Sad and Beautiful World

That was fast!

Well! Feeling totally mired in the minutiae of the self-portrait book and realizing that maybe one person (if that) would buy it, I went ahead and put together a TTV book today. A lot easier since I'm keeping it small and trying to showcase only the best work. Only an introduction; other than that, no writing.

It would make a totally cool holiday gift. Or birthday gift. Or Administrative Assistant Appreciation Day gift. Or "just because you're cool" gift. And guess what? It would be like a gift for ME at the same time, because I'm poor and would make a few bucks off of it and it would also totally FEED MY SOUL, and don't you want to feed the soul of a starving artist???

I knew you did. :-)

I just this minute launched it, so the preview isn't ready yet. But it will be very soon, and then you can take a peek into the awesomeness.

A Different View

By Sarah R. Bloom

Book Preview

Forward Motion

And so things are better, as I knew they would be. Still there are things to discuss, wounds to be healed, but there is also lots of love, and it is good.

Thanksgiving was nice although I really missed having my brother and his wife and kids there this year. We were lucky to have Tori be there with Charlie and Cecily, though. Tori entertained us as children do and it brought back memories of my daughter at that age as she ran back and forth through the kitchen and up and down the three kitchen stairs to the closed door of the landing. All trails my little one traced.

And there is this—I finally, after declaring I would start at the beginning of this month, have begun working on a book to chronicle my first set of 365 self-portraits. It is tedious and overwhelming, but I am making progress and have laid out just over 100 photos so far and added a fair amount of writing. I do wonder if anyone would seriously be interested in owning such a thing—not quite a photography book and not quite a self-help book—but I think it touches on themes that are of interest to women in particular.

I aim to have it finished and ready for ordering by the end of next week, and I can do that if I keep working on it as hard as I did yesterday. Of course today I took a break, but that’s okay. I also wish to put together a small photos only book of my TTV shots, not the self-portraits (TTV stands for “Through the Viewfinder” and is a really interesting technique that involves using a digital camera to shoot literally through the viewfinder of an old box camera. This means making a cardboard tube of some sort to fit over the box camera and the lens of the digital camera to block out light. You can read more about it here). Anyway, I think the TTV book would make a totally awesome Christmas or Hanukkah present and it won’t be that expensive! Heh. So watch this space. Or something.

The kiddo, by the way, seems to be doing better. We take her back for a re-check on Monday with her regular doctor. The situation with this boyfriend is very cute and from what I can tell, harmless and not likely to last very long. She’s not that interested. They did go see a movie together and when I picked them up and dropped him home, we came in and met his puppies and he seems like a nice kid. And all of a sudden my daughter has someone to instant-message with so we had to do all sorts of things to make them compatible via their different messaging services. So now she can IM with her best friend, too. You can imagine…all of a sudden she is in her room ALL the time. It’s very cute. I’m monitoring, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Thankfully, she isn’t really ready for the serious boyfriend yet.

Grateful for the Pattern of its Scar

Today is Thanksgiving here in America, a day when in the midst of football and raking leaves, stuffing turkeys and stuffing our faces, we are supposed to take a moment to be grateful for what we have. The way I’ve been feeling lately, this was a really good exercise.

This is also something that is suggested in recovery—something to do every morning. I think perhaps I’ve done it once. Here it goes…

I am grateful to be alive…
…Because I should be dead, the way I was living for so long.

I am grateful for my daughter…
…Because she almost never existed.

I am grateful for my family…
…Who have loved me and supported me and been there for me when I needed it most.

I am grateful for my incredible friends…
…For being here for me, for loving me no matter what, and for telling me the truth when I need to hear it.

I am grateful to have known love.

I am grateful to have been broken-hearted, too.

I am grateful for the roof over my head and the food in my refrigerator.

I am grateful for animals.

I am grateful for second chances.

I am grateful for sunshine and also for rain and snow and clouds and wind.

I am grateful for life and the luxury to hate it sometimes.

I am grateful for my deepest sorrows because that capacity for feeling also allows me my greatest joys.

I know I could list more…this is a good start, though. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate, and to everyone I wish for you to remember what you can be grateful for today, and every day.

I don’t do it nearly enough.

Poor Baby

When it rains, it pours.

The kiddo has been coughing off and on for ages now...back in September she did a round of antibiotics for what we thought was bronchitis, but her cough never really fully disappeared.

Over the weekend she was sick again with a fever both Saturday and Sunday, but by Sunday evening she was okay. She went to school Monday with no major issues, but last night said how much her throat hurt.

Today she went to school and called from the nurse at 10am, her second visit, so I went to get her while putting a call into her doctor's office. By 11:30 we were seeing one of the other doctors in the practice (our regular doctor wasn't there). I didn't like her. She started saying the kid had some weird kind of asthma that causes coughing rather than wheezing, and I knew that just didn't seem right. But they had her do a breathing test and then a breathing treatment with a bronchial dilator, then another breathing test which showed no improvement. This was to kill the asthma theory.

The doctor then ordered a chest x-ray even though she said she couldn't hear any obstructions. Off to radiology and after waiting close to an hour and going through all the insurance information again, she got her x-ray and we went home expecting a call with results tomorrow.

They called half an hour ago instead, and she has pneumonia!! I'm about to go to the pharmacy (second time today) to pick up her antibiotics. Ugh.

Tomorrow I'll try and post about the sudden development of a boyfriend in her life and how instant messaging and the phone have at once become vitally important. Oy vay.

Trusting the Process

Thank you so much for the sweet comments and emails after my last post. Obviously I’ve failed at the whole blogging every day thing. I just couldn’t face it.

I'm really sorry I haven't been around. I need the time away from the computer. I have been struggling with feeling depressed for like two months now, and was starting to come out of it, but a huge fight with the husband plummeted me back into it. I wish I could write more about it here, but I can’t. Suffice it to say, we are both hurting, and I’ve been able to share about things with one or two people.

We are trying to gain perspective and I am recognizing that he said things out of his own hurt and didn't really mean them. But it is scary right now, and feels really fragile, which is fucking horrible when he is the first person I've ever been with who I trusted completely and trusted that I could be completely myself—faults and all—and he would love me anyway.

I walk around on eggshells, afraid of what to say, not feeling the joy out of my photography like I should; and he walks around looking like somebody died. It is exhausting. It has been a lot of crying, a lot of explaining and trying to understand. It was such a struggle to get a photo the other night when I just posted a face close-up.

Slowly, things will get better. But we have work to do and need to spend more time together instead of me being on the computer all the time and him being in the basement. I was realizing before this fight that my depression had a lot to do with spending too much time indoors and far too much time on Flickr in particular, but the computer in general. Literally hours go by when I could be and should be doing something more productive.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads trying to figure out where to go from here; what am I trying to do with my photography and where do I want it to go? What am I doing to get myself out there in ways aside from Flickr? Why haven't I put my book together yet? Where do my husband and I go from here? Can we get back what it feels like we lost?

In recovery we talk sometimes about “trusting the process”—at least I think it is a recovery thing—and it is about having faith that even when things might not be going the way in which you think they should, even when things absolutely suck, things are going to be okay: Things are happening the way in which they are supposed to be happening. You can view that as “everything happens for a reason” or “God has a plan,” or you can be like me and just base it on experience. Things suck sometimes, but eventually they work out. And more often than not, I can look back on an event that at the time felt like the worst possible thing ever, and see how grateful I am that it happened—see it as a catalyst that created positive things later.

Not always, mind you, but often. Sometimes life just fucking sucks and that’s all there is to it, but even when there’s no ‘lesson’ to extract later, it still stops sucking at some point doesn’t it!

And that is a lesson in itself, I suppose: Things improve (they change).

I'm a fucking wreck, truth be told. I'm crying at anything and everything, but the good news is I'm laughing sometimes too. And most importantly, I really do know that things will get better; that I'll be all right. I believe that.

Down

    in

        the
   

    dumps.

Cracked View

Great weekend. Very tired. Sick with sore throat and congestion. Here’s a photo!

Life, Death, Birth, and Exhaustion

Today was a full day! Trisha didn’t get here until 10pm last night, and we immediately went over to Denny’s to get food. Omelets, that gave each of us horrible stomach pains almost immediately.

Went to bed around 2am, couldn’t fall asleep for about an hour, then woke up at 8am. John came to pick us up a little after 10 and drove us to the abandoned administrative offices of a steel mill—a huge three-story U-shaped building of broken glass and peeling paint. It was fantastic…took tons of photos and of course took some self-portraits while in various states of undress and no dress. Even Trisha got naked so we could take photos of us together. I’m really excited to work on them and get some uploaded, but it will probably not be until tomorrow night when I’m home. Then I’ll be uploading shots from today for a few weeks to come, a little at a time.

While we were there, my father phoned to give me some sad news. My Great Aunt Sarah, the last of that generation on my father’s side, died last night. She was 94 years old and was pretty damn strong up until this past year, when a series of falls and some other issues had her in and out of the hospital a few times, then living with her daughter. She was ready to go, and finally this past week her kidneys began shutting down. The good thing is that she was home and with family when she went, and who could ask for much more than that? It is still sad, however, and I’m really upset that I can’t be at the funeral tomorrow because I will be driving home from here. I’m also missing a memorial poetry reading for my friend Sandy Crimmins, who died suddenly in July.

Anyway, after several hours shooting photos, we went to get lunch at a Mexican place and warmed up. Then we went to get coffee at a French bakery, but we were all too full for dessert. On the way to drop us back at our hotel, John pulled over in front of a house and said he had to talk to someone for a minute and he’d be right back. Trisha and I sat in the car wondering what was going on. After the door opened and shut twice and we couldn’t see anyone, it opened again and John motioned for us to come over there. Turns out he decided to introduce us to this woman Susan early, even though we had plans to get together with her and another woman Christina that evening! He got the poor woman out of a bath to come to the door, but she was happy to see us.

We came back to the hotel at 4pm and rested for a short time and washed up before Susan arrived at 5:30 to take us out. We picked up Christina and then stopped to check out an overlook that had a beautiful view of the city, and then went to the South Side to find dinner. We had a lovely time, in spite of the fact that Trisha and I were both deliriously tired by this point. We were dropped back off to our room a little before 10 and we both got right into our beds, where we now sit relaxing and watching TV and/or writing blog entries. Tomorrow we’ll get up leisurely, check out by noon and then hit the road. I’m not looking forward to the drive back as I’m still recovering from the drive here. A weekend is really not long enough for this distance, but I’m really glad I came. Meeting Trisha has been fantastic…she is everything I expected and more, and we have had a great time hanging out together.

On a final and important note, today is also my mother’s birthday!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Mommy!! I love you!!

Pittsburgh!

I’m in Pittsburgh! I think I forgot to mention it here. A woman I know through Flickr who I’ve really wanted to meet agreed to come to Pittsburgh (which is about halfway between us) for the weekend.

It was a long drive, through two separate instances of snow! The first was acceptable as I was very high in the mountains and it was a dense fog area, but the second instance just pissed me off. The rest of the time it was raining, until I got to within about 40 minutes from my destination, when it finally got sunny. The drive was longer, however, because of my own stupidity during which I followed the ‘business’ route rather than my own directions because there was a sign for a Red Roof Inn.

Turns out it was a different Red Roof Inn. And I spent time lost just trying to find that wrong one! Sigh.

So now it is almost 7pm and I have been here for an hour, showered, and relaxed. My friend Trisha should be here by 8 and we can walk over to the Denny’s to get some food, then back here for a fun night of girl talk.

Tomorrow my friend John, who took me to the abandoned house the last time I was in Pittsburgh, is picking us up in the morning to take us to another abandoned place. The house is no longer there, sadly. Then for dinner we’ll meet up with two local Flickr women for dinner. Sunday I check out and hit the road to come home again.

I hope to have lots of interesting photos and of course some risqué self-portraits. Heh.

I picked this hotel for the wireless access, but it turns out I had to buy a T-mobile “hot spot” card for ten buck a day in order to use it. I bought it, obviously!

This is right up there with my most interesting posts ever, huh?

Drama-o-Rama

I promised substance, I think.

Damn.

Last night I was perusing Flickr as I am doing 99.7% of the time, and noticed a bit of trouble starting to brew in a discussion thread of a group to which I belong. Not just any group, but The Female Self-Portrait Artist Support Group, the same one out of which some of us are putting together a book. Anyway, a little bickering was happening. Surprisingly, this was not something I had seen before in the group. I continued to check back because I was finding it entertaining, figuring it was harmless and would eventually cool down.

Now, I have no way of proving that this bickering was the catalyst for what happened next, but it sure doesn’t look good on paper. Let me preface this by telling you that the philosophy of the woman who created the group is equality for all members, meaning every member gets promoted to “administrator.” As of last night, there were almost 690 women in the group. You can see now why I found the lack of bickering surprising, can’t you? As an “administrator” of a group on Flickr, one has the power to invite, promote, or ban members; can lock discussion threads; change photo uploading limits; delete photos; delete discussion threads.

Can you guess where I’m going with this?

Some bitch got resentful and vengeful, and started using the delete button. Discussion threads started disappearing, threads in which many of us had poured our hearts, shared personal stories, and generally loved and supported one another. They switched what was a public group (with private discussions only group members could see) to an all private group, something which is IRREVERSABLE, and meant that no nonmembers could see the photos anymore. Meaning anyone who buys the book we are making who might want to check out what other amazing women are in the group CAN’T.

It was a horrific thing to watch, because it was happening before my very eyes. Many of the members, including the founder, are in Europe or elsewhere and weren’t awake to see the carnage, but had to discover the results and the freak-outs from all of us with their morning coffee. The group’s creator was upset but went immediately into “let’s fix this” mode, starting a brand new group with a similar name. We are slowly migrating over and removing our membership and all of our photos from the first group. A few volunteers are copying and pasting all the remaining discussion threads into the new group. People are rallying. But it isn’t the same. It doesn’t feel safe like it had and some women are thinking of leaving not only this new group, but the book project as well, which breaks my heart!

And here’s the absolute worst thing…the woman that many of us suspect? She’s in the new group now. The group founder says she has a computer hacker/genius ‘on the case’ to try and find out who the culprit is, but I’m not sure that is possible.

I am sad about it and really angry that one person would choose to be that vindictive and cruel, but I can’t say I am stunned. Honestly, I’m more amazed that this exact thing didn’t happen much sooner.  With that many Administrators and so many discussions going on all the time in the group, I can’t believe someone didn’t get offended and seek some sort of revenge before this.

Actually, that I thought that makes me even sadder.