So I've gone through a really weird period of my life over the past few months. It's fairly difficult to describe, but I feel as if I've been changing a lot as a person. I had had my entire life planned out--I was accepted into college, including the honors program, I knew what I wanted to major in and was ready for a number of careers.

That all turned around when I spent a week living in Nicaragua.

Besides completely altering my worldview, that week marked the realization that I had no clue who I wanted to be--how I wanted to impact the world. Because of this (plus the fact that college is freaking expensive) I decided to defer my college enrollment until next year and focus on the Photography business that I created over the summer, "David Walton Photography" (I know--it's pretty original original name, right?).

The business was fairly successful, considering where I was coming from, but I'll admit that it hasn't been going quite as well as we had hoped. This, coupled with the fact that I had to witness all of my friends move out one by one and head off to their new lives at college, left me feeling pretty empty. I don't want to say that I was depressed, because, well, it wouldn't be true--I've been perfectly "content" and just marching forward through life, but I've just felt as if something hasn't been quite right recently.

Some good news, though: This whole "lets not go to school and focus solely on photography" has lead me to being a bit more active on deviantART, as you may have noticed, and that activity seems to be steadily increasing, so yay! I also got my photograph of the Bean in Chicago, entitled "The Cloud Gate" printed via offset printing, and I've been able to sell a couple hundred of those, which has brought in a pretty penny and allowed me to expand my camera equipment a bit. Furthermore, while nearly all of my friends left town, a friend I actually met through dA, CourtoonXIII [link] , started college in the area, so I've had the opportunity to hang with her and meet her friends, which has been a Godsend, AND it looks like it may get me into Cosplay photography, which is really exciting! Also: All this free time has lead to me becoming a pretty decent Swing Dancer, if I do say so myself If you're ever in the Chicago area and want to check out the Swing Scene, hit me up! I've gotten to know quite a few DJs and instructors in the area (if you cant tell, I'm in desperate need for human interaction outside of my family >.< haha)

As for my art, I recently came across my sister's old Wacom tablet and am hoping to get back into the realm of Digital painting, but alas, I discovered that it is absolutely incompatible with Windows 7. I'm considering buying a new HD and creating a dual boot system with Windows 7 and XP, but I almost wonder if it would be worth it to just buy a newer, nicer tablet so I wouldn't have to switch between operating systems whenever I wanted to work on artwork.

Furthermore, all this thinking about Nicaragua as convinced me to finally upload more of my photos from the trip. I've been somewhat hesitant to do so, just because they are so meaningful to me, and I just feel as if my camera skills at the time were hardly developed enough to capture the true power and meaning behind the images. But... it's time I got over this and finally uploaded my work for the world to see!



So I'm not really sure why I'm posting this haha. Probably because it's 2:30 in the morning, I'm not tired, and I realized that I only have 3 previous journal entries and I've got nothing better to do =]

But I guess all of this just serves to provide a bit of background to what I've been up to recently, for the handful of you who care ^_^




Cheers!

~David Walton