this week I’ll close on a few more. And, next week the guys from lightenupandshoot will be in town doing a workshop, which promises to be a lot of fun (and a chance to broaden the portfolio.

I’ll be travelling to Adelaide later in the month. Although it will mostly be a family visit, I’m very keen to try out my new Tilt Shift lens (Nikon PCE 24mm) on the post-industrial landscapes of Port Adelaide. The image at the top of this post is one of my first shots with that lens. My plans for later in the year have changed as well, with an interesting trip coming up to North America.

Finally, I’ve submitted the first of what I hope will be a series of commissioned pieces for a regional newspaper. Although I’ve written for journals and magazines before I’ve never, apart from letters to the editor, written for a newspaper. As much as we talk about the decline of print media, there’s still a kind of romance in writing for a ‘paper. Who knows how long that opportunity will exist.