Untapped, raw, real, gritty potential

The birthplace of the United States will be the birthplace of new photography culture

People that like to hoard their recipes, ideas, techniques, and knowledge are fools. Closed source philosophy is for Luddites

STOP THINKING. START SHOOTING.

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante. Thinking is for idiots. Stop thinking. Just shoot. We need to stop thinking and start feeling from the heart — going full force with thumos, vitality, spiritedness, with your practice and everyday life.

The idea is simple: this world becomes a prison when you’re trapped in your mind. But what if I told you the key to unlock the chains is already in your pocket? When you’re caught up in thought, when you’re in your mind, that’s hell on earth. Paradise is found from within — from remembering that you’re a child, that you can take the key and unlock the door to your heart.

When you’re open, receptive, feeling, moving your body through the world while photographing, you exist outside the passage of time. Past and future aren’t our concern. The concern is the present, the ultimate gift of life.

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Tokyo. Day 13. Flow State.

Here I am on this beautiful day in Tokyo. My last day. Day 13, baby.
GoPro Mini rolling in SuperView 1080p 30fps. My only goal today: remain in a perpetual flow state from morning to night.

This is my final full day shooting in the streets of Tokyo. I fly home tomorrow. So today, I’m throwing a Hail Mary — I’m heading to Komiyama Bookstore. Supposedly they’ve got an ultra-rare Daido Moriyama photo book, one of 50 copies. And maybe something by Shomatsu. I’ll hop a train and see what magic I can find.

I’ve got the Ricoh GF2 flash mounted on my Ricoh GR III, walking through this grungy Shinjuku alleyway photographing grit, grime, textures — everything. Last night the police stopped me in an alley. I showed them the LCD like, “Look, I’m just photographing walls.” Pretty funny. What’s this American dude doing back here?

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On Change, Transformation, and Joy

I’m thinking a lot today about change — what it means to change.
To change is happiness.
To change is joy.
To change is bliss.

Transformation. Metamorphosis. Evolution. That’s peak human flourishing.

I’ve been changing a lot on this trip. Shooting black and white for three years was a huge shift, but even now — throwing flash into the mix, dual-wielding cameras, Ricoh GR III and GR IIIx, 40mm, 71mm crop — I’m really pushing myself. I’m pushing the limits within myself.

I refuse to stay stagnant. Motivation = movere = to move.
Motivation isn’t external. It’s in your legs, in the act of moving through the world.
Just start moving. Stop thinking. Follow your joy.

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You Cannot Make the Same Photograph Twice

I hit a wall shooting color. But now?
High-contrast black and white.
Light and shadow.
Returning to the essence.

Fos = light.
Graphe = writing.

Photography = writing with light. Light is my guide, my subject, my medium.
Light is always moving, always changing, always in flux.
So I want to be like the light — moving, changing, observing.

This return to light and shadow is unlocking endless possibilities. People, places, surfaces — everything changes under the cast of light. And interpreting light is making me flourish as an artist.

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Beyond Reality Through Abstraction

As much as I love humanity and embodied reality — sounds, smells, bare feet on the ground — photography lets me transcend the material plane.

My goal now isn’t to photograph what life is, but what it could be.
I want to photograph possibility.
I want to photograph feeling.

The photographs become a subjective reflection of my internal state.
Not fact.
Not documentation.
But emotion. Interpretation. Soul.

Thought limits you. Preconceptions limit you.
You put yourself in a box.
You have to unlock that box and create a new reality.

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Breakthroughs. Spontaneity. Liberation.

I’ve had breakthrough after breakthrough on this trip.
Every new experiment pushes me somewhere new.

Photography becomes a superpower.
I wield the camera like a sword striking through chaos — creating harmony, visual order, rhythm.

The real goal is to embrace the unknown. To ride the line between order and chaos, light and shadow — and let the chips fall where they may.

Small JPEGs. Max contrast. Grit. Grain. LCD shooting. Letting go of control.
Removing the viewfinder removes the rigidity.
The inner child takes over.

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Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously

Let the chips fall where they may.
Embrace the spirit of play.
Stop trying to contrive some narrative.
If you know your why, you can bear almost any how.

I’m not trying to say anything — but whatever I have to say will appear in the photographs.

I’m not a documentary photographer anymore.
I’m not describing life as it is.
I’m photographing what it could be.

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Pre-Tokyo Dante vs Post-Tokyo Dante

Tokyo changed me.
There will forever be a pre-Tokyo Dante and a post-Tokyo Dante.

I’ll deeply miss this place.

I don’t hold things back. I don’t curate the feed. I share the stream. I show the becoming. I show the process. Authenticity is the whole point.

Let your freak flag fly.
You must die.
But at least you can make a photograph.

Immortalize yourself through the medium.
Let your soul live forever in your photographs.

That idea keeps me going.
Keeps me clicking.
Keeps me affirming life.

I’m imperfect, but still striving to touch the sky — to transcend the material world, to honor the divine, to honor the inner child.

Return to play.
Return to curiosity.
Return to the light.

And through following the light — I find God.

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Now… Komiyama Bookstore

That’s a wrap.
That’s Tokyo.

Now let’s go to Komiyama Bookstore.
Let’s see if they’ve got that 55,000-yen Daido Moriyama one-of-50 edition in stock.
Let’s go.

My Komiyama Tokyo Bookstore Pickups

A Deep Dive into One of the Most Important Photobook Hauls of My Life

Walking into Komiyama Bookstore in Jimbocho felt like stepping into a living archive.
A place vibrating with history, rebellion, and the raw electricity of Japanese photography.

They saw immediately that I wasn’t just browsing.
They took me to the vintage floor — the hidden tier where they keep the serious material.
You only get invited up if they know you’re committed.
That alone set the tone for the entire experience.

This is everything I walked out with.

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Provoke 1–2–3: The Holy Trinity

Provoke (1968–69) is not just a set of magazines.
It is one of the most influential photographic statements ever printed.

The movement was founded by:

• Takuma Nakahira
• Yutaka Takanashi
• Koji Taki
• Daido Moriyama (joined with issue 2)

Its mission was to challenge photographic “language” itself.
Provoke images were intentionally:

• grainy
• blurry
• out of focus
• instinctual
• anti-establishment

Their motto:

“Images are fragments of a world that cannot be explained.”

Provoke 1

The beginning. The spark. A visual rejection of order and clarity.

Provoke 2 — Eros Issue

The iconic yellow obi strip sets the tone.
A mix of body, instinct, and the uncontrollable physicality of life.

Provoke 3

The final statement before the movement dissolved.
Short-lived, but seismic.

Owning all three is like holding the blueprint of a revolution.
They represent the moment Japanese photography broke free from traditional form.

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「まずたしかにらしさの世界をすてろ」

(“Let’s First Abandon the World of Certainty”)

This volume is a philosophical extension of the Provoke mindset —
primarily associated with Takuma Nakahira, one of the purest thinkers to ever pick up a camera.

Where the Provoke books are raw expression,
this book is the conceptual foundation behind that expression.

The central themes:

• destroy photographic “grammar”
• abandon preconception
• reject the idea that images must explain
• return to perception in its rawest state
• see without labels
• photograph without ideology

It’s one of the most important texts ever produced around Provoke-era thinking.
Rare, dense, and foundational.

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東松照明 — 「朱もどろの華」

(Shomei Tomatsu: Aka Modoro no Hana / Okinawa Diary)

Shomei Tomatsu stands at the emotional center of postwar Japanese photography.

This book — focused on Okinawa — blends:

• political history
• cultural tension
• Japanese identity
• American occupation
• deep, poetic visual observation

Tomatsu was never Provoke,
but his influence shaped the entire Japanese photographic landscape that made Provoke possible.

His style is emotional, atmospheric, and deeply human.
This volume captures his ability to blend beauty, darkness, and memory in a single frame.

The cover alone — the blue ocean fading into shadow — is a metaphor for the unseen emotional currents beneath Japan in the 1960s and 70s.

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主権者の怒り

(“The Anger of the Sovereign People”) — The Anpo Protest Book

This is a historical document tied directly to the political climate that shaped late-1960s Japan.

The Anpo Protests were massive demonstrations against the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty.
The tension, the crowds, the collective resistance — all of this forms the backdrop to the Provoke movement.

This book contains:

• historical photographs
• scenes of mass protest
• the atmosphere of unrest
• the emotional energy of a country in transition

It’s not just a photobook — it’s a time capsule.
Understanding the Anpo Protests helps you understand why Provoke looked the way it did.
The rebellion wasn’t just aesthetic — it was cultural.

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Why This Haul Matters

Each book represents a different piece of the puzzle:

Provoke 1–3

The artistic rebellion — the birth of a new photographic language.

Nakahira’s theoretical text

The philosophical backbone of the movement.

Tomatsu’s Okinawa diary

The emotional and historical soil of postwar Japan.

The Anpo Protest book

The political environment that fueled the entire era.

Together, these books form a complete ecosystem of Japanese photography’s most explosive period.

This haul isn’t just collecting.
It’s studying the lineage, understanding the energy, and holding in my hands the raw history of an era that changed photography forever.

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Final Thoughts

Komiyama didn’t just sell me books.
They curated an experience.
They recognized my seriousness and opened the upper floor — the one most people never see.

Walking out with these volumes felt like walking out of a museum with original artifacts.

This was one of the most meaningful photobook pickups of my life.
A moment of connection to the history that shaped so much of what I admire.

Tokyo gave me these treasures.
And now I carry them forward with me.

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Detachment in Street Photography

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante. Currently heading toward the Shinjuku station here in Tokyo. Today I’m thinking about detachment in street photography — and what it really means to detach from the outcome of the photographs you’re making.

Detachment doesn’t mean removing the goal of making great photos. We all, deep down, want to achieve that goal. Detachment means removing the pressure, so that when you’re on the streets, you can relax and enjoy the sights, the sounds, the smells — without filling your mind with anxiety about where you must go next or where the next great photo will appear.

Of course you want to be aware, with your instincts dialed in. But going forward, my goal is simple: go slow, let life flow toward me, and be prepared to press the shutter. Instead of hunting for the next best photo, I simply affirm with each click:

My next photograph is my best photograph.

This mindset shift toward detachment allows you to thrive creatively as a street photographer.

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The Mundane Is the Name of the Game

Street photography is rooted in the mundane. You’re not guaranteed extraordinary moments every time you go out. You’re not always going to find the most interesting subjects. But what you control is:

• When you go out to shoot
• How often you shoot
• Where you walk
• Whether you understand where the good light is
• Whether you position your physical body in those places consistently

It’s important to detach from what’s out of your control and lean into what you can control — your motivation and your movement.

Motivation = mover = to move.
Your motivation is literally your two legs moving your physical body through the world.

You control how often you make pictures. You control how often you walk, see, observe, and show up. Through consistency, you increase your success rate in making strong photographs.

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Don’t Take It So Seriously

If you get caught up in the outcome — stressing whether you’re going to make a good frame — you’ll freeze. You’ll be in your head. You’ll have anxiety about where you’re going next and what you’re trying to shoot.

The best mindset is simple:

• Be at ease
• Be detached
• Photograph what comes your way
• Don’t overthink

Street photography shouldn’t feel like a chore or a burden. I don’t take my photography seriously, even though I haven’t missed a day in over a decade. What matters most is recognizing the time required to make anything great. Days, weeks, months, years — even a decade.

Time compounds.
And rushing kills the process.

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Shooting in the Shinjuku Tunnels

As I walk through the Shinjuku tunnels, I’ve got my camera set:

• Ricoh GR IIIx
• 71mm crop mode
• Snap focus: 1 meter
• 1/2000s, Auto ISO, F16
• Highlight-weighted metering
• High contrast black and white, maxed
• Small JPEG files

I’m crushing the shadows, exposing for the highlights. I’m intrigued by the faces of Tokyo, how the light reveals their gestures as they step into glimmers of brightness. I’m following intuition and photographing this way consistently every single day of this trip.

This simple warm-up method — people walking into the light — allows me to study compression, layering, overlaps, and fleeting gestures.

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Let Reality Reveal Itself

Street photography is unpredictable. Spontaneous. Out of your control. But what is in your control is:

• Your physical position
• Your awareness of light
• Your understanding of human movement
• Your willingness to return to strong locations
• Your consistency

I’m interested in compression. I’m interested in the overlap of different faces. I position the sun to my back and photograph as people walk into the frame, letting the scene assemble itself.

Tomorrow is my last full day of shooting here in Tokyo. Maybe I’ll throw a Hail Mary and switch things up. Maybe I’ll wander Shinjuku again. Maybe I’ll hit Shibuya Crossing. I feel like I’ve already milked the gold there with this new process — but who knows.

What matters most is letting the chips fall as they may.

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Photography as Joy, Play, and Affirmation

Don’t take photography so seriously — it will kill the process. Find joy in the process. When you’re enjoying yourself, that joy reflects in the photos.

Over time, I’ve realized:

Photography has nothing to do with photography. It has everything to do with how you engage with humanity.

The shutter is the easy part. The hard part is your internal state.

Detachment reflects that internal ease. It allows you to explore, tinker, experiment, make mistakes, and iterate. Through repetition, you increase your likelihood of making something great.

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What You Control vs. What You Don’t

You are not in control of:

• Whether you get a good photograph today
• Whether something extraordinary happens
• What the streets will give you

You are in control of:

• How often you go out
• How often you walk
• How you perceive the world
• Your consistency
• Your attitude
• Your gratitude

Treat photography as gratitude for the day. Treat photography as life affirmation. With each click of the shutter, you’re simply saying:

Yes to life. Thank you Lord for the day.

Through detachment, gratitude, and consistency, you’ll improve. You’ll find the results you’re looking for. And you’ll enjoy the entire process much more.

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Resources

If you’re curious, check out my free eBooks and guides at http://dantesisofo.com:

• Ultimate Ricoh GR Street Photography Guide
• Contact Sheets: Behind the Scenes
• Mastering Layering in Street Photography

Thank you for reading. See you in the next one.

Peace.

How Dante Sisofo Developed a Distinct Visual Style at Shibuya Crossing (Tokyo 2025)

Your style emerged from a very specific combination of technique, environment, and intention. None of these elements alone is new — but the way you fused them created something that is distinctly yours.

Here’s the real breakdown:

1. The 71mm Crop Technique with the GR IIIx

Most photographers at Shibuya Crossing shoot:

• wide (24–35mm)
• chaotic scenes
• silhouettes or crowds

You did the opposite.

You used the 71mm crop mode on the Ricoh GR IIIx with:

• 1/2000s
• f/16
• snap focus at 1 meter
• highlight-weighted metering
• high-contrast B&W JPEG

This turned a compact camera into a compression portrait tool — something rarely done at Shibuya Crossing.

That decision alone shifted your look.

2. Caravaggio Logic in a Hyper-Modern Space

Your approach wasn’t “street portraiture.”

It was chiaroscuro hunting.

You weren’t looking for gestures or crowds.

You were scanning for:

• faces emerging from bright light
• deep shadow pools behind them
• extreme separation
• dramatic contrast

You took the logic of Caravaggio’s single-source spotlight

and applied it to a neon-lit intersection in Tokyo.

This fusion is rare.

3. Isolating Micro-Gestures in a Macro Chaos

Shibuya Crossing is the most photographed crossing in the world, but 99% of shooters treat it as:

• spectacle
• vastness
• “look how many people there are”

You flipped the perspective:

Instead of photographing the crowd, you extracted individuals out of it.

That inversion is part of your stylistic identity.

4. Consistency = Language

A visual language is not a single photo —

it’s a repeatable system of choices that produces a unified look.

You repeated:

• tight compression
• hard highlights
• shadow isolation
• off-center framing
• emotional micro-expressions
• pocket-camera immediacy

Enough times that it became recognizable.

This consistency makes it a style, not an experiment.

5. The Ricoh Philosophy Behind It

You treated the Ricoh GR not as a documentary tool but as:

• a pocket Caravaggio light-harvester
• a one-meter emotional extraction machine
• a compression device instead of a wide context device

That’s unusual.

Most GR shooters go wide, spontaneous, diary-style.

You used it like a micro-tele street scalpel.

This divergence from the cultural norm of the GR community is part of why your look stands out.

6. The Environmental Advantage

Shibuya’s:

• bouncing LED billboards
• traffic-light timing
• directional sunlight
• reflective glass surfaces

All create small, fleeting slices of perfect rim light.

You learned those cycles:

• what time light hits which corner
• which side of the crossing gives shadow backdrops
• where faces illuminate and extinguish

This light-mapping is what allowed the “language” to emerge.

7. Intentionality Behind the Work

The distinctiveness didn’t come from gear.

It came from your criteria for what counts as a photo:

You weren’t shooting “people walking.”

You were shooting:

• revelation moments
• glimmers
• facial details
• emotional flickers
• moments when a face becomes sculpture

That intention shaped everything.

⭐ 

Final Answer

You developed a distinct visual style at Shibuya Crossing by combining:

• a telephoto-inspired 71mm crop
• high-contrast chiaroscuro hunting
• consistent technical settings
• micro-gesture extraction
• deep knowledge of Shibuya’s light cycles
• and a personal aesthetic philosophy drawn from Caravaggio and Japanese minimalism

This fusion produced a look that is unique to your body of work, repeatable, recognizable, and deeply tied to that specific place and year.

Routine vs. Wandering

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante. Currently walking through Shinjuku here in Tokyo, Japan. Ricoh GR IIIx, GoPro Mini. Trust in God, and submit to Him, and everything else will fall into place.

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Following the Light

Today I’m thinking about my routine versus wandering in Tokyo, and how I undulate between these two approaches to street photography. With street photography, it’s very simple: you want to wander without any preconceived notions of what you’ll find. You follow your curiosity, your intuition, and you obey that.

But eventually there comes a point in the practice where you become hyper-aware of the patterns—whether it’s in nature or in human behavior. You study the light, you study the foot traffic, you study the movement of people, and you start to understand where you need to be and at what time of day to anticipate moments.

This ability to not only wander aimlessly but also cultivate a routine is critical. It’s how you put order into chaos—how you embrace the unknown but still force your luck in a way where fortune favors the prepared.

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Sunny Days vs. Cloudy Days

Yesterday was a cloudy day. And what I like to say with my practice is simple: follow the light, follow God. God is light. I determine my routine based on the light.

Today is sunny, so I’m going to follow the sun. I know where the sun will be hitting. I know that right now, if I go to Shinjuku Station, there will be a lot of foot traffic and the sun will be pouring into the station beautifully. I’ll be able to play with light and shadow and execute my technique using the Ricoh GR IIIx with the 71mm crop mode.

With the GR IIIx, I’m using crop mode and capturing slivers of people’s faces as they pass in and out of the light—at the station or at Shibuya Crossing—using the background crushed into shadow and exposing for the highlights with highlight-weighted metering. I’m creating these abstract Japanese woodblock-print-looking, Caravaggio-inspired candid portraits. Snap focus at 1 meter, 1/1000 or 1/2000, f/16, extremely close with the crop mode.

Because there is beautiful light today, I’m going to go out and play.

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Wandering With Flash

However, yesterday was a cloudy day, so I wandered. I put a flash on top of my camera. Flash is entirely new to me, and I’ve been exploring it these past couple of days. Now I find it to be a really good solution to the visual problem of photography. When I don’t have light, flash gives me the ability to etch shape and form onto the surfaces around me—faces, details, textures in the alleyways.

So yesterday I spent the day wandering instead of routinely revisiting the same streets where I know I can anticipate moments. Wandering is the art of discovery. And while navigating the alleyways of Shinjuku, following my nose and letting the wind blow me wherever it wanted, this character emerged out of the shadows—crazy piercings, gauges, a full presence. I approached him and made a photo of his face using flash. It was extremely new to me to get that close.

Later, I experimented with 71mm crop at night using flash. I got extremely close to a guy whose eyes bulged toward the frame. It reminded me of another frame I made of a woman—her lips, her collar. These details, these abstractions of faces, are new to me, and they’re emerging from wandering and tinkering.

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Discovery at the Train Station

Then I shifted back into routine. I hopped on the subway to Shibuya. Instead of going straight to the crossing, I photographed the alleyways. And then, as I returned to the station to head back to Shinjuku, I saw a woman standing by the train doors with extremely long nails—curved, wrapped around her hands. Her feet were long too.

I made pictures of her hands as she held her phone. I have no idea how she uses that phone. We talked about her nails—she said she might have the longest nails in Asia. The first photo I made was spontaneous, just a quick snap of her nails. It was one of the new flash experiments from the day.

Both images—close details of faces and hands—were radical departures for me, and they came from the wandering.

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Working Without Wasting Time

When I’m on a dedicated street photography trip, I don’t want to waste time. I can’t get myself to look up locations or chase tourist spots. I’ve eaten at the same restaurant every day. Carnivore, no breakfast, no lunch, fasting all day. I’m not here on vacation—I’m here to work. From morning to nighttime.

It’s hard to sleep because I’m shooting thousands of pictures a day and staying up late culling and making slideshows. My gear is simple. No decision fatigue. Cameras on the neck and wrist. Batteries in the pockets. Flash in the bag. Shinjuku and Shibuya—that’s where I’ll be. Why waste time going anywhere else?

Tokyo has shifted my entire paradigm. Each trip shifts me. The experience of staying put in one neighborhood intensifies everything. It creates familiarity. It gives me breakthroughs.

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A New Paradigm of What a City Can Be

And honestly, Tokyo is blowing my mind. The people are kind. The streets are clean. Everyone is respectful and beautiful. The city is quiet, orderly, alive. It shows me what a city can become.

In Philadelphia—my hometown—I love the city, but I can get jaded by the grit and grime, by the things I see that weigh down my spirit. But here, I feel hopeful and optimistic about urban life. The contrast is huge.

Even the yakiniku spots have iPads so you don’t need to interact—you just tap for water and it comes instantly. The service is insane. Tokyo feels like New York on steroids—like what New York wishes it could be.

Out of all the places I’ve photographed—Mexico City, Hanoi, Napoli, New York—this is near the very top. I still recommend a new photographer start in Mumbai for the raw novelty, but Tokyo? It’s right below Mumbai.

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Routine and Wandering, Carefully Balanced

Routine versus wandering. I think that’s the essence. For me, the big thing is avoiding decision fatigue. I hate wasting time. I haven’t stepped into a single 7-Eleven. I’m not here for sightseeing or snacks or tours. I just want to be on the street.

The routine is consistent. The wandering is always alive. And ultimately, I follow the light. I respond to the light. If the light is good, I work one way. If the light is bad, I work another.

It’s all about following the light. Following your inner child. Following God.