Enticement
Something for free is so alluring. I, along with thousands of others, was offered 101 free photo prints. This offer sent me to my digital collection of photos. First, I needed to spend time discarding photos that I'd never use.
Culling through months of photos I selected 89 pictures. Did I want or need 89 photos? No, but even that wasn't 101 and I was offered all those prints for free.
How many photos did I want of a frog hanging out in a pond? Could I create greeting cards of some of the photos?
Perhaps the close-up of bees circling a pink flower or the ant walking on a lily bud or the caterpillar feasting on a cherry tree leaf transformed into smart cards illustrates creativity. Of course there's the extreme close-up of a grasshopper.
After an hour of culling through my last six months of photos and after the 89 were targeted, I moved them to the desktop, put them in a folder, and opened up the site offering me my free prints.
At first all went well, but then I discarded photos before the site had uploaded my photos. Since I'm the only one allowed to enter my trash bin the upload ran into a glitch.
No problem. I went into the trash and removed the photos. But I didn't really know what had been uploaded before I trashed photos. So I simply downloaded and downloaded dozens of photos.
No problem. I'd delete doubles. At this point I was working against the clock. Everything had to be completed by midnight or like Cinderella the world changes-- my free prints then cost ten cents apiece.
As I began to delete, everything slowed up until I deleted one too many photos and I was greeted by a message -- error. The type of error that refuses to relinquish its primacy. No matter what I did the error message persisted. I envisioned some sort of intelligence telling me that I could not bully my way beyond that injunction.
Finally I reached that place where I needed to release my desire for 101 free photo prints. What did I learn? To quote E.M. Forster, Unless we remember, we cannot understand.
Culling through months of photos I selected 89 pictures. Did I want or need 89 photos? No, but even that wasn't 101 and I was offered all those prints for free.
How many photos did I want of a frog hanging out in a pond? Could I create greeting cards of some of the photos?
Perhaps the close-up of bees circling a pink flower or the ant walking on a lily bud or the caterpillar feasting on a cherry tree leaf transformed into smart cards illustrates creativity. Of course there's the extreme close-up of a grasshopper.
After an hour of culling through my last six months of photos and after the 89 were targeted, I moved them to the desktop, put them in a folder, and opened up the site offering me my free prints.
At first all went well, but then I discarded photos before the site had uploaded my photos. Since I'm the only one allowed to enter my trash bin the upload ran into a glitch.
No problem. I went into the trash and removed the photos. But I didn't really know what had been uploaded before I trashed photos. So I simply downloaded and downloaded dozens of photos.
No problem. I'd delete doubles. At this point I was working against the clock. Everything had to be completed by midnight or like Cinderella the world changes-- my free prints then cost ten cents apiece.
As I began to delete, everything slowed up until I deleted one too many photos and I was greeted by a message -- error. The type of error that refuses to relinquish its primacy. No matter what I did the error message persisted. I envisioned some sort of intelligence telling me that I could not bully my way beyond that injunction.
Finally I reached that place where I needed to release my desire for 101 free photo prints. What did I learn? To quote E.M. Forster, Unless we remember, we cannot understand.
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