This may be just me---I certainly am one of Nature's overthinkers of philosophical questions---but I came to the conclusion a while ago that I needed to stop asking myself what I was doing and why, and just *do* it. If my inner photographic daemon wants to take a big b&w landscape with pretty mountains and a huge tonal scale, I'm gonna go ahead and do it; if it wants to take a macro of a dog turd on C-41 film, I'm gonna go ahead and do it---well, maybe not on C-41, because I'm not sure I want to explain that photo to the nice folks at the lab. I mean, what's the worst that could happen? I take a photo that isn't very good? OH THE H0RrORz!!1!

So at this point I'm not especially even trying to please myself; I'm trying to follow my impulses, do the process, and the product can take care of itself. (I'm talking about exposure here. Printing is a different story, because I'm still learning the rudiments of the process. I don't think I'll be able to listen to my gut about printing for a good many years to come.)