art & fear

have you read this?  it was recommended last night and i am off to find it tonight.  the quotes i've read and the one i heard last night...they sound perfect. 

“To require perfection is to invite paralysis. The pattern is predictable: as you see error in what you have done, you steer your work toward what you imagine you can do perfectly. You cling ever more tightly to what you already know you can do – away from risk and exploration, and possibly further from the work of your heart. You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes.  Bayles and Orland"

lessons

it seems that i just get over one week before another starts up and stares me straight in the face, daring me to deal with it.  so ...here i am, dealing with it.  and...thankfully, so far, so good (of course it's monday and i'm joking.)

i had a great weekend...well, by great i mean that i got to shoot some shots that i'm very proud of, had fun processing those shots, found some great white jeans (and bought them of course), and got to see one of my favorite summer indulgences, true blood.  funny - the twilight series leaves me cold but true blood makes me all shivery with horror and intrigue.

after reading andrea's eloquent list to her younger self i thought a lot about things that i would tell my younger self and then thought a lot about how, even today, when an older person tells a  younger person, they're all "phffttt" just like i was with my mother. (i don't think i took a breath writing that sentence so it a bit run-on, just like i was when i was younger)  i know all of you can think of a younger person that your heart just aches for and how you could give them so much wisdom...if only.  it seems we spent so many years 'going to school' to only learn the harder lessons later in life...or is it that we realize we learned the lessons at a younger age but they were encrypted in some mystic language that we didn't decode until we turned 29...or something.  anyway...there are so many things on that list that i was nodding along with.

then i see brilliant young people, like my model - Christy, who is funny and has her head on so very straight.  she is not quite sure where she's going yet but she wants to do it in a happy, positive and good way..and i admire her.  she is much more together than i was at that age.  it's funny to think at her age i was deeply in love and knew i wanted to get married.  i knew i was going to be a secretary, support my husband through school and have babies.  then, when they got in school, i was going back to school to get my degree in something cool - at that time i think was "computers" (lol - a degree in computers - what?)  then we would have brilliant children who would grow up and we would eventually sail around the world after we retired.  the good thing about dreams, paths and such...they are changeable.  i wish i could remember where i read it but it was basically this...a path isn't necessarily a straight line with one way on or off.  a path meanders and winds - there are many ways to get on that path and many ways to get off a bad path to get to a new, better path.  i like that thought.  a lot.  a lot lot.  okay - i like that tremendously.  don't you?

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currently on my ipod - english girls approximately (ryan adams), seed (angie aparo), follow through (gavin degraw), beautiful (india.arie), in my own mind (lyle lovett), northern sky (nick drake), la song (beth hart).  apparently my ipod is in a very, very mellow place today....like it's working off a hangover. 

looking forward to - class tonight, seeing a draft of our operational plan, a great three-day weekend

current obsession(s) - true blood, red bell pepper, pasta and finding the perfect green flat.

on assignment

my sweet model girl was so patient today as i dragged her from place to place today, trying to find the right setting.  we got to try out some of my ideas...some are still waiting on the right settings.  some ideas worked, some didn't.  but it was all about the lessons learned.  here are a few of my favorites for this week's theme "obscurity".  in this case, i went with a sub-theme of teenage angst and running away....

it's friday and i love a list

the picture has nothing to do with a list...it's just a picture of my itty bitty bit having breakfast and i love it.  i look forward to fridays, for a number of reasons - including the obvious that the weekend is coming up! 

ways that i've tried to improve my life over the past year:
1.  worry less.
2.  be the kind of person that i would want to be friends with.
3.  eat better and eat locally (when possible)
4.  inject more creativity in my life.
5.  tell people that i love, "i love you" whenever i can.
6.  release the past, live in the moment, plan for a bright future.
7.  challenge myself/allow myself to fail

songs recently played (on my work iPod):
1.  you get what you give - new radicals
2.  ice cream - sarah mclachlan
3.  angel flying too close to the ground - willie nelson
4.  useless desires - patty griffin
5.  so much mine - jonatha brooke
6.  life less ordinary - carbon leaf

accomplishments this week:
1.  started photography classes again
2.  kept my cool when a webinar went horribly wrong
3.  got through the week without buying new music for the iPod
4.  washed clothes instead of putting them off until the weekend
5.  completed the budget and sent it off to the consultants

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for those that were interested in aperture and creating bokeh but had a bit of issue with lens...this is a good article about that at  blah, blah, blahg

the impermanence of time...along with other observations

 the clock ticking strangely sounds like the empty wasteland of my brain - echoing and darting around corners seeking information that seems to have disappeared.  yesterday was a nephew's birthday (12th) and a nephew's trimuph (he got his driving permit).  it blows my mind that one is old enough to shave and one is on the edge of teendom.  days like this (no matter what van morrison says) always make me flinch in the relentless onslaught of time.  i blinked first time...can you vere off now?  maybe for just a wee bit.  this breakneck speed you've acquired makes me feel as though i can't breathe. 
 
time never listens to me. as i suspect, it doesn't listen to you either. it never listens to my suggestions of bending, stretching, stopping and starting - it just keeps going and going. wrapped up in this is the realization that my knees creak now every day and i wake up at the time where i used to think it was cool to fall asleep. but time is used to my curses and i remind myself not to waste time as there are no brakes on this railroad car.

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klutz move of the day: yesterday, while finally hanging pictures that have sat on my office floor for a couple months, i knocked my camera off my desk and killed my 50mm.  i was dismayed but then was thankful that i now have a job where i can replace it (a few months ago i would have just cried).  so, hopefully the new one will arrive this afternoon so i can shoot this weekend.  i've settled on two or three ideas that i hope work out...but i need a model.  *crosses fingers* if so, you may see the darker side of charlane. 

random book passage of the day:  "that friday made the last of our fine days, for a month.  in the evening, the weather broke; the wind shifted from south to northeast, and brought rain, first, then sleet, and snow.  on the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer; the primroses and crocuses were hidded under the wintery drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early trees were smitten and blackened -- and dreary, and chill, and dismal that morrow did creep over!"  (bonus points for right guesses about the author {without googling}.  hint:  sir lawrence)

current obsession:  werther's creamy caramel filled chocolates

today on my ipod:  chain of fools (eva cassidy cover), dreams (brandi carlisle), imagine (john lennon), trouble (ray lamontagne), the man that sold the world (nirvana), and one (u2)....of course among others.