{"id":35254,"date":"2025-11-22T05:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=35254"},"modified":"2025-11-21T21:46:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T02:46:57","slug":"the-middle-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/22\/the-middle-way\/","title":{"rendered":"The Middle Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately my days have been filled with frustrating road blocks.\u00a0 Things that should resolve themselves easily instead get bogged down in endless complication and delay.\u00a0 Because of this I\u2019ve been pretty stressed out.\u00a0 So today while I was contemplating this it occurred to me that I shouldn\u2019t allow days at a time to go by without any fun.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve decided to try and add at least one fun thing into each of my days.<\/p>\n

Sounds easy.\u00a0 But what it means is that I have to first free my mind from the annoying things I\u2019m trying to overcome and instead think up some small diversion that I can do in a short amount of time.\u00a0 For instance, today I dragged out my camera, the Minolta 200mm f\/4 macro lens and a bellows mount and started taking some macro shots of a dead preying mantis that I\u2019ve had sitting on a house plant for a few months.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now was this a terribly valuable use of my time?\u00a0 No, not at all.\u00a0 But it was fun and it got me thinking about what kind of a macro rig I\u2019d like to set up.\u00a0 The bellows device I was using had a bunch of problems associated with it.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t attach to my tripod very well and it was not rigid enough to avoid a lot of vibration.\u00a0 But working around these issues was stimulating and fun.\u00a0 And it made me think about something other than my problems.\u00a0 It was a distraction and it lightened my mood brilliantly.<\/p>\n

So, for the foreseeable future (meaning, until I get past my problems), I will be trying to add something fun to my days in order to stave off depression.\u00a0 But in general, maybe I\u2019ve hit on something worth pursuing.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been someone who lived a balanced life.\u00a0 My instincts have always been a sort of all or nothing strategy to most things in life.\u00a0 Probably this was a matter of necessity caused by an almost pathological laziness that left me always forced into an eleventh hour, hail Mary effort to stave off disaster.<\/p>\n

So maybe late in life I\u2019ve discovered a miraculous unheard-of strategy; balance.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow is a big family party.\u00a0 But I think I\u2019ll get up early and try to set up a focus bracket with the 90mm macro lens and some interesting macro subject.\u00a0 I think I saw a dead spider down in the exercise area.\u00a0 I think he might make an interesting target.\u00a0 If not, I\u2019ll find some still life thing; a feather or a coin or something.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll have some fun.<\/p>\n

And that will leave Sunday to do some work.\u00a0 I need to figure a few things out that have been stalled for a couple of weeks.\u00a0 And then Monday and Tuesday are unavoidable hell.\u00a0 I thought Tuesday would actually turn into a horrifying fiasco but blind luck stepped in and turned a horrifying nightmare into a merely tedious exercise in futility.\u00a0 But just two days later and it will be Thanksgiving and that should be a wonderful way to recover.<\/p>\n

Balance.\u00a0 What did Siddhartha preach?\u00a0 The Middle Way?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately my days have been filled with frustrating road blocks.\u00a0 Things that should resolve themselves easily instead get bogged down in endless complication and delay.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4418,1263,3],"tags":[1267,4467],"class_list":["post-35254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-photo-study","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-photography","tag-photogs-corner","tag-striking-the-right-balance"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Middle Way - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/22\/the-middle-way\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Middle Way - 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