We all have those things that make us uncomfortable. The one that stands out the most is having my picture taken. I’m the one who takes pictures, remember? I stand BEHIND the camera for a reason.

Several months ago I was walking with my friend Matt, who is an excellent photographer, when he stopped me to have me stand so he can take a picture. We had been walking and talking and suddenly I start stuttering and trying to talk more and was all shifty like I had just stolen a candy bar from a store. That’s how I saw it. I’m not sure how he saw it. Poor guy probably just wanted to practice lighting. That’s what he should have said, “Hey Dar, I like the lighting here. Not really interested in the subject so it’s not about you at all, could you just stand here please?” Maybe he did. In fact, I can’t remember much of what was said.

Writing this blog about what makes me uncomfortable for me is making my head hurt.

I once let a friend take some pictures of me, but I brought my camera. He made me put it down. I’ll link to that post, he titled it, “Hide And Seek“. It’s mostly not about me, which is good. I have to tell you that I don’t rock climb and I hate water slides. In that post he’s refering to things that were on my 35 by 35 list. I didn’t do any of them. I’m going to be 40 in 1 1/2 years. Yeah, I’m not going to make a 40by40 list. (The first paragraph about me was true and sounds so impressive.)

Wow. Looking at those pictures overwhelms me with emotion. I am not that woman anymore. I look the same, more or less. Perhaps a little more seasoned now.

Overwhelmed, I tell you. Those pictures are nearly 5 years old. Everything made me uncomfortable then, except hiding and pretending I was doing so well. You know what makes me uncomfortable now? Hiding. The thoughts of going back into the cave. The idea of maintaining fake friendships. Get real or get out.

Oh, I just remembered that at the iLA live event a few weeks ago in Salem I won a raffle and had to go to the front of the room to collect it. I was fine marching up there to collect my prize, but I had a plan. I was supposed to tell the room why I’m awesome, my plan was to get out of that and I almost got away with it! I was walking away as someone called out, “Hey, she needs to go back to say why she is awesome.” No thanks, I’m good, moving on. Only they wouldn’t move on so I had to go back up. Great. I started to get tunnel vision and I couldn’t think of why I’m awesome. I said something about being able to serve them in customer support, but that wasn’t good enough. Then Ruth looks at me and says, “This is hard for you, isn’t it?” I look to the back of the room and Lennox is laughing because he knows just how hard it was for me.  I can’t remember what I ended up saying that was acceptable enough for me to walk away. I though of things afterward, though.

My nightmare would be for someone to be taking pictures of me and interviewing me. Yep. Ask me about my accomplishments and I’ll think of all my failures. Tell me how you think my life is hard and how great I’m doing and I’ll squirm. Yesterday a teacher said to me, “You work really hard for your kids” and my next thought was “not hard enough”. I didn’t say that out loud. I’ve learned to not do that. Oh, I think that it would be way worse for me to get me in front of a video camera. Yeah, that would do it. I have all kinds of plans to do videos or vlogs for specific purposes, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

I’m feeling nostalgic so I’ll leave you with one last thing. I forget that sometimes I like to write poetry. In October of 2008 I wrote a post titled, “Random Haiku and other Poems“. I’m really good at silly poems. Sometimes Christopher and I rap songs back and forth, mine are always silly and kind of Dr. Seuss-ish.

 



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