I am a meteorologist and a former youth leader at church…I have a lot to say on both subjects…and then some
It’s been a while. I have pretty much given up on my Northern Michigan Recreational Weather Blog, and started to blog from here again. A lot of that has to do with WordPress.com charging to embed YouTube videos. Since this is a self-funded blog site, under my wife’s business, I started to do my Coffee and a Weather Map series. However, that has had to be put on hold since the summer, when we moved into a 5th wheel. I haven’t done much with it mainly due to bandwidth issues, and, while in Florida, I lost my Apple Pencil. Since we moved into a cottage south of Gaylord, Our bandwidth, hasn’t improved by much, and now we have power constraint issues. However, on a whole, things have been going well.
However, what first started this post was a comment on the office Facebook page that irked me from a storm that went through the region toward the beginning of the month.
The comment was something along the lines of “with all this technology you’d think we would get better forecasts.”
Blah. My emotional response would have been to sarcastically point out how much better forecasting is since when I got into the business over 30 years ago. I remained calm and moved ahead, ignoring the comment.
I remember being in awe as the NGM (Nest Grid Model) picked up that a wave would produce an east coast storm 48 hours in advance of it hitting anything. Now, we can generally see out 6 or 7 days, although not all the time, and see the possibility of something coming.
That extra time we have now, must be messaged properly so that people will know what to do. However, most of the public can only ask how much snow is going to fall in x city, when there are still lots of uncertainties. We try to message things generally when a system is 5 days out. We try to not get into too much detail since the path track of a storm will change and fluctuate, sometimes by 100s of miles, when within the last 12 hours, the track may be off by 25 miles, and producing more or less snow than was predicted for some locations.
Luckily, we have people who like our work and come to our defense siting their snow fall and the prediction. Over the years, I’ve become accustomed to the generally ignorant comments on social media, but every once in a while…
I’ve always had an interest for shooting video and pictures. In the past, I didn’t always have the resources to complete it. Whether that was a video or film camera, or an editor, I just didn’t have a way to do it well. Then DSLRs began to get better, and there were ways to edit on your computer. So about 4-5 years ago, I began this slow journey of learning.
How to mix sound and get good sound was one of the first things I learned. It came by accident. I learned about mixing live sound for our church, which I continue to do. Then I learned that sound, in video and film, was probably the most important part of the process. If people can’t hear you or the sound is poor, then people won’t want to see your video. So I began to acquire low end, but decent recording devices to supplement the point and shoot that I began shooting with.
I seemed to be advancing rapidly, until recently. I began to notice that my advancement was slowing down as I tried to shoot things. It wasn’t the physical impediments of resources. I learned you can shoot with anything, as long as you had a story to tell.
The impediment was me.
I’ve always had some sort of anxiety. A general angst that would worry me about my relationships with people. I’m not sure when it started. I’m not sure there was an instigating incident that kicked it off. However, somewhere during my early life, I began to not feel safe, unless I was with people that I knew accepted me. Even then, it seemed, that I would still regress in conversation, not sure what I would ask or talk about next. I was afraid of the awkward silence.
That fear began to expand into my film and video life. I’m always not wanting to seem to intrude on people. Yet, I want to record moment for people that are important. It causes me to hold back. Not that there aren’t times that inappropriate to take pictures or video, but to remain safe, I hold back more than I probably should. Especially, if you need to take lots of video and pictures to get the great moments to create your story.
What brought this realization? A family celebration of life for my cousin. I was often torn between take video and pictures, and talking. Not wanting people to feel ill at ease. Of course, my anxiety of who to talk to, not to be too obtrusive, began as well. I started to get my mind into a knot. I would sit down somewhere, not in the way, but on the fringes. Eventually, someone would sit, and talk to me, or I would force myself into someplace that was a part of a circle, and begin to talk, or just listen…
(pause to take a shower and begin cleaning my office(about an hour))
Now that I have that out, I think my answer is in the last sentence. Just keep forcing myself to get into it. So besides cleaning the junk out of my office, I need to finish a few projects.
As Luke Cage says,”Always forward…”
And just like that, one of my favorite YouTubers, and probably the one I’ve learned the most from, puts this video out…
About a year ago, our household acquired a young male dog. He was a year and a half pit/boxer mix. He was hard for me to train. Over time he has gotten into the groove of his pack (our family), and is much better behaved than when he showed up. 