Goodbye!

[Robert Soames Wetmore]

After exactly three years on this list, I just want to say goodbye as I will be leaving the list for quite some time, and indeed perhaps permanently. Finances aren’t the best at the moment – in fact they’ve taken a significant turn for the worse. Though I’m by no means destitute, I am even considering selling my '75 Dodge Dart since I mainly take the bus anyway. And I’m trying to scale back on the non-essentials and hobbies (of which photography is one of the most expensive). My favorite hobby anyway is reading and I will concentrate a lot on that since it is pretty much free. I also mean to concentrate on getting my jazz radio show off the ground at a local community station as well as to work on a few other mainly volunteer things so that I’m not just taking up space on the planet.

This list is just too darned good at enabling! What little money I do have for photography I am going to try to spend on Sensia slides and Fuji mailers...and I’ll try to forget about all that equipment I just "need" to have! (How funny it would be to me now if Pentax finally announces a new film flagship - a true PZ-1p successor or perhaps a limited LXAF sort of SLR - at PMA!) Any extra equipment bucks I have (though I can foresee precious little) will probably go towards the occasional new Hexanon – the Konica AR kit is so much less expensive and yet very much to my liking. (I’ll also be using my Yashica Flex TLR which fortunately for my finances doesn’t accommodate interchangeable lenses or many useful accessories! And I’m falling in love with the ground glass lately.) At least I don’t anticipate having to sell any Pentax lenses.

This list also takes so darned much time! I’ve never been much of a "money" person but I’ve figured out that to get my life above a subsistence level I have to start working brutally hard (and I should probably get a bit better at kissing ass and self-promoting and all that nonsense, though I don’t know whether I can stomach that sort of thing). The internet in general is such a distraction from productivity; this list in particular is so high-volume and time-consuming.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for all you’ve taught me! I’ve taken so much more than I’ve given. Though I’ve never been popular or good at making friends, I met a few here and I do feel there is a certain sense of community and good will on this list, of which I feel I was occasionally a part, and which I will certainly miss.

Good luck to everyone throughout the world in any difficult times ahead.

Rob






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