Therapy....

In a another life-time that now seems a million years in the past, i used to be a lighting designer for shows and live events. So when I started out recently with tākiri and the taking of photos for what it produces I was very blasé about taking photos etc because i knew EVERYTHING about anything remotely technical involving cameras/lighting/colour temperature etc etc…well i don’t actually, in fact my photographic ability hovers between utterly atrocious and absurdly mediocre. It has taken me almost 3 months to finally produce a single photograph of the jewellery that is (a) in focus, and (b) brightly lit. Up until last week, all my attempts at photography resulted in pictures that seemed to be shot on a dark night at the back of a dark cave during a hurricane. I had tried using my wife’s canon DSLR, but as I am a nerd at heart had happily pushed all the buttons repeatedly until even my wife needed the manual to reset the thing as I had reduced a half-decent camera to being only capable of shooting grainy video in sepia… 

There was another post on this blog featuring photos that I had proudly taken a few months back. I recently deleted all of those photos as they were really actually quite terrible, and then had to edit the accompanying post to accomodate the missing pictures hence why it still seems a bit disjointed.

Writing this blog has become cathartic. Initially I was kinda reluctant to write anything on a blog as it had seemed such a distant and emotionless medium to express yourself in, also I did not entirely see the point. It was supposed to be an intro point to developing tākiri into a feasible commercial enterprise but as I went on with the entire process, I realised that apart from tākiri, the effect on me personally was quite surprising. All of a sudden I started writing things in my head that I could use here later and having an avenue to release some pressure by inflicting my ramblings on a wider audience actually proves quite therapeutic to me. Having ms has altered so very much of my life and I am still coming to terms with all the ramifications. One of the biggest effects is that it affects EVERY aspect of life from the most seemingly inconsequential aspect (I want a biscuit but is it made from butter..?), to all the big things (the effect of this disease on my family and relationships) anybody with ms will understand that explaining all of this would take a book on its own and there would still be areas left cover.

Something that always catches my attention, are cures…. As the medical profession still don’t know what causes ms nor how to cure it, cures pop into existence almost daily, and as soon as some of them appear they are chased off – or adopted by a public desperately eager for anything that helps ease this thing.. People pop up and promote all sorts of things that they swear will cure you, from biotin (this is definitely helping some people) to various diets (I follow Swank…) to drugs (I favour Low Dose Naltrexone). There are also many many ‘cures’ that I view with great scepticism, however, as long as someone is getting some benefit out of any of them I say nothing disparaging about any of them at all and they go into the same box as i put most religion and politics – as long as you don’t try and force me to be a believer we can all be friends…..

Currently I am very excited about a cure that I have recently come across, and that is hummus, sun-dried tomatoes and a bottle of vodka. At least you get happy and eat something tasty at the same time, while the hangover that you will have the next day will make you forget that you still cant walk…

Back to tākiri. Last year i veered off-course with the planning for the development of tākiri and the focus went instead on creating short-term objectives – like seeing if i could infact sell anything – that were relatively achievable but then didn’t progress any further as post Xmas people have spent money on gifts etc, and things like a jewellery purchase go to the back of the drawer for a while. So. this year starting from next week (when some people start coming back from leave here in NZ) i start with a long-term approach that will see the involvement of crown-entities (parastatal organisations) and perhaps some other related organisations (not-for-profit and disabled) who could be inspired into coming onboard and developing the momentum needed to take tākiri further. Having an idea for something is fantastic when you begin seeing it coming together from just a scrap of an idea, but there is a point when fresh enthusiasm and drive is needed to get it further still and now i am at that point….