Today, I’ll be succinct.

My photo of the week is an old one, and I post it because it’s a moment of transcendent beauty that helps commemorate a change in my life.

In April 2018, I took the train between Seattle and Vancouver. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I did see a lot of beautiful landscapes out the window.

This photo is one of them, particularly stark because this is not a black and white photo. This reflects the landscape as I saw it with my own eyes.

I post this today, because I’m embarking on a new journey of my own, one which will lead me to the Pacific Northwest.

(Pointless EXIF data after the break, but nothing else.)

Humble milkweed.

A plant so named, because if you break its stem, it will produce a milky syrup. Incidentally, that “milk” is poisonous to humans.

I really think it’s a cool plant.

In my last photo of the week post, I did my best to outline some of the struggles of wildlife photography, particularly when the subject is skittish or fast-moving.

This particular subject was neither.

It all started out so innocently.

Out of the blue, someone messaged me to ask I was planning to attend next week’s workshop in Berlin.

I had no such plans. I never had any such plans.

On the occasions when I had asked, management did not think there was enough value in sending me to Berlin to meet with my team’s counterparts there. However, shortly after receiving that innocent message, I also received a new manager.

I sat in a “hand-off” meeting between my new manager and my previous manager. My old manager probably said something like, “we should make sure we give Steve any resources and opportunities that would be useful to his career growth.”

I saw my opening and said, “I heard there’s this workshop in Berlin next week, to go over [redacted]…”

Believe me, when I got approval, I did not hesitate to book my plane tickets and temporary dwelling.

It was only later that the headaches started…

This is part of a new series of posts describing photos I’ve taken. They should be less long-winded than some of the other content.

Often times, when I photograph animals I end up following some real great processes, like:

1. Oh shit! Is it in the frame.
2. Oh, maybe I should zoom in.
3. Hang on… is this in focus?
4. Oh hey, I can probably take a nice picture.

Most of the time the time I can’t even get to step one before the animal has scurried away. And, I mean I don’t blame the animals for being afraid of humans. I’m afraid of humans.

But, sometimes it feels like I can’t catch a break.

This post is the second in a series recounting how and why I moved to New York City.

The first post is here.

So, I moved to NYC. Not out of passion, but out of the desire to continue working in the field of natural language processing, but with a change of pace.

A new team, a new location, and more readily available pelmeni. What more could one ask for?

For various reasons that I might explain in another post, I spent November and December of 2018 mainly in Berlin, and returned to the U.S. to spend a jetlagged week in Pittsburgh before starting my new role in NYC. It was an internal transfer, and I didn’t plan things so I had much time to situate myself.

I landed there, determined to make a life for myself and to secure housing.

But NYC is a place that rewards some advance planning…

This is a public service announcement.

I am still at home with nothing to do except for making coffee, listening to music, photographing flowers, walking through un-built housing developments, working full time, watching baking shows with my parents, and desperately awaiting the end of a global pandemic that certainly hasn’t been used as an excuse to further disenfranchise precarious workers while quietly abolishing regulations and restrictions and ethics for billionaires. As someone with a grand sense of perspective, I can only assume that my current plans for this blog are at the forefront of your thinking…