A JOURNAL; INTRODUCTION
Welcome to my new Journal. That feels incredibly too 2004 to say.
WHAT IS IT?
I envision a frequent-ish journal posting on photography, design, growing as an artist and creative, the restaurant business, occasional product reviews, organization strategies, and lots of tips, tricks, tutorials. YES! Some YouTube videos again, finally. This is intended to be a loose forum for me to express myself without the need to please an algorithm or ego of my creation.
WHY A JOURNAL?
This is wildly new for me. A particularly bold step given my general preference to keep everything locked up, hidden from the masses, or let alone my closest of compadres. I’ve never considered myself much of a writer unless you’d accept a few abstract poems, c. 2017.
Lately, I’ve felt overjoyed yet overwhelmed with a fairly standard but higher-than-normal unrest in my mind. The result has been an electric emotional state, unremitting buzzing and humming, and therefore mild irritability akin to what I imagine most other creatives experience. Leave a comment if that’s true? And like most other creatives the question is simply “how do I get this energy out?”
I’ve spent the last 10 years pursuing photography and making it my primary residence of passion, love, joy, frustration, et cetera. I’ve made ridiculous leaps and bounds from when I started to where I am now. My personal goal was always to be as good as the photographers that I saw in Bon Appetit magazine. I studied, practiced, failed, and continue to fail. Within those ten-ish years, I’ve since seen my work within these magazines, I became a Capture One Global Ambassador, and rubbed elbows with some of the talents I once aspired to be. Most recently Peden + Munk followed me on Instagram (I’m still giggling at that one. A jaw-dropping WTF still on my face). They have been true heroes of mine and likely many others who have picked up a cookbook in the last ten years, be they aware or not.
During all of these years of pursuing photography, I’ve grown more and more as a designer, a 3D artist, wannabe writer, stylist, interior designer, graphic artist, illustrator, and so on. I’ve dabbled and pursued them aggressively, all while being a restaurant operator for three busy restaurants and also a husband. I’ve formed a persona both in life and online that embodies this spirit and skillset, leaving most else behind or aside. But with this pursuit, I’ve been left feeling constricted and confined lately.
You might be asking yourself, “So, what’s the problem, dude?”.
To sum things up. I’m tired of living singularly. I want to experience the world through my different lenses, whether photographic or whatever-the-hell-else. I’ve always been keen to have a sense of identity through what I do, but I feel like it’s only limited me for the last eight years or so. I just want to be me. Blake, the creative dude who runs restaurants and does creative stuff and blah blah blah (no boxes allowed). I want to write. I want to draw. I want to design furniture. I want to write and create songs for my kids. I want to swing and miss.
I needed a playground to do all of this. A journal, if you will.
- Blake Pope
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