Coffee shop writing

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Leander, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO500
 Leander, 2016

こんばんは！ Hello!

Today’s photo is one that I took this evening at the coffee shop. I dropped Koa off at baseball practice and then went to the nearby Starbucks to write my A-Z blog post. I enjoy hanging out at a coffee shop, reading or in this case blogging and it’s fun to people-watch even though this particular Starbucks is relatively quiet.

So, I’ve been thinking about what to do with our old laptops. We have three of them that we don’t use any longer. They’re very old, and aren’t 100% healthy. Two of them have hard drive errors, which makes them unreliable and the third is over 10 years old so it is just super slow! It runs Windows 7 just fine, but modern browsers run like molasses on it! But I don’t know the best way to dispose or recycle them. Of course I want to make sure all the data is completely wiped too… I guess I need to do some research!

Well, it’s almost time for bed. I think I’ll listen to the end of the Dodger game (yay, Maeda!) and then read a bit. おやすみなさい！

– B Barron Fujimoto

A-Z Challenge – E

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E is for “Everything But the Girl”

So, this post is about one of my favorite bands, but not really about them or their music. I wanted to write about how their music changed during their careers, and how that change affected me.

I first started listening to Everything But the Girl (EBTG for short) in 1984 while in high school, and they became one of my favorite bands. At that time, they were sort of jazzy, kind of new-wave… definitely not mainstream (at least in the US). I saw them perform live in 1986 when they were touring promoting their album “Baby, the Stars Shine Bright”. That album featured an orchestra and was very different from the previous. I still enjoyed it, though. The next couple albums were similar, kind of adult contemporary, but then with “Amplified Heart” they went a new direction, and then “Walking Wounded” and “Temperamental” were pretty much full-on electronic music.

That last shift was a major one, and it really sounded like a completely different band than the EBTG of the ’80s. I actually had a hard time processing that change. Not anything serious or traumatic, of course, but I had this notion that in order to be “true to yourself”, you couldn’t change like that. So, the new direction the duo took was, to me, not the true EBTG.

Maybe I was too young to realize that people change as they grow older and gain new experiences. I believed that your personality (or music in the case of EBTG) shouldn’t change, and if it did, you were selling out.

Later I read an interview with Tracey Thorn (singer from EBTG) and she said something like, “The person who sang on that album no longer exists. I am a different person. I cannot sing someone else’s songs.” I’m sure that is not the exact quote, perhaps not even close, but it is what I remember reacting to. It was a bold statement… and a bit shocking. How could she say those things about the songs that I love so much?

But now I am older, and I realize that people do change… I don’t have the exact same interests as I did when I was young… for instance, I was very into painting when I was in my teens and early 20s, and earned an Art Studio degree, but these days, I have very little interest in painting. That person who went to Art School is very different now. It was who I was at the time and I am happy I experienced that. I can’t imagine a different reality. But that person exists in the past.

I’ve also noticed that people I’ve known for a long time, who were previously so into certain things, have lost interest in those things. That’s natural and okay. No need to beat yourself up or feel guilty over evolving! (I admit feeling a little guilty when I was in my 30s that I did not paint anymore)

But isn’t it great that we can change? Wouldn’t it be terrible if we were stuck as the same person we were 20 years ago? Isn’t it best to simply accept and be happy with who are at the present moment? I believe the answer is “yes” to all three questions.

Wow, I’m tired

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/300 sec, ISO400
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Hello! As you may have noticed, I’ve been working on the A-Z Challenge, and thus, I am actually wondering what to write about in today’s regular blog post. I put a bit of thought into “D”, and spent a decent amount of time editing and rewriting it. It’s actually a lot of fun to do that! I know that I am not very skilled when it comes to writing, but I enjoy doing it anyways. I just didn’t know that it is tiring, but it makes sense. I mean, you are using brain power and oxygen in thinking, and that must cause some mental fatigue, right?

But, just like the exhaustion you feel after a good run, the mental exhaustion feels kind of good. As long as I know that it’s almost bedtime! If I had several hours left in the rest of the day, I probably wouldn’t have such a positive mindset! 😆

Today’s photo is of Lani waiting to go outside. We are trying to get her to not bark so much if she wants to go out, so now if she is loud, we stop in our tracks until she quiets down. I think she is learning slowly that in order for us to let her out quickly, she needs to not bark. But she’s so full of energy it must be difficult!

A couple other things about this photo is that I am trying to use a consistent look to my black and white photos, and have started making some presets in Lightroom so that I can produce the same look. This includes film grain, tone curve, and slight blur. Also, I’ve been getting into the 4×5 format. I’ve normally used a 2×3 format, or the square format, and never considered 4×5. But I kind of like it!

Well, it looks like I did find a few things to write about tonight, huh!

おやすみなさい！ Take care!

– B Barron Fujimoto

A-Z Challenge – D

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D is for “Digital Decluttering”

I am a big fan of decluttering, both physical “stuff” and digital as well. The digital version is a little different in that its goal (at least for me) is to remove the things that waste my time, or that I don’t find valuable. For instance, I used to love browsing my Facebook feed but eventually found it unfulfilling in the long run. It was entertaining sometimes but ultimately I didn’t actually learn anything from my feed and I realized that I’d rather spend my time reading, watching travel shows or photography videos, or looking at my Feedly feed, which is easier to filter down to things I am interesting in seeing. I rarely check Facebook any more, and if I do go to Facebook, I’m just following someone’s link.

As for my Instagram feed (and Flickr too), I unfollowed a lot of people who I had followed since I started using Instagram. At first I felt bad unfollowing them, but you know, tastes change over time and it’s not healthy to try to stay with interests that aren’t relevant any longer. Gotta move on at some point! But who knows, someday I might become interested in that kind of photography again and I will re-follow the same people. But it’s not something I can force… it just has to happen naturally. The point is to not hold onto things that aren’t valuable anymore.

On another level, I like to delete old bookmarks that I have never gone back to (and may even be broken). Although it seems like these bookmarks are “out-of-sight, out-of-mind”, I believe that they still take up space in my subconscious. And anyways, when I click on a bookmarks folder, having less to look through means it is easier and faster to find the bookmarks I do use.

For my devices, I recently bought a Chromebook. It’s a laptop, but it basically just runs the Chrome browser. Many people think that this limitation makes Chromebooks less valuable, but I have found that placing limits on things is liberating. What I mean is that since large programs like Photoshop or Office cannot be installed on it, the purpose of the Chromebook is straightforward, streamlined, and simple. It’s not burdened by bloatware, so the things that it can do, it does very fast. It doesn’t have to load extra programs into memory, or start up a huge OS. In fact, it boots up in just a few seconds, and the battery lasts 10 hours. It’s a great blogging machine, and wonderful for watching Netflix.

These are just a few things in which digital decluttering improves my life. It works for me, and I think decluttering might help a lot of other people simplify their digital lives, and get them valuable time back.

Birthday boy’s dinner

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"Mountain of Karaage" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.2, 1/100 sec, ISO640
 “Mountain of Karaage” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Happy Monday!

Today is Koa’s 12th birthday 🎂… just one more year before he becomes a teenager. He’s still a little kid in so many ways, but he’s growing up too fast! It’s really true what they say about how they become grown before you know it. Actually, it seems like they were young boys for a long time, but suddenly at about 6th grade they change and are little adults. The time really flies by! I still can’t believe Bay is a freshman in high school. 😮

Today’s photo is of a mountain of Japanese fried chicken , which is called “karaage”. We like to call it JFC. 😋 It is so yummy, and Koa requested NO VEGGIES. But we did have grilled asparagus as well, although I don’t think Koa ate any. We let him pass on it on his special day.

The karaage was so good that now I am thinking that I want to request it for my Father’s Day dinner. This year, my family will be with me for Father’s Day, which hasn’t happened in a long time! Usually they are in Japan for over a month in early summer, so I am alone on Father’s Day, but this summer they are making their Japan trip a month or so later than usual.

Time flies so quickly these days that I know that summer is just around the corner!

Take care, and good night for now. おやすみなさい！

– バロン Barron Fujimoto