Chemistry is such a love of mine that I could bear to make it a career. The sheer power represented by the most elegantly arranged chart in the history of humanity provides a predictive power only exceeded by celestial mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.  The idea of extracting a living from that fact is somewhat romantic but the realities of industry mean that relationship was doomed.  Actuarial science provides possibly better dinner party conversation and the predictive capacity but none of the power.  Maybe spending time in a clock tower with a high powered rifle with a copy of the illustrative life table would do the trick but would come nowhere near the magic calculating enthalpy or creating thermite.

Anyway, I’d finished running a training session at camp when I met up with someone who took Woodbadge with me.  We exchanged pleasantries on how neither of us had done much on our Woodbadge tickets when he saw the camera stand on my backpack.

Him: Do you enjoy photography?
Me: I guess.  Recently I’ve been having more fun doing prints but I’ve been collecting pictures from the porch of Totem.
Him: Any luck today?
Me: Not really, there was too much snow in the way.
Him: I hate photography.
Me: Really?
Him: Yep.  I hate it so much I made it a career.  I saw some of the most successful people being the ones who reduced the art to monotonous checklists and I thought, “I can do that”.
Me: How has that worked out for you?
Him: I’m booked clear into 2013.

Well, then.