A Most Impulsive Purchase (P.S. Does Anyone Know How to Use a Camera?)

I seem to have a wonderful ability to procrastinate yet be completely impulsive at the same time. Well, truth be told I usually procrastinate with crap stuff like paying bills, admin and all the other nonsense; the spontaneous, impulsive side usually comes out more when it comes to shopping or going out getting drunk.

The weekend just gone was basically the above paragraph in a nutshell. Let me explain…

I did ‘the usual’ in the days leading up to Saturday. I work Tuesday – Saturday and the cycle usually begins around Thursday time where I repeatedly tell myself I’m going to have a cheap, relaxed weekend. Maybe I’ll clean the apartment, hit the gym a few times and cook some nice food.

So far, so good.

So good in fact, that I currently sit here on Tuesday writing this piece off the back of a weekend where I drank for three days in a row, ate more junk food than is probably advised in a month; oh, and I’m ¥30,000 lighter thanks to the Olympus OM-D E-M10 I bought. Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

A photo of something that will be used to take photos.

Yeah, that’s where the procrastination and impulse come into it.

The drinking and junk food are almost to be expected – I’ve never had willpower – but the camera is a bit off the wall for me. I’ve been threatening to buy one for years now; in fact I almost bought a DSLR three years ago but instead opted for a Go Pro in light of the Vietnam bike trip I had coming up. Aside from the odd diving video and Mount Fuji, the Go Pro can usually be found gathering dust somewhere in my apartment.

So yeah, I’ve been putting off buying a camera for years. I’ve always known it would be good for my travels, and would obviously allow me to add a little bit more to my posts (just like the Go Pro does once a year!), but what was it that made me go out and get one this weekend?

Full disclosure time: I have absolutely no idea.

Fiddling around with the ‘art’ setting because I’m arty as owt.

Not only do I have no idea what drove me to buy it, but I honestly don’t know the first thing about photography. Well, gotta start somewhere, right?

I’m lucky enough to have a number of photography-mad friends here, maybe their influence has rubbed off on me a bit. Maybe it’s the fact that when Japanese people ask me their favourite question (What’s your hobby?) I can only ever respond with “Umm…drinking with my friends”. Maybe it’s the fact that I struggled to cobble together more than a handful of decent pictures for my last post. Who knows?

The Go Pro serves a purpose, but when you’re staying in one place doing very little in the way of adventure then it doesn’t have much use. Living in a city like Tokyo will give me plenty of opportunities to get out and takes some shots of random stuff.