{"id":12810,"date":"2020-09-11T09:57:32","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T16:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=12810"},"modified":"2024-11-28T05:59:52","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T13:59:52","slug":"nothing-to-see-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/11\/nothing-to-see-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing to See Here"},"content":{"rendered":"
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March (iPhone+Filters)\/September (Fuji)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In March, I started taking a selfie once a week.<\/p>\n

Okay, I really started taking selfies back in November, 2019 (literally a hundred years ago, right?) when I signed up for online dating<\/a>. Selfies are the currency of online dating and I needed good ones if I was going to play that game. Then Corona came and dating is an impossible task. But I kept taking the selfies.<\/p>\n

At first, I was trying to get used to the idea of the mask. I was teaching myself how to make them and I wanted to make some effort towards normalizing wearing them. We were still arguing about their efficacy and I thought, why wouldn’t we wear them if there’s a chance they’ll help? A fair number of people made fun of my first picture, asking why I’d made it from underwear, but it turns out that a strong black and white pattern messes up facial recognition software used in\u00a0 police surveillance at protest marches, so that’s fun. And now they are so common, no one comments at all. Well, sometimes, I have a tropical print one that people seem to like.<\/p>\n

Anyway. Selfies.<\/p>\n

A month or two in I realized my hair was getting kind of crazy and it was simply not possible to do anything about it. Everything was closed. I started taking pictures of myself with this out of control head of hair. I looked like an aging 70s metal guitarist. And I felt like every time I looked in the mirror I had aged another ten years. The new isolation lifestyle has put lines on my face where I didn’t see them before. The pictures weren’t flattering, even when I cleaned them up a little bit afterwards and that was intentional. I wanted to mark how this era was marking me. I wanted other people to see it, too, so they didn’t feel like they had to be beautiful in the middle of all this.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Morning Coffee<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Amp<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Jammies<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Jammies<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Jammies<\/div><\/div>
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Early Morning<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Star<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Morning<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Fucking Masks<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Hannukah<\/div><\/div>
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Too Much Phone Time<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Morning<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Working<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Googles<\/div><\/div>
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With Gertrude Stein<\/div><\/div>
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Tired<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Holidays<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Windy day at Laupahoehoe Beach Park<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Working<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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The morning I tested negative for Covid<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Garden, April 2021<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Post Shingles Vax<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Front Window<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Back Yard, Spring<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Best Friend<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Good Morning<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Movies in Bed<\/div><\/div>
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Harls helping with edits over July 4th weekend<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Bike Helmet<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Mike Took This<\/div><\/div>
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Dayjobbing from my Hawaii housesit<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Pete Took This<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Night, Bed<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Bad Weather at the Beach<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Thanksgiving morning with coffee<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Week 32<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Kitchen Covid<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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St. Louis Watches<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

I had to get photos for my book cover. It was time, and I still could not get a haircut so I thought, “Fuck it, let’s just do this thing.” Previously, I had this idea that I would Get Styled Properly. You know, have my hair done, and let someone paint my face to cover those shadows under my eyes. Instead I put on a soft sweater and the stretchy jeans and the result is an author photo that… well, it’s great and it looks very much like me. It is not the glamour shot I had envisioned but I am delighted nonetheless. I look happy, which is no small thing to capture in a photo in this era when there are so few things to be happy about.<\/p>\n

These self-portraits are the way I mark time right now. Living alone has a sameness to it, though I suppose living with others must also have a sameness, in a different flavor. It at least has the benefit of a hug now and then, something I get almost never. I was drinking with friends in the park (we are all shiftless teenagers now) back in the summertime; when I got up to go home, one of them said, “Fuck it,” and hugged me. I was both terrified and relieved and the same time. When I got home, I cried for a while because of course I did. What else is there to when you are so conflicted by a genuine show of affection from a friend?<\/p>\n

One morning, while posting my lastest selfie\u2014my six months in isolation selfie, WTF?\u2014I was hit with a wave of self-consciousness. I have never wanted to be an influencer; I can not say the word with out choking a little bit. I do not want to sell you my lifestyle, currently comprised of an eternally messy kitchen, a small dog who is sometimes shouty, and a recently acquired Nintendo Switch so I can play Animal Crossing, a game which emulates travel, talking to neighbors and friends, and meeting strangers who you invite to come live in your world. It is not a bad lifestyle, the way I am living right now, but it is not, how you say, Instagrammable. There is nothing to see here.<\/p>\n

I took photography in college. I liked it very much. I have a fair eye and I was lucky to be mentored by a working photographer who let me use his darkroom on the regular. We don’t do darkrooms anymore and while I am nostalgic for that alchemy, I like that I can take a picture with my phone and share it with everyone in the whole damn world instantly. For about a month now, I have been relearning photography and my selfies are becoming self-portraits. I like that change, but the set up makes me worry the pictures feel more contrived than an extended arm with a phone in it.<\/p>\n

Oddly, I feel like the pictures are also more honest; there is something about the iPhone selfie that makes me want to fuss with it, to apply the portrait filter that hides the flaws in my skin, to push the vibe towards nostalgia. Shooting with my camera and a tripod, I end up with something that is much more right now and real. Right now being early Friday morning, week whatever of the plague, while I’m having my first cup of coffee of the day.<\/p>\n

Every now and then someone will send me a beautifully written piece by someone living alone during this awful era. I don’t read them anymore; I don’t need to. I know what it’s like.<\/p>\n

I should say that I am fine. I am very, very good at being alone, though I never wanted to be alone quite this much.<\/p>\n

I wanted\u2014want\u2014to be seen. I wanted more than that soft brown gaze from my dog, though that is a quality gaze. He’s doing it right now while I type. He’s in his bed, nose pointed towards me, one ear tuned to the universe, the other flopped over to remind me that symmetry does not neccessarily mean perfection. It does a lot of work towards making me feel better, the slow blink, the contented grumble, but he is just a dog after all. I wanted to be seen by people, too.<\/p>\n

The camera is the only way I can make that happen right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been taking self-portraits for six months now. It’s a weird undertaking, but I don’t think it’s a vanity project. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":12811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lookit","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12810"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14424,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12810\/revisions\/14424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}