#91 Fun with Photos

#89 Basic Photo Editing

Okay, I went a little crazy with this one (in a good way!) I decided to try Picnik to edit a photo of my cat, Zoey. I added a border to the original photo, a heart "sticker" in the right corner and created text along the bottom of the photo to match her "attitude." It was lots of fun, super easy and saving the edited photo to my photo file was a snap.

Two Photos - Too Funny

The only happy people I know are people I don’t know well. ---Joseph Telushkin

You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it – many times.

Laughter is the best medicine.

The old saw has proved true for me on too many occasions to count. No matter how sad, lonely, angry or frustrated I’ve felt – and believe me, I’ve had my fair share of hit-rock-bottom days (weeks, months!) – all it takes is a good laugh, often at myself - the drama queen having a moment – and I’m better. Not all better, mind you, but at least a bit better, and that’s a start.

I’m blessed with friends, who share my sense of the ridiculous (and then some); Gracie the Dog and Zoey the Cat, who never fail to amuse at just the right moment; and an extremely astute therapist, who once prescribed an episode or two of Frazier every day to help beat the blues – advice I’ve heeded with excellent results. On occasion, often when I’m surfing the Internet, I’ll come upon something that makes me laugh, as well, and every now and then also teaches me a lesson.

Ten months ago, I wrote an essay title Managed Perfection. I’d been reading a blog written by a woman I’d never met, but who was of interest to me because of her relationship with Burning Man Traveling Companion (BMTC). Intelligent, accomplished, energetic, a business entrepreneur with contacts throughout the local community, she seemed to be perfection personified living the perfect life. Eventually, I realized that, of course, she had to seem perfect. She was using her blog to advertise her services, and she had to sell herself if she wanted to sell those services. Her posts were a part of her story, but not the ups-and-downs, warts-and-all story that makes up the real life we all live, no matter what we’d like other people to believe.

It was all a fantasy, and I knew it, but that fantasy lingered in my mind. Surely she had to be someone really special – hadn’t BMTC pulled out all the stops pursuing her? Surely he'd also had to change his ways to attract such a paragon of womanhood, who was also 10 years younger than he. The man I'd known had lived off women one way or another most of his adult life, but this woman didn't seem like the type to put up with that kind of behavior.

One of the prerequisites for writing fiction is a vivid imagination and, oh boy, do I have one of those. I’ve always enjoyed creating “characters” and giving them a story, something I did on a regular basis writing as Nikki Benjamin. Thus creating the “character” of Ms. Managed Perfection was a natural progression for me.

I’d seen only a small head shot of her, looking serene, but it was a place to start. I imagined that, as a voice teacher, she would certainly sound lovely (and she does on her Web site podcasts). Since she teaches what I’ve assumed are similar-to-yoga-style exercise classes, I was also sure she was slender and athletic like every yoga teacher I've ever seen. BMTC is only 5’7” so she’d have to be petite, as well, and – let me repeat - slender. The man I’d known for nine months did not like overweight women and really dissed them in a mean and sarcastic way – so, yes, she had to be slender for sure.

In short order, I’d created a fairy child princess – a serene yet energetic and perky got-it-all-together-in-every-way little blog-world nemesis.

You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. We’ve all heard it – many times.

One picture (or two or three) is worth a thousand words.

More than that, one photo (or two or three) can be all it takes to crash-and-burn a fantasy with a reality that leaves you clutching your sides, howling with laughter, at yourself and your foolishness.

In the months since I’d written my Managed Perfection essay, I’d gradually lost interest in the fantasy character (and the fantasy couple) I’d created. I’d come to realize that my life was exactly the life I wanted to be living, right here, right now, and I’d begun to focus on enjoying each moment to the best of my ability. There was no longer any room in my head for thoughts of a woman I’d never met and a man I hadn’t seen in more than four years.

Having learned to use the social networking tool Twitter a few weeks ago, however, I was eager to see if anyone I knew or had known was tweeting. The only ones I found were – you guessed it – BMTC and Ms. MP; and, oh my goodness, what busy lives they were leading, all of it shared via tweets many times each day. I found it extremely amusing – when did they have time to actually work in between thumbing all those tweets, scanning the Internet for pseudo-intellectual information to share and attending all those social engagements? But their tweeting was also understandable since Twitter has, in fact, become a major way to sell yourself and your business by constantly blowing, um, tweeting your own horn.

Good for them, I thought. They were sell, sell, selling themselves relentlessly down the stream and, oh by the way, photos of a workshop they’d attended were posted on Flickr.

The temptation was too much for me – I am, after all, only human, and a very curious human, at that. So I took a look and…OMG!!!

The photos, for me, were like a roadside wreck. You know you shouldn’t gawk, but you can’t tear your gaze away. My jaw dropped and then…then I started to laugh and laugh and laugh. Not at the two people in the photos – the two real people shot candidly in the midst of what appeared to be anything but real-life happy moments – but at myself and the now truly ridiculous fantasy that had plagued me well past its sell-by date.

Here was an aging-not-all-that-well man with a paunchy belly and a sour expression on his face (an expression I’d seen often in the past).

Here was a rather large woman, tall and obviously overweight, wearing ill-fitting clothes and big-mistake glasses, her lips pursed, her arms crossed over her bosom (body language I recognized, as well).

Here were two people, supposedly together, yet not looking particularly happy about it – standing apart, sitting apart, gazing off in opposite directions.

Here was a slice of their real life caught on a digital camera, and it was so not the fantasy I’d conjured.

Interesting how life offers lessons at the exact moment we are ready to learn them. A year ago, I hadn’t been ready to let go of my fantasy. It seemed so…perfect. They seemed so…perfect, and I’d been envious.

Of course, I didn’t know them – or myself – quite as well as I do now….

My Brilliant Career(s) Part Two

You make the choices you make based on what you know about yourself and what you think you know about the world. And sometimes the world will turn around and break your heart, but other times...the reality of what you wound up with will suddenly seem like the only possible choice - it just couldn't have turned out any other way. ---Lisa Kogan

Emily’s House was published by Silhouette Books in June 1989. I deposited my first check from the publisher in a bank account with my name and my name only on it. I had finally earned a little money (very little!), and I intended to have a say over how it would be spent. My husband was furious about the bank account, but for the first time in 15 years of marriage I refused to back down. That bank account and my writing not only became the lifelines to which I clung as my marriage deteriorated, but also afforded me enough faith in myself to file for divorce shortly after my 50th birthday.

With 20 published novels to my name, divorced four years and trying desperately to get over the end of my relationship with Burning Man Traveling Companion, which had wounded me deeply, writing wasn’t working for me anymore. I was spending way too much time with imaginary people, I’d been “orphaned” at my publishing house, my agent seemed only vaguely interested in my works-in-progress, and the cost of health insurance, not to mention the cost of “supporting” Burning Man Traveling Companion for nine months, had taken a serious bite out of my savings. I needed to get out of the house. I needed to be with real people. I needed a dependable source of income. I needed a job with benefits.

In October 2005 I answered an ad for a reporter at the Observer Newspapers. I had no journalism experience at all, and I’d never written a news story in my life. But, really, I wondered, how hard could it be?

I got the job, and because the editor scared me half to death, I learned really fast how to write news stories – eight to 14 news stories each week, to be exact. I also got a social life, attending events all over Houston, then writing about them for the paper. For several months, I had the privilege of being the senior writer for Greater Houston Weekly, interviewing people like Milo Hamilton, Dr. John Lienhard and Wanda Sykes, reviewing restaurants and attending opening nights at various theaters around town. With an editorial change at GHW, my focus returned to the Obserever Newspapers, where I took on the job of police reporter. I loved having the opportunity to hone my skills and take my writing in a new direction, but the stress of looming deadlines week after week for more than a year, coupled with increasing editorial and staff changes, was also making me crazy.

When a job offer writing copy for a small local advertising agency landed in my lap, I accepted it without hesitation. The salary was almost too good to be true - more money than I’d ever earned. The work, I assumed, would be good, too – different from anything I’d done, but fun and creative. In fact, it was anything but fun and certainly not my idea of creative. I sat in a cave-like office (we were “encouraged” to turn off the lights to save electricity) and tried my best to think up interesting things to say about an IT company and a division of Halliburton. The owner and the three other employees kept to themselves, so there was no camaraderie at all. The only face-to-face time I had occurred when the owner grilled me on what I’d written, then verbally tore it all to shreds. Three weeks into the job, I walked into his office and quit. Lesson learned: Sometimes the money isn’t really worth it. That job is by far the worst job I’ve ever had in my life!

Once again unemployed, I approached my former editor, who was in the process of starting her own community newspaper, The Tribune. I offered to help out any way I could with her fledgling effort, and she turned me over to her graphic artist, instructing him to teach me the fine art of page layout and design. To say 27-year-old Rico, a graduate of the Art Institute of Houston, was aghast is putting it mildly. But he manned up, gave me a crash course in Photoshop and Adobe InDesign, and introduced me to a whole new kind of creativity that I absolutely loved.

Looking at a page as art was new to me, and putting together the puzzle of words and pictures was a challenge. Your focus had to be intense – we worked with 80’s rock music blasting in the background so we wouldn’t be distracted by the chatter in the newsroom. That page – getting it perfect – was everything. For a while, I also interviewed people and wrote stories for the paper, but as I got better at layout and design, I gladly gave up the writing. I worked with Rico Thursday-Monday, then loaded stories onto the paper’s Web site and updated the Web calendar on Tuesday. I was into the art, into the photographs, into the graphics. I was creating in a whole new way, and I was revitalized once again.

So why did I leave after only six months? Partly because I was only a part-time employee earning a small hourly wage, and partly because a job opened up at the Kingwood Library, the one place in my neighborhood where I’d always wanted to work.

It’s been 36 years since I first moved to the Houston area, and signing on as a full-time circulation assistant at the Kingwood Library two years ago, I seemed to have come full circle. My job at the library is the right one for me – the perfect one for me – at this time of my life. My fellow staff members are kind, generous and supportive, and I’m honored to be a part of the team. I thoroughly enjoy sharing my love of books and movies and music with people of all ages. I have a steady paycheck, benefits, and a generous amount of time off to work on my writing and photography, to travel, to visit with friends and family. I laugh every day (and occasionally moan and groan!). Most important of all, I feel good – heart and soul good - about the work I’m doing.

But really, darling, tell me…is the library your career now?

My dictionary’s definition of career is: The general course or progression of one’s working life or one’s professional achievements. Another definition is: A path or course, as of the sun through the heavens.

Well, yes, my job at the library is part of the general course of my working life – all that has come before has gotten me to where I am now, one small, often courageous step at a time - and it’s a darn good place to be. But my job is so much more than that. It has not only widened my life in unexpected ways; it is also an especially sunny spot along the length of it.

It’s where I’m at on my path, my course, my journey through earth school, and right here, right now, it’s the only place I want to be.