Still alive

I'm still alive but mostly exhausted by the whole book process. I finally finished soft proofing all of the images for a Blurb version of the book. That took most of Saturday morning, to produce a new version of everything then relink to the soft proofed images. Got it laid out and uploaded to Blurb and a printed version should hopefully be arriving in the next week or so. I'm excited to see the finished version and perhaps more excited just to be done, for now. Other SoFoBoMoers are finishing up around now. I've seen several excellent results popping up. I particularly was taken by Paul Butzi's walk around his home with his dog. The words and pictures flowed together really well and there were a few good insights shared along the way. The other Paul, Paul Lester, also shared a beautiful look around a small glen, close to home. Getting to experience his Taoistic approach to arranging the images was a delight. Looking forward to seeing the other books as and when they arrive. I haven't taken a picture since the last SoFoBoMo shot. Almost have a couple of times but the urgency isn't there for now. I did wake up on Sunday morning with a fully fledged, fully visualised idea in my head that I'd love to follow through on. That hasn't happened before - I can really see the image in my mind's eye. All the details. How I'd like it to be lit, what the colours would be, how it would work. I know the story and what the concept is. It even has scope to be an entire other project - a series of conceptual images. But I'm daunted. Daunted by the thought of trying to put it together. Daunted by the work required to pull it off. Scared it might not be as good as it still is in my mind's eye. Unsure why I'd spend the money required to make it happen, with no general point to doing it. All sounds silly after I've typed it out. Mostly though, I just feel tired of the whole thing for now. I need to recharge. Another indication that that's true: I went to set up the camera to play around with some stroboscopic shooting and I've stripped the tripod thread. So no tripod shooting until I can get that repaired (anyone know what the cost is?). I'll take that as a sign to slow down for now and enjoy some other things. Reflecting on the whole SoFoBoMo effort - I'm amazed at how much I learned, in such a short period of time. Adobe InDesign from scratch, in a few days. The ins and outs of basic typography and layout, enough that I could at least understand all the mistakes I'd made when Holly pointed them out. Enough to have not made many more along the way. Insights I gleaned about how a book should be structured. The front pieces and how they relate. The application of graphic design and the torture of trying to come up with a passable design. The issues around layout of pages and display of images. The struggle to take enough images and then to have enough good ones. The always twisted writing process. How little I enjoy editing what I've written after the first draft. The great sense of shared purpose between all the people participating. The fun and excitement of sharing your book with someone for the first time. It certainly makes me want to do it all again, some time soon. I'm just not sure if I can face up to trying to do another one in May. Going to mull it over for a few more days.