You’d think that working and learning have been around long enough that someone would have coined a word for that nauseatingly eager, stomach-plummeting feeling of, “Aawh, hell. I’ll never catch up.”

Maybe it’s just a string of incomprehensible expletives.
I’ll bet George Carlin has a bit on this. I should investigate.

I started my new job on Tuesday.
Four anxiety-ridden, horribly overwhelming days later and I am still not entirely sure that I’ll really get the hang of things in time for them to believe that I’m acceptably capable.

I wish I were more knowledgeable on this before now.
I can’t even sleep without dreaming about things I don’t yet understand.
Functions! Args! Objects! Sprites! Else! If!
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I’ll get it.
… I hope.

Listen.

Kurt Vonnegut said it best (and doesn’t he, always?) when he said, “the arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.” So, when your outlet for creating an adequate life-once-removed is renovated for revenue, how do you cope? Profit shouldn’t drive your dreams, lest it chauffeur them richly into death’s own obligation pit.

So what’s to do?

My photography has always just been that: mine. There are plenty of folks around town—people I’ve come to know well and even idolize—who do wonderful work for weddings and birthdays and friends and parties and couples and musicians alike and get paid for it and live well enough with their passions and their work existing as the same thing.
I want so badly to create for myself a similar dream-world, I’ve just yet to develop the sort of social skills required to do so.
Or something.

Now, I realize that I’m a measly 22 years old and that, a good majority of the time, I’m not even certain what I think in relation to how I feel. But, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that there’s a certain percentage of people that, should you point a camera at ‘em, magically flash-evolve into a creature whose most admirable quality is a sense of stolid embarrassment. It’s as though my camera is an oncoming train and they’ve become too horror-struck to save their own lives and instead just stand there and wait for death. Ugh.

I also know that should these petrified people desire “professional” pictures of themselves, that one ought to be very prepared in the ways of improve and props; kites, fake flowers, a toy ball— really anything to play with is essential. There’s nothing worse than having someone pay you to take a good picture—or, worse, plural: pictures—of them, but refuse to loosen up and allow you any sort of creative license.

I mean, fuck.

I am here to shake my head, punch buttons on my camera, eyeball perfect strangers, ask odd questions, demonstrate silly postures, pose and touch people I’ve just met, and wait, wait, wait for light. I know it’s a sill thing to wait for, but I need you fucking people to just be patient and wait with me. I need you to relax, breathe a little and just pretend like you like each other. Get close. Laugh a little.

Here comes the cluetrain!
Don’t be a dick. Try to understand.

Effortless effigy; they stuffed newspaper into the fireplace, lighting it and—quick! Rushing outside to watch the coal colored smoke heave itself from the chimney with a straining puff, creating creatures in the ink clouds and making stories of the shapes. They lay on their backs in the lawn and argued softly about which noun-cloud subdued which constellation and how many adjectives were honestly necessary. When they ran out of smoke, they’d race back inside to set fire again to the details and excuses of everyone they’d never known.

Spark! Light! Flame! Rush! Point!

On each visit to the inside they would take the smoldering ashes and soot from the munge of words and spread it out on the floor by the door with their hands and fingers. And as they ran in and out they would leave footprints of warm ash, making it easier to find their way back and forth and, should they leave, giving anyone who might come before the storm—and it would storm— a good idea of what they had done there and what it meant; what it looked like to take a culmination of negativity and excuses and churn it into childlike joy and deep breathes of cool summer air.

“I think maybe it’ll rain,” she said.
He said, “I think it’s definitely going to rain.”

And it did.

The Gods gave the green light to rainfall, their cheerful applause reaching mortal feet in a distorted sort of anger at the distance required to share the beauty. Our creative couple—newsprint natives—were swept away in a current fashioned from the raining down of god-thoughts of what’s what and who’s where and why this is different.

They found their feet eventually—and don’t we always?—, but continued to follow the stream because, “we’re where we need to be, I guess, and we’re what we’ve worked towards. Right?”

Right.

With some help from Nick.
I love collaborative stories.

You give me hope. Always. Not only do I know that I can always rely on you to understand exactly where I’m coming from, but you’re living proof that beautiful, smart, compassionate, independent, dream-driven women exist– hell, CAN exist– in our contemporary world of blah and ick. Thank you for always giving me someone to look up to. You’re like my best friend and older sister, except you live too far away for me to hug you all the times I’d like/need to.

I love you.

There are times when I am momentarily—many, many moments, mind you—drawn to someone who exists not as a stranger, but as a memory. A memory of a former ally who gets along well enough without me now, eats away at the earth to create her own personal path but who, also, at one time, shared a friendship with me and whom I adored and cherished—or, rather, should have adored and cherished more, more, more.

In-between our more recent neglects in communication, she took the time to write for me a short, thoughtful letter which I still read from time to time when I find myself heavy or blue or down and depressed. I’ve since received hate mail, friendship resignations, self-righteous apologies, acted ugly, and made mistakes—but it’s so nice to be able to read and remember that someone, somewhere, thinks I’m pretty good people.

I do hope it’s okay to post this, and I’ll leave it anonymous, but seriously:
So. Much. Love.

I’m not sure of the purpose of this, I only know that once in a great while nostalgia sweeps in and I’m forced to look back. Inevitably, when this happens, I think of the strange fixture you have been in my life for the past 6 or so years.

Ever since we met, you have always been the standard I could never reach. I looked up to you, adored you, always wanted to be you in even the smallest way. I never truly felt part of your inner circle, and maybe I never was, but the fact that your life was always at arms length to mine served to color you as this quirky, beautiful, fearless girl. You were everything I wasn’t and, I won’t lie, sometimes I hated you for it.

I have no idea what impact I have had on your life, whether insignificant or monumental it doesn’t diminish the magnitude of how you have impacted mine. Even now, when my jealousy and self-loathing have pushed you out of my life, you still give me courage when I think I have none left. You seemed to know exactly who you were, and exactly what you wanted, and exactly how to get it, and even how to attract good things into your life that you never planned. In a word, you were effortless. I realize, now, that I have always idealized you, and that no one can ever be as perfect as I made you out to be. I consider myself an observant person, but it is only recently that I have been able to take off the blinders and see you more clearly. Flawed, yes, but still wonderful.

If I ever said a bad word about you, know that it was only because I wished you would let me in, and when you didn’t, I was cowardly enough to try to break you down to make myself feel a little less small.

Sometimes I wonder if you ever really considered me a good friend. I think it is my greatest fear that I have meant nothing to you in the scheme of things. I’m not telling you this so that you can lavish me with assurances of my importance to you, I’m telling you because I want you to understand the ripples you’ve left in my life. I want you to know that I still think you are a delightfully eccentric, breath taking, and courageous girl. Thank you, for everything.

Anxious to retell of the feeling I had when I was, for so many moments, the driving force having much to do with what happens when metal meets muscle, I found an audience uninterested; unmoved by the nighttime theophany I so carelessly struck down with my unbelieving vehicle.
Exaggerations.
Melodrama.
Blah Blah Blah.

Well, whether animal or apparition, the mangy stolid wraith broke my headlights and left reminding tufts of hair and blood within my grill.

What now?

Whatever metaphor I forcefully struck; whatever dumb idea with glossy eyes; whatever thick creature of a notion did not die but rather dissipated meagerly, meek that evening. Left me no creature to comfort or confront.

What’s this mean?

The allure, and to some, the frustration of loving is something best explained with:

Impromptu drives to secret places; where we both hum to keep time with the windshield wipers and press our faces against respective places (side windows) to bring closer that conscious-keeping condensation. Got to keep up, got to keep awake, got to keep on keeping that driving face that you love so much, so much so that your face breaks, too, into that tiny smile. That little victory.
Look. Outside.
A bird.

It’s coming towards us in the sky, a soft spiral in the air. Catching bugs shaken up by passing cars, scars, promises—ours? It’s hard to say the size or shape of it though it’s possible to make out colors. Brown, bright red, black, and gray dancing forward, the lightest being ever to grace the sky. It’s tough to tell whether it’s falling or flying, but both of us are caught in awe as its pursuit of dinner brings it towards the windshield at an ever-quickening pace. One moment, beak wide and straining for an unseen insect, the next moment bouncing from the clear pane of glass. In the space of several seconds losing freedom without ever even having its dinner.
How horrible to die hungry.

I pull over to the side of the road instantly. You climb out of the car and survey the ground until a ball of feathers is located. It sure isn’t breathing, but it’s the only proof we’ve had in the last 40 miles that anything is still alive. We look at one another, shocked and taken aback. The bird—poor, crushed creature— suffered a broken back: a shriveling spine that has twisted and curled, throwing the head back as if having a good laugh. Or cry.

A new veil of somberness falls over us and we’re silent. What could we say? In the car, a new passenger has joined us, a casualty of our adventure. I want to pull the car over again and hug you but I don’t know if that is appropriate. It’s just a bird, right? But I feel the burden of unexpressed sadness welling up between us and I know that in this moment I can either strike hard enough to bring your feelings tumbling out or I can forever keep my peace.

So I kept my peace and you kept yours.
Love is the lightest thing, the easiest thing in the world until it isn’t.

In progress, etc. w/ Amanda. Stay tuned?