Writing

Today, I just want to implore you to go and read the story on ontluiking.nl. I’ll be out shooting the next one. Gotta go!

LIVE! We are live! If you know any Dutch words — though preferably a lot of them — you can read a 3400 word story on ontluiking.nl right now! That’s all for now and that’s sufficient if you ask me.

A draft, in the inbox. That was the main objective for today. It wasn’t mine to make happen as it was my inbox. Which means there was no drafting to do on my part. Then, a little before 10 in the evening, a message: “De Ontluiking deel 1.docx”. I won’t be wasting time writing this. Let’s get to reading.

I can’t stop tinkering. I just can’t I’m a little too excited. Possibly for nothing. Nevertheless, I tinker and thinker on. Indefinitely. We’ve all been disappointed before [https://mitchellens.ink/they-are-testing-me-for-what-nothing/], lord knows we have. Despite that, perhaps in full blown naiveness, I’m excited all over again. So much so in fact, that I can feel the tension increasing in my throat when I’m working on stuff. Like something is slowly firming its grip around my oesophagus, onl

Something’s bubbling again. I can’t describe it. There are no words, yet. All I have is the feeling. That’s what I’m using a fuel for the coming days. I’m feeling a spark, once again. Let’s use that — once and for all — to start a fire.

I’m sitting in an Indian restaurant and I truly appreciate the pragmatism that rules here. The food is great, though not overly decorated. The service is polite and quick but without the fuss. You sit down and they immediately offer you a free started or papadum and dips. And with ‘offer’ I don’t mean that they ask if you’d like anything. They just put it down, assuming you’ll be accepting. If your plate is empty — or it seems like you’ve finished eating — they’ll just grab it saying ‘can I take

Doing the work is only half of the work. The other half is synthesizing it, turning it into something more than the sum of its parts. Wether that’s a book, a movie, a gallery online, it’s all a synthesis of the smaller parts you create along the way. It’s less fun to sit behind a computer and turn the work you’ve made ‘out there’ into something another thing that can live out there. But it’s just as important in the process of making things. You capture, you synthesize, you create. Effectively

Dear Bowie and Cobain, God, I remember how small you once were. And look at you now. No longer kittens that fit into the palm of my hand. I know I sound like some nostalgic parent when I say that but that’s actually kind of how I feel. A little silly maybe, but I don’t care much about that. You deserve that love. Thank you for bringing life into our home. Wether that’s by your constant yapping when you’re playing with your ball or by tearing down our wallpaper every now and then. Thank you for

A few days ago, I purchased one of those little circular robotic vacuum cleaners with the promise of never having to vacuum again. I’m pretty sure I can’t trust that machine to completely eliminate the need for me to clean every nook and corner of my apartment but any lightening of the load is welcome. Is it too early to write up some thoughts? Probably. But I’m doing it anyway. I find these machines quite expensive still1 and didn’t want to spend multiple hundred of euros on a vacuum cleaner.

I didn’t do anything today. Let’s keep like that.

I’m keeping it short today by merely letting you know a new issue of Dialogue [https://mitchellens.ink/dialogue] is going out in a few hours! You still have time to subscribe [https://mitchellens.ink/dialogue/004/] and catch the story in real time or you can read the previous stories on the Dialogue archive page [https://mitchellens.ink/dialogue/] right now.

How many cat photos can you pull off before people start to categorize (pun intended) you as the pet photographer? I hope it’s not too many more, as I presume I will enjoy photographing animals a lot more than dusty office people.1 I’m never going back to doing that again. In fact, don’t even reach out unless you have a four legged friend to photograph. Otherwise I’m way too busy walking and riding circles around my hometown, photographing whatever I come across, until I’m ready to commit to a

It’s time. So far, only one color preset and one black and white preset have been living on my Fujifilm X100V. This afternoon another color preset was added. Heavily leaning on a Fuji X Weekly film recipe, I’ve added a version of Bleach Bypass to my camera. Next to warm analog-looking photos, I really like harsh tonalities and low saturation so Bleach Bypass is perfect to give a try. It’s sadly not part of the X100V by default but the Fuji X Weekly version seems very nice on first try. We’ll see

I’ve been dipping in and out of my Dialogue 004 draft for the past few days and it’s slowly starting to take shape. I never planned for it to take this long but the moment I started writing I realized I didn’t really know what I wanted to say yet. That doesn’t happen often for me as I usually wait long enough until the general idea is formed in my head. Only then I pick up the pen and write my thing — mostly in one sitting. This time, I come up with a few sentences and then I’d have to sit and