I'M DOING MY BEST HERE

Lately, I’ve been feeling like a pod person, just going through the motions. On the outside, everything looks normal. Someone tells a joke, I laugh. It may be a slightly hollow laugh, but it’s something. I am interacting socially. It is the in between moments, those times when I’m alone in the car or walking the building, when I’ll realize at some point in the middle of the activity that I am not thinking of anything. Those moments are full robot mode, like a switch has been pushed to the off setting. My brain is not churning with writing ideas. Memories that often play like out like movies are staying locked away in the filing cabinet at the back of my brain. I’m not mentally placing photos on walls or designing yoga classes. There’s no making note of the things I am seeing as I walk or drive by. It’s just an absence of all thoughts.

On top of the blank empty hole that is my brain, my body feels like it is on loan from the Pillsbury Doughboy. Michael got me an Anthropologie gift card for Christmas, which I’m usually quick to spend, but Ive browsed the sale items both in shops and online and left with nothing. I don’t want to even try on clothes partly because of the whole doughboy situation but also because it just feels exhausting to remove all the winter layers just to try on something that I probably won’t be happy with. There is nothing worse than standing in the cruel lighting of a dressing room and trying on a mini dress that fits me in weird places and not others, my winter white legs bouncing light off the mirror. I always leave my socks on in these situations and the whole half dressed, bare legs, with socks look is particularly sad, but I know if I want to get the most out of that gift card, I’m going to have to try on a number of items and chose wisely. Heaven forbid I spend it all on one full priced item.

Maybe in the Spring, when I can see colors again….

Saturday, Michael and I went downtown to check out the space where I will be hanging pictures in May and to eat lunch at new to us Korean place. We parked somewhere in between both places so that we had to walk over to the coffee shop and then back in the other direction to the restaurant. We didn’t spend a long amount of time looking over the wall space for the showing. I took some pictures of the walls and Michael and I sat with hot drinks while I contemplated what I might want to print. Since we had some time to kill before the Korean place opened for lunch, we strolled for a few blocks, looking into shop windows and speculating on businesses in the area. For the first time in a long time, I felt a spark and an urge to get my camera out. I even got into it and at one point had to tell Michael to wait. When he asked what I was doing, I said “I need to stand in the middle of the street for a minute.” This is nothing he has not heard before, but when I was finally back on the sidewalk I knew that I would have to visit this spot again. I took a good picture, but not a great better. That good picture reminded me that I can do better.

I want to do better.

There are moments where I am really trying to not be that pod person. I can still feel a spark to take pictures. I signed up for an aerial yoga class this evening to force myself into some hanging upside down play time. I plugged my ears into some dance party tunes and moved my body. And then I spent that gift card on singular, full price item.

JANUARY IS DUMB

Ice

8 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Ice"

My birthstone is the garnet. Don’t get me wrong. The color red is nice and I know it’s some people’s favorite color. It is not my favorite color. If you look through my closet, you are mostly going to see gray, blue and purple colors. More blue than anything. Actually, my favorite color is that Tiffany’s blue or robin egg blue. The garnet is a deep red, almost maroon color that turns me off. If I haven’t been so impatient to enter this world, I would have an aquamarine birthstone. I would also share my birthday month with both siblings and my dad. Instead I decided to come out early during the coldest most miserable time of the year which has only gotten worse as I’ve aged and moved north.

Now that I think about it’s really been worse since the move north. It never dawned on me that the climate could be so different just three hundred and fifty miles north of Oklahoma City. It never dawned on me that so much would end being so different three hundred and fifty miles north of Oklahoma City.

The last birthday I celebrated in Oklahoma was my thirty fifth birthday. I had requested a strawberry cake and my mother had made a lovely fancy white cake with strawberries on it. What I had really wanted was a simple strawberry cake mix. Pink strawberry flavored cake. Misti asked Audra to bake me one, but Audra said that she couldn’t do it because strawberries were not in season. Audra said she made some other cake and I really didn’t care because I knew that whatever cake she made me, it would be wonderful. Misti, Amy, Chris and I gathered at Chris and Traci’s house with Audra’s cake. It had the cutest elephant made of icing sitting on top. I cut into the cake and when I pulled the knife out it was pink. Audra had made my strawberry cake. It was the kind of surprise that made me giggle with joy. That was also the same night I told all the people gathered in Chris and Traci’s house that I had received a invitation to interview for my job in Kansas City. Chris and I would move a month later. That was the last time we were whole.

I still can’t help but feel that I ruined everything.

Tuesday night, I sat in Dr. Mary’s office telling her about the power being out at our house since Saturday. I told her about how Michael and I have just been stubborn in our notions that the power was going to come back on any minute. “We’re fine.” This has been our answer to everything. I told her that really though, I’d reached my limit. I woke up Tuesday morning at 4 AM and the left side of my body ached because I hadn’t moved all night. I was weighted down with to many layers of clothes and blankets to move around. We were not fine. We were depressed. Then I mentioned the next winter storm that is headed our way. Sunday is supposed to be the coldest day in the history of KCMO. I told her that on January twentieth, 2012, the last of our doctors who had had any kind of hope for a treatment for Chris told us that there was no hope. I told her that every year since then, I’ve been dealing some sort of shit leading into my birthday. Death, sewage backups, snow storms, inauguration day for the worst president in history, power outages. I just want one year with out the shit.

I want strawberry cake.

TEACHING AN OLD DOG

Clouds

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Just before Christmas, I found out that our local family owned photography store is closing shop for good. Crick's has been around for seventy years. The owners thought about selling it, but couldn't find anyone qualified to run the full service photography shop. I'm real sad about this because Crick's was such a great place to go, not just to shop for all things photography, but because the people working there were always so helpful. I learned so much every time I walked in through their doors. When I found out they were closing, I went in to look at some lenses. The woman working the counter pulled several lenses for me to try on my camera and she talked about the pros and cons of each one. I kind of fell in love with a macro lens that costs about $700. I did not buy that lens. 

I walked away from Crick's with nothing but things to think about. I had to weigh practical versus not so practical. My job is to image things at the microscopic level. Of course I would gravitate to macro lenses. I like to get up close with tiny things, but maybe I should broaden my horizons some and step outside the box. Anyway...I had some things to think about before I chose what lens I was going to buy next and what I finally decided was that I don't need to buy another lens. At least not right now. Did you guys know that I was doing a 365 day selfie project in 2016? Well, I was and I started out with using the Nikon to take my pictures every day. Then I started traveling and I couldn't upload a picture because I was either short on time or there was no internet. I switched to my phone and then when I got to San Francisco, I said "fuck it" and stopped the project all together. It's the first time I've not finished the 365 Day Photo Project.

The truth is, I don't use my fancy Nikon as often as I should/want to/need to in order to justify the purchase of any lens, let alone one that costs $700. It doesn't help that I have entered 2017 unmotivated and uninspired by my view. The clouds have started to circle overhead and Michael has started to do his tip-toe dance around me because this is the time of year that is the most difficult. It's the time of year where I'd rather be curled up in a ball under the covers or staring with glazed over eyes at the TV while shoveling copious amount of hot Brie into my mouth. If I were to look through the view finder of my camera right now, I wouldn't see anything worth pressing the shutter button for because you're supposed to look for the light and I don't even see that right now outside my window. 

Something I've done to help me stay off the couch and away from the hot Brie is to sign up for Skillshare. The first month is free, so I thought I'd give it a go. If I like it and watch some learning videos, I might go ahead and get a subscription. Right now, I've added about twenty different classes on various aspects of photography to my list. My goal is to watch at least two classes a week, depending on the length of the class. If I'm consistent, I'll keep my Skillshare account. If I'm consistent, I might not keep my Skillshare account. Amy told me that our local library probably offers online classes similar to the ones posted here. This was news that I feel the library systems need to advertise more. Or at least talk about in a tone a voice that I won't ignore. 

If this plan doesn't pan out, there's always the adult tap dancing class I've had my eye on. Tappa tappa tappa.