Who do I think I am?

How does a physically-challenged, retired scientist find contentment in life?  Family, friends, Nature, photography and music are the keys.  Getting outdoors to go for a walk in the woods is a favorite pastime.  We're fortunate to live with woods in the backyard, and just minutes from peaceful State Forest Preserve, where quite a few photographs can be made before going home to recuperate.  The pain of multiple physical disabilities, including severe myofascial trigger points in my thoracic back and hips, an old leg injury, and Depuytren's Contracture in both hands, limit me to only a couple useful hours most days. But music and photography are a lot of fun, and bring meaning to my life, especially when my work is appreciated by others.

Music recordings haven't happened for many years. Hopefully music will emanate from this house again one day, by recording short bits at a time and using a custom music keyboard / computer rig in bed.  A reconfigured music studio is now almost finished, and I hope to begin recording new music soon. We’ll see. It takes an awfully long time to compose, record, mix and master pieces lying flat on your back in bed, and I can only stay in one position for a short time before my back pain shuts down my body and brain with pain.

I am a natural scientist.  Picture a toddler spending hours alone, doing stuff like lying on the sidewalk or in the dirt, watching insects, spellbound by Nature's intricacies.  I have always found joy and inspiration there, and still do. How precious life is!  Why does anything exist at all? Profound yet mysterious beauty and meaning surround us, created us. We should not continue to separate ourselves from Nature. We should study and try to understand, breathe in its sublime beauty all around us, and will bring meaning, if we allow ourselves to be part of it instead of totally separating ourselves from it.

Though I am a life-long musician, and have been making landscape photographs for over 40 years, I have a B.A. in geology, an M.S in Environmental Studies and another M.S. in Science Education. My 9 years in college were among the best of my life, and I had a rich and rewarding professional career. For about 25 years there, I was too busy to record music or do landscape photography. The loss of my career, and my outward professional / social life and identity because of disability, was, and continues to be, the most difficult thing I’ve ever experienced - worse than spending most of a year in a hospital as a kid after being hit by a drunk driver. Learning to manage my pain, mostly by limiting my activity, has proven to be the key for me.

But only after my disabilities caught up with me in my 50’s did I realize that creativity brings me the greatest joy.  Music and photography are expressive, communicating things that words cannot, and bring special meaning to my life. Especially since I can no longer sit down and play my keyboards for very long, photography kinda saved my life.

 We could have been rocks flying through cold, empty space ... instead we're conscious, meta-cognitive beings.  The odds must be incalculably slim.