sure enough…

just to ensure that it’s not only when i’m off-kilter that i write in this blog, dammit, i’m writing in it now.

i’ve never. been better.

my career is just, just, just blooming. i’m just now finding myself most in line with who i would want to be when i grow up. But instead of waiting until later, i’m finding this groove now. it’s exhilarating, and the work that i do with the station and my photography could take me anywhere at all.

ash and i talked – she apologized the whole night, and though there are still a few things to iron out, i feel exorcised. living with ghosts ain’t no joke, and i’m still the same character, but my proverbial jar is open. turns out it always has been.

i’m savoring it constantly. Thanks for being out there, folks.

at this point, i’m lying in a heated waterbed in Lawrence, Kansas. I’ve been here all weekend to photograph the wedding of a woman i work with at the station. it was lovely and relaxed and so much fun – i’m still waiting for the wedding experience from hell that must be inevitable, but it hasn’t happened yet!

i’m intending to be (besides my car payment) debt free. while being part-time employed with public radio. my credit card debt totals a little over $7,000, and after hearing about credit card companies and banks jacking up their APRs, i feel like it’s more critical now than ever. At the same time, i have one more wedding this month, and then i’m dry until May. eef!!! So i’m beginning to think of how i can fill in those gaps. scary and kind of wonderful.

I guess the worst case scenario if i really can’t make ends meet is to move back in with my parents. of course that would take a hell of a lot of money mismanagement on my part, but it’s nice to know that 1. i’m SURE they would let me do it and 2. it really would be pretty nice. i adore my parents to the end of comprehension. and i’m becoming a professional at talking with my stepfather when he’s feeling intellectually feisty.

he and i have gotten to the point of almost not speaking after mishandled political/theoretical arguments. Now that i know better how to respond to things he’ll say to test my knowledge or limits, i feel like when we get into heated debate, it ultimately just keeps my blade sharp. Here is this passionate retired assistant state’s attorney, constitutional expert and general wise guy… talking politics or god or any random life theory with me, a 29 year old college drop out who almost didn’t graduate high school. I have a pretty wide gap as far as formal education goes, but i like to think i make up for it in private consideration. i spend a hell of a lot of time alone (which i love) and i spend a lot of time pondering all the different sides of ideas that float through my mind.

ultimately, i want to learn from the people around me – not be right. At the same time, even though i’m not “formally” educated, I’m confident in the rigorous work i do in my mind.

i’m off-topic.

so life is really about to get interesting, and i’m so happy i quit my retail job and am taking this big risk – thankfully, it’s only a monetary risk. everything else makes PERFECT sense, and that’s how i know i made the right decision.

Time to explore downtown a little bit before heading back home.

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.

man, am i glad my wisdom teeth are out.

the surgeon didn’t have me count down or anything – i was just OUT. I do remember, however, howling in pain during the procedure. it was my lower-left tooth, which was the reason i went in there in the first place. I “woke up” in a chair in a separate room, crying. Crying, crying, crying. Crying. In SO much pain. Crying. it was all i could do. my whole upper body ached like it’s never ached before.

i took a video of myself in the car – still crying. awful.

got home, did a facebook video with mom translating, and then i sat on the couch in pure agony for hours. i took 1.5 vicodins. had two ice packs pressed against my head, but the pain was from my neck to the top of my skull. in my ears. in my eyes. it would not be relieved no matter what i did.

I had prepared a huge bowl of strawberry jello, which i gently dug into. Temporarily, i started feeling better! then the pain came back and the whole process repeated itself. a few hours later (after changing gauze over and over and over and over again), i ate some more jello. Mom & Guy put “Gran Torino” in for us to watch, and i promptly fell asleep for almost the whole movie.

By the time the movie was over, and i woke up, i was feeling much better! Now, the pain is localized to where it SHOULD be – my mouth and my jaw. Fine with me. Mom & Guy asked if they could take me back to their house to sleep, but i refused. I just wanna be in my own bed! With Mo! They were amazing, though, and it was really so, so wonderful to have them with me, in my apartment, all day. I am lucky.

Now, hopefully it’s smooth sailing. I’ve got plenty of pain meds left, and four more days off. sweet.

well, it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon… i’ve bought a hammock. i’ve got a glass of chardonnay. working on some photos. finished editing the interviews from the wedding i did the other day. and found out that i have about TWO MONTHS worth of time off i need to take before November.

life is good.

Paul invited me to Ireland, where he and Vanesa will be vacationing all through August. And i’d really like to visit Michael for a few days in la-la land. Sorry, Chris, i think Japan is out this time, but let’s meet somewhere else!

Things are good. i made two months worth of rent in four hours yesterday while photographing a wedding – and that was at my OLD rate! My health is good, Momo’s health is good, i’m getting better at my photography AND my voicework – speaking of that, i’ve got another hour of voice work to do with WNPR, because, sadly, they’ve canned our station manager. Yikes. I’m not sure if this effects the Colin show i am supposed to be some kind of part of, but we’ll see.

Going part-time at tmo will be so awesome. I can’t wait to fill in the time!!!

That’s it. just a few random thoughts before heading back into photoshop to work on some very late Independence Day photos. I raise my glass to you all out there.

Oof.

Metric’s people said i could do an email interview with Emily. Cool, right? I had initially wanted a face-to-face interview, more like a discussion than a pop-quiz. I didn’t want to shoot out questions that could be answered in one shot and then moved on. In all the interviews i saw, she’s not a one-line answer type of person, so that was promising!

So, i thought, let me put a good list of email questions together, and see what she says! One of the questions is something i wanted to ask in person, about something she mentioned in a documentary on ilovemetric.com. She said: “i’d given up on writing, which i didn’t tell anybody that i work with”. She went to Buenos Aires when she was questioning her future as a songwriter, and i wondered if her relationship with self-doubt was any different now that she’s enjoying this well-deserved success.

What’s weird is that she not only missed the point of the question, but denied ever having considered “backing out” of writing. Are “giving up” and “backing out” different? Weird.

The whole thing seemed like a dud of an interview, but i’m glad i had the opportunity.

Me: If you could go back in time, what’s something you would tell yourself as Metric was just getting started?

Emily: Don’t listen to anybody who tries to tell you what to do as an artist.

Me: If you weren’t a musician in this lifetime, what would you be doing?

Emily: Growing sweet potatoes and milking cows

Me: Since your consideration of backing out of song-writing, how has your relationship with your own self-doubt changed?

Emily: I never considered “backing out”. I was writing a lot, i just didn’t like any of it! I realized that for me writing can never become a chore. I would quit before I would let that happen. I want to actually experience moments of such emotion and complexity in my life that I feel compelled to convey them in a song, not just spend my life sitting around trying to think of something to say.

Me: What do you want your audience to take from the live shows that they couldn’t get from the albums?

Emily: Live music is not television. Anything can happen. The future is unwritten.

Me: What direction do you want to go once you’re ready for the next musical step?

Emily: No idea!

Me: What are some of your “dream collaborations”?

Emily: A lot of my heros are dead. Of the living, I think a cameo on “Flight of the Conchords” would be a good start.

Me: What do you think about right before you go on-stage? What do you like to do as soon as you’re off-stage after a set?

Emily: My mind is completely clear before and after a show, it is the best part of the day.

Me: I was really drawn to the idea of the “campfire test”… Could there be an acoustic Metric CD in the future?

Emily: Yeah, we’ve been talking about that! Until then, you can download a free MP3 of “Help, I’m Alive” acoustic at ilovemetric.com

so get this: in an effort to be a little gay-friendlier than my last post, i decided to watch “Milk” for the first time.

I ejected it after about 30 minutes.

i appreciate the effort. i do, i really do. it’s probably the best we’re gonna get for maybe 6 years or so, after more big waves of political and social change. but the writing was shit. i wanted to punch Emile Hirsch’s character in the face as soon as he over-acted his fancy swagger (and i normally come in peace!). James Franco was adorable, with as much substance as a golden retriever. Sean Penn did the best he could, which, considering the writing, is pretty good. But as a whole, it almost felt like propaganda. Propaganda for ideas of which i support, but propaganda nonetheless.

Funny, i was rooting on principle for Milk every time it was up for an Academy Award, but now that i’ve seen it, i take my rooting back. I wouldn’t root for Slumdog Millionaire (the first 10 minutes seduce you in, and then they hope you don’t notice the inconsistencies stylistically and in the screenplay.), and i doubt i would have had patience for Benjamin Button unless it was mind-blowingly good (as reviews refute). That leaves The Reader, and Frost/Nixon, and i’m going on a wild guess here that i’d prefer Frost/Nixon simply because its historical political setting is more relevant to me and my life now than a love and justice story traced around a Nazi war crime trial is.

Oof. Time to watch the playoffs.

today is Hartford Pride.

when i was 16 and had just come out, Pride was so exciting, i could barely sleep the night before. I could hang out with my gay friends, do gay shopping (one more rainbow sticker won’t hurt!), and meet other gay people.

Now, i’m 28, and it totally turns me off.

Here’s the core of it: You are not your sexuality.

When you’re 16 and you’ve been concealing your sexual tendencies since kindergarten, and suddenly you’re out, hell YES, it’s ALL you are!!! That just makes psychological sense.

But now, at this age, it’s a much smaller part of who i am (especially considering my chronic singleness). And this leads me to my next thought…

I am incredibly irritated (but nice to) people who “act gay”. Butch lesbians. Effeminate men. I’m not talking the ones who just veer to the side, so to speak, but the outwardly homosexual types of people who just wear it on their sleeve (and ears and necks and t-shirts and car bumpers…). This is because they’re putting their sexuality on center stage, with all the solos, over-mic’d, making their sexuality the biggest thing about them.

That just seems creepy. If some straight guy was macho-ing it up around me, i’d bite my fist, too. If some straight lady was damseling all over the place, i’d bang my head against the wall. sexual orientation should be a part of you – not all of you – no matter what your orientation.

I suppose the innocent thing to say in defense of Pride is that it’s ONE day a year for people of a sexual minority to get together, and celebrate that which makes us different. sure, that’s lovely. That’s why i went. I parked, walked around, walked through, and was back in my car driving home within 20 minutes. I couldn’t stomach it. i felt disgusted. at my own people! how about that?

I thought, if i had a kid with me, i wouldn’t want to take them to Pride. I wouldn’t want them to think that’s all gay people are about. Our ONE public outing is a day of obnoxious music with booths as far as the eye can see, selling rainbow everything?

I wish it were a day of community service. There were a few booths with great AIDS education, community outreach organizations, heath care… Instead of a hedonistic meat market, i’d rather have us sponsor a day of community involvement, volunteerism, outreach. Whatever that means. My imaginary kid would have a better understanding that socially responsible people can be gay, straight, male, female, and anything (everything) in between. Not just lesbians wearing wife-beaters glaring at each other all day (that’s pretty much all i saw – no one was smiling! the hell?).

And i wanted to live in San Francisco?!?! Ugh. i take it BACK! (sorry, Lindsay, i don’t think you’re as irritable about this as i am! Good thing…)

That’s it. I’m gonna go cool down.

update: fuck it, i replaced the ring. having it makes me happy, and that’s all i really need to know.

(and Metric came out with a video for “Sick Muse”!!! hooraaaay! intentionally low-budget, and Emily looks, as ever, lovely. Hope they come out with one for “Satellite Mind”…)