Virtually Rodney

April 13th, 2014

A work in progress

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I’ve been unfaithful.

I’ve been cheating.

I have also — to mangle a biblical reference — been robbing Peter to pay, well, Peter.

I have a mistress and her name is RodneyCurtis.com. She has been taking all my attention and leading me astray from this Wanderer site; I’ve wandered from the Wanderer. Oh, but she looks so pretty!

For years I’ve maintained a static web presence over at RodneyCurtis dot c’mon. It just sort of sat there and maybe got updated once or twice a year when one of my books came out or I had some cool new wedding stuff to share that I’d shot months previously.

It was mostly used for photography, whereas this site was used for anything I felt like. But now, as I’m attempting to re-define myself, I thought it might be a good idea to creep out of the digital stone ages of 2006 or 2007.

The trouble is, I know enough to be dangerous — to myself. I can’t tell you how many times my site has experienced catastrophic failure over the past week. For a while I even had most everything posted at RodneyCurtis.com/RodneyCurtis.com.

My biggest problem is theoretical, philosophical even. Who am I?

It has been difficult applying for meaningful employment with three different resumes: Rodney as a photographer, Rodney as a writer, Rodney as a teacher (with subcategories — Rodney as a photography teacher/Rodney as a writing teacher).

Setting up a website to reflect those disparate professions has been tricky. I’m obviously still figuring myself out; both Rodney and RodneyCurtis are works in progress.

Eventually I’ll figure everything out and what I write here will flow nicely and professionally over there. My publisher John Hile thought that was a good idea since it’s always great to have web pages linking to each other. Google likes that and what Google likes, we all like. (Strangely, the corollary to that sentence is also true. How many times has someone sent you an email about something and you find, almost immediately, that THAT something shows up in ads all around you?)

It’s easy to get wrapped up in “me.” Though for the previous few weeks I’ve happily had a nice jolt back to reality. I’ve been teaching formerly homeless folks in Detroit how to take pictures and advocate for themselves with photography. All my silly little worries about coding my site and figuring out how to put my best foot forward seem to melt away as I chat with the fascinating residents. Hopefully I’ll be able to write more about them, maybe even share some of their photos.

Hmmm, but how should I show the pictures and what’s the best way to code them and can I  …

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