THANKFUL FRIDAY

Last Saturday, I purchased $300 worth of picture frames and then I threw up on my shoes. Tonight, Michael and I are going to the art reception for the artist currently in the space where I will hang my pictures in September. I received a list of the artists and reception dates a while back and the line up is all women which is great. It looks like I am the only photographer (ha!) of the group which makes me nervous. I thought that moving my showing to September would give me time to settle in to the idea that I might be a little bit professional, but instead I just waver between confident and fake.

I’m a big fake.

There is a woman I met at camp who runs her own home organization business. She reached out to me a while back asking if I’d be willing to have a one-on-one session with her to teach her take better pictures with her phone. Scheduling for the both of us has been crazy, but we finally put it on our calendars to meet for coffee on Saturday. After we confirmed our date, I immediately started a mental list of things I wanted tell her, things I wanted to show her. I told her to bring a notebook. And for a few days now, I haven’t felt like a huge fake. The feelings I have around teaching someone the things I know about phone photography are very similar to how I feel when I’m teaching yoga. I feel like I know what I’m doing.

I am hesitant to admit that I know what I am doing.

I struggled with a return to teaching yoga after my many year hiatus because every yoga teacher I met when I moved here seemed more yogi than I felt. They often tossed around important yogi names like Pattahbi Jois and BKS Iyengar and even though I know who these people are, I do not follow their philosophies of yoga. I follow and teach an adaptation of these philosophies, but I have strong opinions about about yoga and our bodies and how we should move those bodies in yoga. And I know human anatomy. Despite all of that, it took me a minute to find my confidence in teaching again. I had to remind myself that I know what I’m doing, that I have always known what I was doing.

I quickly showed a coworker how to use a system he had never used before and as we walked out of the room he said “You’re the greatest!” I only hesitated slightly when I responded with a ‘thank you’. I said something about hesitating and he said “NO! OWN IT!” Not too long ago, while reading my book club book, I got to the chapter on celebrating victories and not down playing accomplishments. Like when someone gives you a compliment, you don’t respond with something like “yeah…I could have done a better job” or “It doesn’t look like the picture, but I think it still tastes good.” The whole point of the chapter was to stop giving yourself those little digs that we tend to give ourselves. I feel like ‘greatest’ is a bit of an exaggeration, but today I am owning it. I am the greatest in some things. To some people, this may sound conceited, but I will argue that recognizing the greatness in yourself teaches you to see the greatness in others.

Today I am thankful for small celebrations of self.