My Mental Hairball Is Gone

For the time being, at least.

Whatever was clogging up my mental workings appears to have been coughed up and now I'm feeling much better, thank you.

Thank you for the many many kind and loving wishes, emails and comments. I'm sure that your special brand of patience and goodwill was a large part of my swift recovery.

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It's a really funny paradox to feel angst over losing a job you didn't really like and you knew you should be leaving anyway. I guess my inner Control Freak, who would have much rather been the one to say See ya, wouldn't want to be ya! was disgruntled at not being given that opportunity, thus creating the mental hairball of fuzzy, dark depression. As a friend used to say to me, "here's another f*cking opportunity for growth and development."

But it's a new (rainy) day and I feel fine.

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While I was in my funk, wearing stale sweats and eating plain rice, I kept revisiting my photos and my faces for i live here: SF and it was really the only thing that made me feel good. I realized that in this project, even though I consider it still quite new, I've been meeting articulate, passionate people who have taught me things I didn't know.

In meeting them, I've wandered parts of the city I hadn't been to before, favorite places of the people in the photos, places they wanted to share and have be part of their photographs. They told me about their lives, why they live here and what they care about. A lot of information for a first date, but all interesting and positive things.

For the most part, these people are total strangers to me before we meet. I have no idea what they look like. And then after a few minutes, they're showing me their favorite parts of San Francisco, and we're talking and sharing our thoughts and interests. And then at the end of the shoot, when I've edited their photos, when they are so excited about how their photos turned out and are so very very happy, I feel like a million bucks.

I just can't get over how cool and rewarding the whole experience is, and how much I love it and look forward to these meetings. For those of you who haven't yet met Cari or Megan, I hope you will stop by and see what they've written. And there's more in the pipeline, so that's really something I look forward to, and I hope you do too.

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In this last week, I was really worried that I had run out of things to write about here at tangobaby. Even reading other blogs and leaving comments seemed like an effort, and that scared me because I love blogging, all aspects of it, and it made me sad to think that all of a sudden, that particular well of pleasure had dried up without warning.

But the thoughts are trickling back, and I know that the more I write, the more they'll start flooding back, and so relief is in sight there, too.

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My mom has always been my biggest and best supporter, fan and understanding soul. A few weeks ago, even before all of this falderall with work, she sent me a check and told me to buy something for myself: batteries for the camera, a lipstick, whatever. It's from her little savings account, so that makes me feel guilty as heck even though I know it makes her happy to send me the money.

But I feel like at my age, I should be sending her money. So I hadn't cashed the check, thinking that I would save it to spend on her when she comes to visit me next time, or for a rainy day. The rainy day happened to be in my head though, and while I was sitting there, looking at my photos, I wanted desperately to do something with them that would make them look even prettier.

After a day of being tethered to my chair, I made this site below and I'm very proud of it. I used the money my mom gave me to buy the template and the domain name, and even if it's a total vanity project, I feel like I've really accomplished something and it cleared the dark clouds in my mind. I had no idea what I was doing when I started and by the end of it all, I was routing DNS thingys and hosts and things I still don't understand but it works.

See what you think (click on the logo to take you there). And thank you, mommy, because you were my first believer.

Resting on Laurels I Don't Have

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied. ~Arnold Glasow

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"So, why are you still working here?"

That is what one of my coworkers asked me today. She was very direct. She even had her hands on her hips, in an insistent stance. She meant the question in a nice way, though.

As much as I might complain and whine about my job sometimes, I do work with some very talented, bright and very funny, cool people (except for one, and that's all I'll say about that). For almost two years, I have played jokes on some, shared snarky emails and daydreams of where the nearest Sugar Daddy store is in town, and gone out for drinks, movies, lunches and dinners with even more. When I would walk in a little late in the morning, looking frowsy from a late night of tango dancing, some one would always ask with a smile, "Oh, tango again last night?" Or when I had my flamenco skirt and shoes in my bag and was on the way out the door, people would want to know, "How's that flamenco coming along?"

It's nice to be noticed.

Now, when they see me with my camera around my neck, maybe having just come in from lunch, they say, "Take any good pictures today?" And they mean it. I get little congregations at my desk to see one of my latest achievements. It's very sweet of them.

I've already sold seven books at work.

So someone who hadn't seen my book yet came over with a copy in her hand. Three of them had been pow-wowing at another's desk, and she had been flipping through it. She marched back to my desk and said, "So why exactly are you still working here? I can't believe you took these pictures! You should be in a gallery. You should be selling these books all over town!"

I babbled. "Wha..wah...wh--"

And another one piped up on the other side of my desk: "You need to get a grant. Seriously. Apply to the Getty Foundation and get out of here."

They already have all of these ideas. Go to this store. This museum. This hotel. Oh, the tourists here. And here. My head was spinning and my insides were saying, oh please, can't you do this part for me?

So now I have to give myself a little bit of a kick in the pants. I made my book, and I adore it. I figured out how to make prints I like and I can sell them, too. I show my book around and people love it. I have copies sitting on my desk (the stack is dwindling rapidly), all with the idea that I will take them into shops and hotels and show them and see if I can drum up some orders, and instead I've done nothing so far.

I'm resting on laurels I don't have. I need to cut this crap and get out there and show my stuff. But then I think about me trying to apply for a grant with the Getty Foundation and my mean little Dorothy Parker self just laughs (Just learned to use a camera at Easter, this year, for god's sake! Still uses the Auto function on her camera because she doesn't even know all of the settings yet. Who does she think she is, anyway?!).

This post is not a pity party for me and I know what I have to do. But I still want to have the world come to me, to be like Lana Turner at the soda fountain at Schwab's and get discovered and instantly become a star (even though that story isn't true, isn't it what we all want?). Isn't that what reality tv is all about? Someday I'll be discovered? That diamond in the rough, the one that only needs a little facet here and a little polish there and voila! Now I can show them all I'm not a total phony?

Wake up, tangobaby. You've got to hit the pavement and get to work.

Please help kick me in the pants. I need more feet.

***

Just so you know, up top are what the MOO cards look like, what I was telling you about here. They are insanely cute and I think all of you should get MOO cards. (See, I'm so good at promoting other people's stuff.)

On the other side, they say:

julie michelle
photographer

Okay, MOO cards. I know.

Just Call Me Monet Junior

Oh lordy! Why didn't you guys tell me I could do stuff like this in Photoshop?!!

I take it all back.

***

Today I became an Impressionist! And I can't even paint!

I took this photo today of a waterlily at the Japanese Tea Garden:

And magically turned it into this watercolor painting!

Hooray...something new to obsess about...Photoshop filters!

I Guess One Is Not Enough

I'm sure you can tell right now that my Canon has got me wrapped around its dear little lens.

I didn't want to turn this blog into a photography blog and further confuse those of you who used to come here to read about tango and wonder what the hell happened to that.

So I'm trying to keep my meat and veggies separate and stop mushing things together on my plate.

***

I've made up a new blog, where I can post photos in groupings that please me and not have to worry when I'm at a loss for words. I guess I can do this on flickr, too, but that's a whole other black hole and I can't even get started on that.

Please do stop on by--femme:fotographie. I'll be glad to see you there at my new blog, too.

To see with reverence and devotion

Darśana (Darshan) is a Sanskrit term meaning "sight" (in the sense of an instance of seeing or beholding; from a root dṛś "to see"), vision, apparition, or glimpse. ~ from Wikipedia.

***

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I am still coasting on my high from Sunday. So much so that the energy and excitement seems to have drained the creativity from me.

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I have been coasting: no words, no images. What's with that? Mostly, I think it's a function of not having the time or the freedom. Relegating your creativity to the shards of the day, like the beginnings or the ends of a loaf of bread--not a perfect situation.

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I know for most of us who feel the need to run away, to live in a garret somewhere, to have the ability to express ourselves creatively whenever we want to, that many of us do not have that luxury.

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But if we did have that luxury, would we? Or would the creative endeavour just become another occupation, like sitting at a desk and working on spreadsheets? Would we stir ourselves? Would we rise to the occasion?

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I hope we would.

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***

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I am finding more and more that to write, to take a photo that says something, to make something with the hands--when you get that feeling, you must jump immediately before the spark leaves just as quickly as it arrived. You cannot hold that impulse and save it for later.

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Right now I am wishing for a tiny bit of that sweetness of seeing, and hope that perhaps I can take just one perfect picture today, to see just one thing with reverence and devotion...at lunch during my allotted time, my little island of me.

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That will tide me over.

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I think.

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"When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home." ~ Betty Bender