Sunrise

by Jon Sullivan - 2023-02-09 - Status

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A continuing quest here in Oregon is a sunrise photo. Months of trying and failing.

One of the elusive quests I've had here in Oregon is getting epic sunrise photos. I keep seeing great photos on the Internet others have taken. And then I spend a bunch of time tracking down where the photo was taken. And then plan out a weekend for it. Then get up at 3am and drive out into the dark to be there for the full thing. And then, over and over, I end up standing in the freezing cold with my tripod and a bunch of photo gear draped all over me like Steve Martin in The Jerk while a sunrise doesn't happen at all. So...... many of my weekends start at 3am with me driving to an epic location for a sunrise, and then freezing my ass off as the clouds turn out to be too thick so no sunrise, or no clouds so no sunrise, or, as the universe taunts me, the conditions are great but still no sunrise.

I can see many sunrises if I peek out on work days. Everyone else gets great sunrise photos. Sure enough, I just looked out. Great sunrise happening with some wild cloud effects I've never seen before. But no place to get a good shot from my apartment complex.

It's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you'll get. Other than frostbite and paranoia over standing in the dark in high crime areas at 6am.

It doesn't matter. I am in my happy place. Chasing moments. Having adventures. Finding interesting light. Creating happy photos. Going to beautiful places.

It's always a risk. Risk of wasted time, stolen gear, driving off the road. You go to the place, roll the dice, and hope nature does it's part. Which, for most of my Oregon weekends, it does not. It's a gamble, but an unavoidable one. The alternative would be to not go out and play it safe. Sleep in on Saturday morning, putter around the apartment, and find a sure bet to waste the day on like video games. Or.... these days.... not waste it but spend the whole weekend working on AWS certs and new technologies. Somehow online classes lack the visceral thrill and adventure I've come to crave.

This is the dilemma I find myself with these days. Chase adventure, in this land of adventure. Or be a responsible adult and do homework. It's not really a choice. I have to grow into the new technologies. Blockchain, kubernetes, microservices and containers, DevOps is dead long live DevSecOps, AI, ISO/IEC 9126, wtf Python and vanilla C, TypeScript, Rust...... Endless. And the hook I've hung my entire career on, PHP, is fading away. Being an adult about it is going to be hard. Perhaps harder in a magical land where adventures call. Lots of choices and gambles. Even if I spend the next few months studying diligently, there is always the rather dangerous gamble of picking the wrong tech to focus on. Balance. That seems to be the theme these days.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau

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