It's 6.00 - do you know where you are? : 無料・フリー素材/写真
It's 6.00 - do you know where you are? / normalityrelief
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | I mean that. I really did take this at 6.00 in the morning on Halloween (2009). It was after a giant, off the hook, crazy Halloween party we hosted at our place. The last attendance estimate I heard was somewhere in the vicinity of 40-50 people. I didn't know most of them.So what better environment for having some fun, meeting some new friends, letting your hair down (or putting your hair up, or dyeing your hair, or shaving your head, etc), maybe even drunkenly hooking up with the guy or girl of your choice, yes? Yes. It's the perfect setting for such things!Except for me.Anybody who knows me even a bit knows I have ADHD-I. I practically announce it when I meet new people because it puts me at ease knowing those people likely won't judge me too harshly if (read: when) I act like an idiot. What very few people know is I also have Asperger Syndrome. That one's a bit harder to explain, & far fewer people know what it is than are familiar with ADHD-I.It's easy to say it simply is a difficulty communicating & interacting with others, but really, who doesn't experience that from time to time with varying degrees of severity? You begin to get a better idea of it when you learn it's one of the autism spectrum disorders. Very basically put: it's kind of like autism with the relative preservation of linguistic & cognitive development.So what exactly does this mean for me & why the hell am I telling the internet something so personal & somewhat embarrassing?What it means is - despite having developed the ability to casually talk with people - I've spent my life in complete darkness regarding how to interact with others. In middle school I made a habit of collecting discarded notes written by & to people I didn't know - not because I had any interest whatsoever in the details of their personal lives - because I was so desperate to figure out what people said to each other, what people talked about, how people spoke, what words people used to describe things, etc etc etc. It never really worked. I could regurgitate what I'd learned, but as soon as a conversation ventured beyond the boundaries of my research, I'd stare mutely at the person until one of us left.It's terribly difficult & frustrating to describe because everyone has social difficulties now & again, some more than others. But it's not simply a problem with social difficulty or awkwardness. People with Asperger's are known to show a theoretical understanding or social norms in a laboratory context. We get why people do things, we understand how people react, just like anyone. But for whatever reason, when placed into a fluid social environment, we can't seem to act on that knowledge.And why the hell am I spewing out my personal life into a world where information never dies, ever? I think it's some weird way of asking people to try to understand others, even when they don't, or can't. I was raised a nice guy, & I continue to be one (he says ever so modestly). Even so, throughout my life there have been people who have written me off as retarded, or a freak, or just someone who wasn't worth knowing, often because I'd say something stupid, or weird, or foolish, or nonsensical, only to realize later how much of an ass I must have sounded like. I've made plenty of stupid mistakes because I didn't know how to approach strong-willed people with simple problems, putting those problems off until they became monumental problems, only to be chastised, berated, cut down, & spoken to like a mentally-deficient child when I couldn't explain why I'd done something so foolish. I've approached many people I've wanted to get to know better, only to have no idea what to say & promptly turn around & leave, undoubtedly coming across as an insensitive jerk when all I really wanted was to be nice & maybe make a new friend, or more.So why? It's certainly not for the pity, that's just uncomfortable as hell. I think it's to try to remind people to give others a second chance before jumping to judge. Or, you know, just ask people not to judge others at all. Let them be them, & quit looking at them like they have a cell phone-shaped tumor growing out of their head if they happen to say or do something you can't seem to understand. Good lord this is turning cheesier than ... I don't know, cheese?Oh right, the photo. So all of the revelers finally either disappeared or went to bed - an overwhelming amount with new friends - by around 5.30 &, as usual, I suddenly realized my house had just been filled to the brim with friendly strangers ... & I hadn't managed to meet one of them. I got angry. Angry & lonely. So I took my camera & tripod & hiked out to the lakefront to see if I could catch the sunrise. Turned out the sun wasn't set to rise until 7.30. That didn't improve my mood. So I sat in the middle of the parking lot for Belmont Harbor & took some pictures of the path leading to the lake. Then I got tired, came home, & slept most of Saturday.On the plus side, it was a very successful party.Quite a bit cooler large on black |
| 撮影日 | 2009-10-31 06:00:38 |
| 撮影者 | normalityrelief , Denver, CO, USA |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | Chicago, Illinois, United States 地図 |
| カメラ | NIKON D60 , NIKON CORPORATION |
| 露出 | f/7.1 |
| 開放F値 | f/7.1 |
| 焦点距離 | 36 mm |