Sit back and enjoy the show
Sometimes, when you really want something, all it takes is the courage to ask.
There’s a bar in the Tenderloin where my friends and I have been meeting for cocktail hours fairly often for several years now. The owners regularly change up the decor; as it turns out, they do it by inviting people they know to hang their artwork. So a few weeks ago, I asked them what my chances were of persuading them to let me hang some of mine. To my delight, they invited me to put up a show…with less than 3 weeks to prepare for it. So I’ve been getting prints made, buying giant sheets of black foamcore, getting spare blades for my mat knife, and preparing to mount a dozen prints ranging in size from 8″x10″ to 20″x30″ (which is absolutely the largest print I’ve ever made, and I hope I sell it, because I have no idea where I’ll store it if I don’t).
I promised myself that this was the year I’d start taking my photography more seriously. Just a few months later, I’ve managed to arrange to hang my work, in a venue where other people have successfully shown their art (in some cases, literally selling it on the spot, straight off the wall ), for three months.
Am I proud and excited and ever so pleased with myself? Why yes! Yes, I am! And I’m wondering what other delightful things I can conjure up for myself.
Filed under triumphs, Uncategorized | Comments (3)Come fly with me
I’m usually super-frugal, but travel is the one thing about which I will reliably say, “What the hell, it’s only money,” and I’m never sorry. Last week, I met up for coffee with someone who shares that philosophy: the awesome Audi, who writes the blog Fashion for Nerds. I had a hunch we’d get along, and not just because she has an enviable sense of style — Audi had recently made a series of posts about traveling on a budget, which is one of my favorite subjects as well.
Sure enough, we immediately leaped into a discussion about cheap airfare, hostels for grown-ups, affordable destinations (and ways to make expensive destinations more affordable), and the delights of hanging out with the locals instead of spending all your time in the known tourist hot spots. She told me about flying to Europe via Iceland Air, which lets you stop over in Reykjavik for several days for no additional charge. I told her about London Walks, my favorite way to get to know one of my favorite cities better for very little money. We have the same approach to travel: Yes, it’s only money, so why not stretch it as far as possible?
We also agreed that traveling alone is one of the great pleasures of life — you can go wherever you like and linger as long as you please without worrying that someone else is bored, hungry, broke, or in a hurry to get somewhere else. Bliss! Of course, you don’t have anyone to debrief with at the end of an experience-filled day, but if that’s a non-negotiable part of your travel experience, you can spend your days solo and meet up with your travel companion(s) for dinner later, or chat with the folks you meet at your lodgings or at the neighborhood pub. Both of us have met people while on vacation with whom we’re still in touch, sometimes years later.
I’m posting about this because it fits into the topic of this blog in two ways:
First, while I’m no shrinking violet, it’s still an act of real courage for me to invite a total stranger out for coffee for no other reason than that I liked reading her blog and realized she lives in my city. It could have gone any direction at all. She could have said no. She could have ignored me. We could have met up and taken an instant dislike to each other! But none of that would have killed me. And because I extended myself, I now have a new pal I wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Second, travel is the very definition of wing-building. Especially budget travel, which takes a lot of us (even the frugal ones) far out of our comfort zone — and solo budget travel even farther out of it — and traveling alone to a country where you don’t speak the language, farther yet. Travel has brought me some of the most satisfying, enlightening, and joyful experiences of my life; it’s also given me some of the most frustrating, frightening, and sad moments.
Since I’m currently planning my next solo international adventure, the topic of travel is much on my mind. So look for more posts about it. And if there’s anything in particular you want me to discuss, whether that’s my favorite guidebooks, my tips for packing light, or my thoughts on how to plan a short or an extended trip, let me know in the comments! I’d love the ideas, input, and feedback.
Filed under triumphs, Uncategorized | Comments (3)The fear of joy
Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. – Erica Jong
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In my last post, I talked about using fear as a tool for growth. But why is growth so scary in the first place? Growing requires us to change, and change is often the thing we fear most — even if we genuinely believe it will make us happier than we are today.
We can approach change in only three ways: chance, crisis, or choice. We drift along, realizing only after the fact how far we’ve come from where we began. Or we’re forced into the unfamiliar, kicking and screaming and clinging to what we’re used to with all our might. Or, least likely for the vast majority of us, we decide consciously to try something different, hoping and trusting that our constricted horizons will expand.
For the uncommonly centered and enlightened souls who have complete faith that they can handle the outcome of any choice, good or bad, change is a delightful adventure. I can manage to summon up that kind of innocent daring, oh, once a year or so. The rest of the time, I (and probably the rest of us) find it a challenge, and not always one I want to take on. Let’s face it: changing by choice, as opposed to chance or crisis, can be terrifying. If we fall into change, we can at least blame circumstance if we don’t like the results; if we’re forced into it, we can say we cracked under pressure and made a bad decision. But if we make a conscious and deliberate shift in our lives, and we end up feeling worse off than when we started, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
By the same token, though, if we choose not to change, we’re resigning ourselves to “good enough,” to “it’ll do,” to “I can’t really expect any better,” to feeling like the victim of our fate rather than the master of it. Embracing change, walking straight into it with our eyes open, is the only way to control our lives, insofar as we have any control over them at all. We may hate the fact that change is life’s only constant, but we have to accept it. If we have to figure out how to build our wings on our way down, we have the option of selecting our moment to jump off the cliff rather than waiting for random fate to push us.
Filed under quotes | Comment (1)The joy of fear
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. … You must do the thing you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt
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This quote is a touchstone for me; my main intention in starting this blog was to chronicle my attempts to follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and thereby become a stronger, braver, more confident version of myself. I’ve mentioned this quote to dozens of people over the years, and almost every time, the person I’m talking to brings up a time that s/he “felt the fear and did it anyway.” This week, though, two very different people who have never met each other responded to the quote in a very different, and (to me, at least) unusual way: both said that they were so stubborn and determined that they couldn’t remember ever thinking anything was beyond them as long as they tried hard enough.
I have to admit that I found this completely incomprehensible. Never felt intimidated or overwhelmed? Never endured insecurity or self-doubt? Never suspected they’d bitten off more than they could chew? Never worried about what other people would think or how they might react? Never feared the repercussions of going against the crowd? Never hesitated, even briefly, to say, “I wonder if this is going to work out”?
Never? Not even once?
That seems more than impossible to me; it seems superhuman.
But the flip side — being ruled by doubt — seems equally impossible. I confess that I’ve certainly hung back, kept quiet, delayed, denied, avoided, procrastinated, made excuses, taken the path of least resistance, or simply gone along with the crowd from time to time. The axiom about how the nail that sticks up gets hammered down rings all too true for me some days. Let’s face it: it’s a lot easier, plain and simple, not to do the things you think you can’t do.
But it’s also not as satisfying.
There’s joy in looking fear in the face. In standing up for yourself. In defending someone else. In risking rejection. In entering competition. In challenging conventional wisdom. In claiming authority. In setting boundaries. In examining your preconceptions. In defying your prejudices. In redefining your priorities. In confronting your phobias. In speaking your mind, as activist Maggie Kuhn said, “even if your voice shakes.”
Fear — not terror, but a healthy concern for consequences — is part of the human condition. It’s normal to think you can’t do something. It’s also normal to go ahead and give it a shot anyhow.
This week, find something you didn’t think you could do, and then do it. And come back here and tell me about it.
Filed under fears, progress, quotes, triumphs, Uncategorized | Comment (0)