For whatever else I claim, and claim to have been in life, my cameras, my sketch pads, all that, have always mattered to me. In college, the best grades I got in journalism school were in photojournalism, and as being the photographer for Michigan State University's Capital News Service. The first job I was ever simply offered on the spot was as a photographer, and overall, I'd say I did pretty well at it. People around me don't seem to really "get" that. The expectation seems to be that I could work some kind of 9-to-5 shlump job, like the rest of the world, when the truth is, I've been fired from so many of those kind of jobs, that at this point in life, I'm a little gun-shy about trying to get a "real" job; especially in this economy. And as much as I wish people would just leave me the hell alone about it, most just don't seem to "get" it. And I feel like, at this point, if I really said anything honest about the way I felt, it wouldn't make things any better. My fondest hope is that some people would just let me save up the $1,000 or so it would take to get a decent DSLR, and try to get going. We'll see if that really happens, although it probably won't. And frankly, I've been through enough of life that I don't really give a sh*t if I ever get rich or not. I'd just like to be able to do my thing, without constant interference.
     Anyway, what the hell is the deal with people marginalizing art and artists of all kinds, unless you happen to be Picasso, Miles Davis, or someone else who managed to have gotten that lucky? Are we that go****mned culturally deficient as a society?! I won't go so far as to claim that the world needs artists in the same way that we need teachers, doctors or microbiologists, but COME ON! Surely artists rank at least above car alarm installers and mortgage bankers. I could ramble on until I'm blue in the face about social inequity, or whatever, but the fact is, we, as people, are all different. And rating a person as an individual on the basis of what they do, well.....some would say that's just one step closer to a kind of Nazi-ist uniformity. Don't get me wrong, I also understand the need for social order, but as I've been raving about for a long time, ours seems to be a world that is incredibly out of  balance. If American society were a tire on a car, that'd be the corner that you felt all the shaking from. If you understood that.