Tea Time For Me

OP: This time it's lion cubs dance (cr 冰彬兵)

Imagine if one day you were given a choice: Become immortal and indestructible for eternity, unable to be harmed by anything ever again, and get to live forever.

However, in order to achieve that you must give up whatever your purpose in life is. Whatever it is that you were always meant to do, what you were supposed to contribute to the overall scheme and future of the life of the universe, your purpose… the whole reason you were even created, even born in the first place. You must give that up. You don’t know what that is. You’ll never know; But, regardless, you say yes.

Perhaps you assume you wouldn’t have made any sort of significant difference anyway. That butterfly effect theory or whatever they call it? Nah, you call bullshit. It doesn’t matter - you don’t matter, at least not to anything outside of your immediate connections - and it’ll all be fine, and you’ll just live forever with minimal (or maybe even no) consequences.

So, yay! You’re now immortal. You’ll never die or get hurt ever again. Wee!

But then, centuries and centuries later (not to mention that by this point you’ve gone through horrible heartbreak and misery and despair because every loved one you ever had, every friend you ever made, ever person you barely got to know, has passed away, died as you lived on long without them, helpless to do anything for them as you watched them perish, unable to ever go with them or ever see them again. But I digress), now, you learn you actually were important in the grand scheme of things. You were supposed to be a key factor in the world’s survival, long ago; but, because of the choice you made (immortality over individual purpose), you were never given the knowledge or awareness or resources or ability to save the world that you were always supposed to obtain, before you unknowingly made the wrongest choice to ever wrong.

Needless to say, you’ve fucked up big time.

The entire universe as we know it is destroyed soon after this horrifying revelation. It implodes, collapses in on itself, essentially forming a massive black hole or something. Stars, nebulae, galaxies, solar systems and planets, worlds and worlds of living people and things, and light-years of time and space and life, all sucked up into absolute, indefinite nothingness.

But you remain.

Just you. Floating amongst, spiraling around, rocketing through, suspended in… nothing. With a feeling of such unbelievable loneliness that your feeble brain can hardly perceive, can’t possibly hope to comprehend. Not only are you the only living thing left, you don’t even have one inanimate object to keep you company. You have literally. Nothing. And you are literally nowhere. I mean, technically, you are now the universe - if it would bring you petty comfort to think about it that way. You. Only you. With nothing, no one, nowhere. Forever. And ever. And ever.

All because you thought you didn’t matter. That you had no real, meaningful purpose. That you could never possibly make a difference.

But you did. And now look what you’ve gotten yourself into, you silly nugget. You’re gonna be pretty bored and lonely for that eternity, huh?

Or maybe it was out of selfishness. Maybe this wasn’t because you felt useless, but because you simply only cared about prolonging your own life and nothing else. Hm.

The moral here? Be selfless, and always know and remember that you matter.

Or else, one day, you might destroy the universe. And be left to suffer, and be tortured horribly and endlessly by the void of nothingness that has consumed you. With no way to escape. Ever.

Other moral because I got sidetracked from my initial point - all things considered, would you choose longevity over purpose? Immortality over meaning? 

OR, IDK, MAYBE SOME IDIOT JUST LAMINATED A STUPID PIECE OF PAPER TOWEL FOR NO GOOD REASON

AND MAYBE I SHOULDNT BE LOOKING FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE MEANING OF OUR SHORT, FRAGILE LIVES IN

A LAMINATED

PAPER

T OW E L

IDK MAN,

and the pages of that book

were made out of

laminated

Fuck around and find out!

Bonus

I was a bit torn on this one.

Doug is a MAGA boomer who asks for advice, makes excuses when you give him feedback, and then ignores said advice in his future photos.

He has talent, but it feels like he just wants to do things his way and never actually improve his abilities. I suspect he wants everyone to say his photos are great with no notes, even though that is not what this forum is for.

Years ago, I sold a bunch of my photo gear after my parents got sick. We needed the money and I didn't really think I'd be doing photography again. It just didn't seem important at the time. I was taking care of two dying people and making art seemed pointless.

I recently mentioned that I sold my telephoto lens and a follower messaged me about their zoom lens that had been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for quite some time. They asked if I could make good use of it.

So, I have been devising a plan on how to do some bird photography while I am still stuck in bed recovering.

My mom bought this really cool bird bath that is very on theme for me.

I set it up outside my window. I decided to fill it up with bird chow rather than water. And over the past week I have been figuring out a workflow to photograph birds from bed.

My camera has a wireless radio trigger that also sets off the flash. And I can activate the trigger from anywhere in the house. I have my security camera watching the bowl of seeds and it sets off a motion alarm whenever a bird stops by.

I did some exposure tests with Baby Yoda. It seems the lens was a little more telephoto than I thought.

But I figured birds are small and they would be in frame.

Maybe I'll zoom out a little just to be safe.

I soon got my first customer.

A female cardinal stopped by.

Do you see her?

Okay, so my first attempt didn't quite go according to plan.

But look at how sharp that lens is!

I'm sure I will iron out the kinks.

I've been doing this 5 minutes at a time for days. I've been a little frustrated with how little energy I have to work on this project. But the hardest bits are solved.

Now I just need more birds to show up.