sure enough…

i’m SO glad MAD MEN is back. really.

way back, in the first few episodes of Season One, i was surprised to learn something about women in the early 60’s. I’d always thought that women KNEW they were not an inferior creature – as we still believe now – they just… put up with men talking down to them, sexualizing them, etc…

i was surprised to realize that while this eye-rolling tolerance was the attitude of some women, it was much more commonplace then that they actually believed it. They didn’t put up with anything! They sincerely believed that their roles were, in fact, inferior. They were perfectly expecting to take the unwanted attention, to be subservient on so many levels. Those levels have blurred now, even long before 2009, and i was grateful for a subtle correction in my imaginary “history of women” montage still building in my mind.

Good stuff. And so good to recognize my brother’s voice right before his face appears on the screen. If seeing his success isn’t an inspiration to each and every one of you, i don’t know what is. One actor out of millions. Millions who want it as much if not more than he does. Millions who have cried themselves to sleep and hung their souls at the edge of a high school stage just to get to the next step in their careers. Millions who have their own unique product that shines just right for no casting director. Millions who catch their breath constantly in the unceasing battle between their stoic sureness and the worm of doubt that they themselves have nurtured to strength.

The combination of skill, perseverance, and dumb luck is working out for him in breathtaking ways, and no matter what roles he plays or people he meets or jobs he gets after this, he’s got a lot to be proud of, a lot of success that he deserves.

that goes for all of us, exactly as we are, if we’ve made it this far. and if you don’t feel that way now, find a way to get there.

i’ve gone part-time.

it’s been interesting.

the veryexcitingradioshow is airing August 30th, but i can’t advertise my thrill to the world until the 26th, when he’ll let the cat out of the proverbial bag.

so i’ve had a lot of time. to do… whatever i want.

i’ve done so, so little.

before lately, the prospect of doing so, so little has been nice! I’ve never had a problem feeling entitled to a break. I work hard, i work often, i really mean it whenever i work. indulging in a movie or a nap in the hammock or silly playing with Momo has always been cherished.

Now? i just surf the internet until 2 in the morning and wake up at 10 in the morning, groggy, and spending the afternoon, wait for it, surfing the internet until my shortened afternoon work shift, where i’ll get out relatively early, and come home to surf the internet until 2 in the morning, and yougetthedrift.

(one thing which i won’t feel bad about is the fact that I’m going through all the Neil deGrasse Tyson videos i can find on the internet, which isn’t such a bad way to spend your online time.)

I feel disgusted with myself, when i know i have the choice to be satisfied with myself. That means two things:

1. i could be working on the thousand wedding photos from Saturday to make room for the thousand more i’ll have this coming Saturday, and the one after that… I could be cleaning the bathroom… I could be getting an oil change… I could be volunteering for sick kids in a hospital… You get the point.

or

2. i could be doing the exact same thing, and feel like i deserve the state i’m in – that it’s obviously what i need to be doing, or else i wouldn’t be doing it.

then i think about morbidly obese people, and bet they leaned more towards option two.

It’s something that will pass, not only because i have only really about two more weeks of this very light schedule, and my mind may change to be a little lighter about things.

i did have these feelings before last night, but i did, for the first time, have an argument with my best friend, J. In the end, she chocked it up to her playing devil’s advocate, that during the whole disagreement, her passion in opposition wasn’t personal – but she sure sounded like it at the time.

it was dumb, as things like these always are, but here’s what happened, severely nutshelled.

i said i was teasing myself with the idea of getting a THIRD camera body ($3500) and a super wide angle lens ($450 and up) because lately, i’ve noticed a lot of shots i wish i could have gotten thiiiiiiis much wider! but due to physical constraints of my current widest lens (24-70), i could only pull back so much, and physically i often can only more back so much – like being in a relatively small room or having barriers of some sort. One example is the Metric picture of her jumping and the mass of photographers all collectively aimed at her. GOOD SHOT! But if i could have had it thiiiiis much wider? breathtaking shot. So, physics is the problem, a wider lens is the solution, and a third body would make it quick (to avoid changing lenses, which sometimes you just do NOT have time to do).

J said that she knows plenty of photographers who only use one lens, and one body, and they come up with great shots, so as she said, “some people don’t NEED three lenses to do great work”.

it was completely unrelated to what i was talking about. she kept throwing up her hands and saying things like “i don’t know ANY photographer who goes out with three bodies and lenses” at which point i wanted to scream, because in photojournalism, two and three bodies are more than commonplace, they’re expected and useful tools.

She asked me, how do you feel about wedding photographers who only go in with one body? And i said i feel BAD! Because the clients will get a small portion of an INFINITE amount of creative, effective shots they COULD have gotten with more tools, and bad because the photographer cannot be as creative as modern technology has graciously allowed us to become!

All this while her boyfriend sits listening, directly positioned underneath his “music room” with 16 guitars in cases, 4 guitars on stands, a drum set, two keyboards, two mikes and a colorful collection of floor pedals.

she said that three bodies and lenses would be cumbersome, saying i may physically hurt myself by carrying all that weight, and i also may be obtrusive to other people as well.

for the record, the two bodies and lenses i always use collectively weigh 10 pounds. i weighed it the other day, because i thought if i knew how much they weighed, i could brag about it later, or interject it in an interesting story sometime. once i saw that they were 10 pounds, i thought, oh. well that’s not gonna make me look like a hero or anything.

and if i have two bodies at my side and one with a wide lens strapped across my chest, that’s not even a rational argument as far as physics is concerned.

anyway.

it got heated, and she claimed that she was playing devil’s advocate once i said something like, “wait a minute, i really feel like you’re being condescending, and implying that by having more tools that i am less of a capable artist”. after all these years, and knowing her as well as i do, i know that even if she meant all of it, she still has always been capable of talking herself into (and very well out of) corners. Her brain is a remarkable machine, and in its intricate beauty sometimes she just wants to play in the wonderful land of Hypothetia, and she gets worked up in defense of her ideas.

(she also jumped to defend and explain when i pointed out that the Metric t-shirt that says “Cougar VS Snake” is wrong, because the lyric from the song is, “Cougar FOR A snake”. I never understood why she leapt to defend the error, and i barely understood more of her reasoning than this: “it was an inside joke! if you know Metric, then you know it’s not cougar VS snake, so that’s why the shirt says FOR A snake”. i want to take this moment to say that really, 99% of the time, J is right. About everything. it’s remarkable. but she’s human and sometimes does things like this.)

i was happy to seal our weird, heated argument up, and everything cooled off quickly with some laughs, apologies and changing of the subject. But it was deeply surprising to think she’s seen me with my gear that i am so happy to work with and that i spent a lot of money on, and yielded really beautiful work from, that i’ve INVESTED in for myself and the future of my business and my art, and my best friend is rolling her eyes, saying that if i can’t get the job done with one, then……

What?

Even the artists’-paintbrush analogy was disregarded, as was my admittance to the idea that you should be able to take a great photo with a cell phone camera from 2003, but if you want versatility, gather your tools and learn how to use them! agh!

so.

that’s worked me up, this lazy time off and my attitude about it has worked me down, and now i’m just… stagnant.

looking forward to reading this later once things have picked up and my heart’s been racing, and thinking, ugh! she should have just lightened up and enjoyed herself!

i guess i could do that now, instead of waiting. (My mom told me when i was very young, you ALWAYS have a choice – especially when you least think you do).

thanks for reading.