Freedom...or not?

I sit here alone at my friend Tuang Liang's lovely apt at Cambridge, as I have for the last 5 days. The family's gone on a 10-day road trip to Canada and I've got the whole apt to myself! I can think of all the wonderful things about this circumstance. I am entirely alone here, with no one to account to. I can do whatever I like, whenever I like, with basically no responsibilities to fulfill. Well, I mean we all have some responsibilities or other at every point of our lives, but I can choose to ignore them momentarily with no consequences!

Is this freedom? ... or not? I'm just wondering... I suppose I should enjoy this period of transition before my classes begin next week. Thereafter it'll be rather busy I guess. This week, I can just be a tourist, and it's a good chance to see Boston properly, something I could not do the first few days of my arrival as I had to do the necessities like open bank accounts, set up a mobile no, check out the school and of course, hunt for an apt.

Then I think of my family back home. Can I really enjoy this 'freedom' knowing that my daughter is back home missing me? Or that between Yen and my mum, they share the demanding job of looking after Meg 24/7? Or that I've left our home in a big mess and Yen has to spend the remaining days of his leave clearing up after me? These thought processes go through my head every day, and even if the answer to the questions is YES, a part of me says NO! I can't really enjoy - although I will try to, as this is a rare situation I'm in - when I'm a little apprehensive about school, about doing well, about finding a suitable subject to photograph, about setting up a cosy home before Yen and Meg arrive, about trying not to spend too much money so we'll have enough for later, etc etc, etc. As you can see, I'm somewhat a worrier...thus the bald spot! I think one of the conditions that people who are alone experience is the conversations inside one's head. One can't control it. I have decided that I will make it a point to direct all these negative worrying thoughts towards photographing Boston, to get into the shooting frame of mind again. I feel I've lost some of my guts to shoot people face on over the years. I just flipped though Alex Webb's new book "Istanbul: City Of A Hundred Names" and it's a great book. His coloured compositions are simply beautiful. They're not contrived but almost perfect, and that's the beauty of street photography, where, if you manage to marry the two, you've got a winner. I must try to push myself in that direction, firstly to overcome my timidness when shooting people. I need to take this year to develop my photography cos this is probably the last chance for me to do so full-time. We'll see what happens. I shot a miserable 3 pix today...one of which is this one...