It's hard to not feel like there's something standing in the way - that maybe you haven't been honest to yourself about what you can do to be better. I think I need to start looking at my work more. Is it too measurable of a task for me to ask myself what this work needs to make it what I want it to be? I started doing that last night. I never liked photographing people before, it seemed extraneous, unnecessary. But in this project, people are necessary and I need to have more courage to photograph them. The project is asking for intimacy and intricacy to complicate this incredibly magnificent cultural history. It's becoming a much more narrative story than what I'm use to, but that is okay because sometimes different is good. This is the first project that I've attempted that comes from an established idea. It's like trying to write a great book- I'm trying to provide proof, or rather a beautiful argument that the world really looks this way or is this way. It does because I believe it to be so, so then the only thing that stands in my way is in my own skill in expressing this. I've barely skimmed the thought, by which I mean I've encountered this question without actually believing or thinking hard about it, but how many more projects, how many more years of my life will it take me to build these skills? This is a really difficult question to face because cowardice always comes out. If you're honest with yourself, the answer could be that you may never possess what it takes, but that is also the kind of answer that projects its own future. If you believe this answer, you will never possess that future, that dream is already an embarrassing memory.

I think I will go through many more projects. The number doesn't matter. The effort is more profitable than the product. I suppose it also depends on my hunger and my drive to satisfy my curiosity. I think there is probably a way to be strategic about all of this, although maybe we should call it Lyfe Strategy because there is always an unknown, but great algorithm for how life unfolds.

Well, I didn't pass the first selection of Fulbright candidates, which means no Fulbright at all. Goddamn, I put so much work into that application but it basically means that I am so glad I never waited around to hear from them and that it was the right thing to do to move Thailand when I did. Plan B worked.