The Evolution Of My Blog

I’ve noticed that many of the Blogs that I follow have declined significantly in their regularity of posts. It seems like most Blogs ebb and flow in regularity like the tide, my Blog “The Soap Box Truth” is certainly one such Blog.

I have been finding it harder and harder to express my message and or stories that I have to share. It’s not that I have any less to say it’s just that I tend to find my best written contributions, be them Poems or Articles, come from a very personal place within, a place that more times than not is a place of personal pain or to a lesser degree, depression or painful self-reflection.

I guess it’s these moments that allow me to connect most intimately and honestly with my emotions and inner self which then I have the luxury to convey to those who share my Blog.

However after my initial purge of built up emotions and my almost animalistic urge to express myself and to be heard I find myself in a much more peaceful place and find that I openly resist going back to the place where I write best from.

I have also for the first time in my life found a path to express myself in a more positive less personally intense method. I have finally taken up a lifelong ( hobby ) ambition of freelance photography and now find myself spending every free moment walking with my camera looking for the beauty in this world and trying to capture it emotion and all, to share with the world. For the first time in my life I am solely focused on the beauty in this world and not the analysing of its pain and negativity.

I have been spending up to 4 hours at a time gently strolling through parklands, cities and functions looking for that elusive emotion or memory and trying to paint it’s picture in light with my camera for all to see. I have at times sat on the grass for hours ( almost in a state of meditation ) waiting for two small wrens to sit together on just the right branch and look at me in just the right way so that I could share the innocent beauty of these magnificent little birds. I have sat in the reeds of a pond quietly and in peace long enough for the proud parents of signet swans to feel safe enough to share their young openly with me.
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I have walked the streets of my beautiful home city of Brisbane to share its warmth and youthfulness with all that care to see. I live in a vibrant young city that has a story to tell ever corner that you turn, so I keep turning the corners in an effort to capture it’s feelings and beauty to show those that have not yet had the pleasure of visiting our fair city.

I have created a FlickR account ( at http://www.flickr.com/photos/51977793@N07/ or you can search the FlickR home page for ( Persons ) Andrew.Swansson ) to share my best efforts and I also find more and more I am posting my photographs here on my Blog page. I am very interested in any comments or suggestions that anyone has and hope to continue to improve my ability to share life as I see it and feel it through my lenses.

Having said all of that, I still have things I need to say and things that will make me want to step up once again onto my soap box but hopefully that will actually be less and less as I become more and more comfortable remaining on the positive side of life.

I am also interested in any suggestions that people may have for photographic topics and or places. I am also looking for any model volunteers in the South East Queensland area if anyone is willing or knows anyone, especially any heavily pregnant ladies.

So until next post, please enjoy the following shots which I took recently.

Cheers
Andrew

Reality Calling

My last post was a bit like a pressure valve release before I blew a blood vessel, it was a therapeutic preventative measure to bring me back from the brink and to release the frustration and anger building quicker within me than I was able to deal with or process.

Looking back and reading my last post with the luxury of hindsight I now realize it all looked a bit messy, childish and embarrassing, a good old fashion dummy spit. But it did it’s job and by being able to vent my built up frustrations and anger I once again reduced the pressure to a manageable level and then started to process the facts that were left once the emotion was removed from the equation.

I always find it interesting how different people deal with their frustration and built up emotions, irrespective of whether it be anger, guilt, jealousy, fear or any of the other marvelous emotions that we all experience. Emotions that when it is all said and done remind us that we are alive. When we stop feeling these emotions is when we should really be worried.

Last Friday afternoon my first response to being told that I was being made redundant was to isolate myself from the human race, I instantly felt such anger and rage within me that I instinctively knew the safest place for me was to be by myself where my ranting and raving would not do any real harm and I would not be forced into making apologies further down the track or be forced to face legal ramifications to a momentary laps of sanity.

Once isolated my second response was to call my eldest sister “ Wendy ” and to just get her to talk to me, Wendy has always been my life line to hold onto while I let the barriers down. My lifeline which guaranteed that I would continue to have a lighthouse of sanity to focus onto and not just continue to spin off out of control once I let all the restraint go.

This is the part of dealing with emotions that I am least comfortable with, “letting go”. Now I know the logic which goes with the statement that “ Control is an Illusion ”, but the fact remains that I do not like not being in control of myself. I think that is the main reason why I hate surprises and change in my life because they both come with a degree of loss of control over oneself and surroundings.

So once I released the pressure I focused on giving myself and my son a normal weekend and I shut the dilemma of being made redundant out of my head and life for the long weekend. ( It was a long weekend her in Australia for the Queens birthday which incidentally was not this weekend … but that’s another Blog and discussion.)

There is a lot to be said for “ The Ostrich Principle ” of handling bad news. That’s the principle where you stick your head in the sand and pretend that the threat just doesn’t exist, after all if you can’t see it then it can’t get you.

Now I love the Ostrich Principle and normally roll out of my isolated rage while talking to my eldest sister straight into my golden period of denial while practicing to be an Ostrich. And I must say it at the risk of sounding full of myself ~ I am bloody good at being an Ostrich.

Friday night I went to a comedy club and actually sat there with friends and laughed till I nearly wet myself, Saturday was focused on my sons sports and then Sunday was taken up with a huge Winter Festival on the Gold Coast called Wintersun that runs for 4 days of live Music, Great Food and Classic Cars. To make sure the denial was complete I even let my son have two of his teenage mate over for the night Saturday and I took all three teenage boys to the Wintersun the next day.

If you ever get bad news that you really don’t want to focus on then surround yourself with three teenage boys, Hot Rod Cars and scantily dressed ladies on the Gold Coast. While listening to Live Rock & Roll bands in the Winter Sun.

So here we are, it’s now a week later, all the emotion is out of the situation and all we are left with is the hard cold facts that at the end of this week I will be once again unemployed.

But you know what …. Life goes on, the sun has still been rising every morning, the sky hasn’t fallen down on top of everyone, and politicians are still untrustworthy.

I have decided to take a week or two for me then just get back up into the saddle and get on with life. Actually my son is on school holidays at the moment and I am looking forward to being able to spend some time with him before he goes back to school. Just enough time for a bit of a road trip I think.

Till then ….

Dohi to you all