a labor of love, Obsession, and misguided priorities
Hello everyone. I have a problem. I feel like I'm in a constant race, but I don't know who I'm racing against and what the finish line looks like. But I'm always running, scared that I might lose to phantoms in the imaginary competition that exists in my mind.
You're currently looking at one of the results of this madness: upwellings.com.
I went to UCSC and studied Marine Biology. The scientific diving class changed my life, I experienced field quarters and independent research and made lifelong friends in the diving community, and then I graduated. I got a job where I've always wanted to work, I made it, I won.
But diving was not a part of my job. My friends left and went and fulfilled the dreams we had talked about while I made my 5 year-old self happy.
Doubt and guilt crept into my soul.
"There you go man, you just got started diving, and now you're all washed up already. You blew it. Good you followed your childhood dream working where you do, but you never stopped to realize you could have grown up dreams. All that training, the time and energy and money you sunk into being a diver, the care and trust and hopes that your instructors gave to you, thrown out the window just like that. Great job. You're losing now. You're falling behind. Your friends are disappointed. You're a disappointment."
The phantoms tormented me and at times convinced me of my inadequacy. I forced myself to keep diving through the insecurity, bringing a camera along underwater to distract me from the fact that there was no data I was collecting, no purpose for being underwater except for voyeurism. One day I sat and I watched the gigabytes of useless video.
And I realized that there was no video of this animal, or that alga. Anywhere. Or at least, not that I could get to. We have pictures of these animals in guide books, I drew the thalli of many an alga in class, but I hadn't seen these organisms moving, in passing, out of focus and fleeting as they are underwater as you swim along in any of the textbooks. The life of the Pacific doesn't stay still, well-lit and properly-framed like the guide books; and then the stuff that does stay still is mixed in with a hundred other faces in a crowd so diverse I've been looking at this stuff for 5 years and I barely know what I'm looking at.
I had my solution to calm the demon of my own mind. I would dive, and I would bring the camera, to slowly but surely take shitty videos of everything I could recognize and a lot of the stuff that I don't. And while a field-guide without any ecological context is like biological stamp-collecting, a pathetic excuse for "science" bemoaned by Ed Ricketts and other great minds, I figured each species page could have a link to take visitors far from here and on to more learning.
This felt good to me.
And then if I made videos with music because I got stoked on a series of dives, people might also get stoked. And if I borrowed someone's camera I could take pictures and people like pictures so they could enjoy those too. And if I had a thought I could write it down and people could read if they cared about my experiences. Granted there isn't much there but there could be in the future. And if someone wanted to learn more they could through looking at the websites I've looked at and maybe that someone is like me in a way and wants to read more about me. And then maybe they would use my videos to share their stories of the animals and algae and show other people and maybe then I won't have wasted the responsibility my educators gave me to do something in life.
Perhaps my obsession can help you, entertain you, or help you feel better about yourself by peering into a troubled mind. In any case, I'm off to race the phantoms.
Cheers,
Patrick
2/6/14
You're currently looking at one of the results of this madness: upwellings.com.
I went to UCSC and studied Marine Biology. The scientific diving class changed my life, I experienced field quarters and independent research and made lifelong friends in the diving community, and then I graduated. I got a job where I've always wanted to work, I made it, I won.
But diving was not a part of my job. My friends left and went and fulfilled the dreams we had talked about while I made my 5 year-old self happy.
Doubt and guilt crept into my soul.
"There you go man, you just got started diving, and now you're all washed up already. You blew it. Good you followed your childhood dream working where you do, but you never stopped to realize you could have grown up dreams. All that training, the time and energy and money you sunk into being a diver, the care and trust and hopes that your instructors gave to you, thrown out the window just like that. Great job. You're losing now. You're falling behind. Your friends are disappointed. You're a disappointment."
The phantoms tormented me and at times convinced me of my inadequacy. I forced myself to keep diving through the insecurity, bringing a camera along underwater to distract me from the fact that there was no data I was collecting, no purpose for being underwater except for voyeurism. One day I sat and I watched the gigabytes of useless video.
And I realized that there was no video of this animal, or that alga. Anywhere. Or at least, not that I could get to. We have pictures of these animals in guide books, I drew the thalli of many an alga in class, but I hadn't seen these organisms moving, in passing, out of focus and fleeting as they are underwater as you swim along in any of the textbooks. The life of the Pacific doesn't stay still, well-lit and properly-framed like the guide books; and then the stuff that does stay still is mixed in with a hundred other faces in a crowd so diverse I've been looking at this stuff for 5 years and I barely know what I'm looking at.
I had my solution to calm the demon of my own mind. I would dive, and I would bring the camera, to slowly but surely take shitty videos of everything I could recognize and a lot of the stuff that I don't. And while a field-guide without any ecological context is like biological stamp-collecting, a pathetic excuse for "science" bemoaned by Ed Ricketts and other great minds, I figured each species page could have a link to take visitors far from here and on to more learning.
This felt good to me.
And then if I made videos with music because I got stoked on a series of dives, people might also get stoked. And if I borrowed someone's camera I could take pictures and people like pictures so they could enjoy those too. And if I had a thought I could write it down and people could read if they cared about my experiences. Granted there isn't much there but there could be in the future. And if someone wanted to learn more they could through looking at the websites I've looked at and maybe that someone is like me in a way and wants to read more about me. And then maybe they would use my videos to share their stories of the animals and algae and show other people and maybe then I won't have wasted the responsibility my educators gave me to do something in life.
Perhaps my obsession can help you, entertain you, or help you feel better about yourself by peering into a troubled mind. In any case, I'm off to race the phantoms.
Cheers,
Patrick
2/6/14