A Good Day

A lot of life is characterized by moments. The moment you were born. The moment you knew flying over your bicycle handlebars was going to be painful. The moment you realized you loved someone. The moment you said I do. But for all of us, there are the other pivital moments that make our individual stories unique. The moment your hard work paid off. The moment you said goodbye. The moment you stepped off a plane in an unfamiliar place. I've had one such moment this week, and while seemingly insignificant to 99.9999% of the world, it has propelled me forward in an extremely important way. My photography teacher challenged us this week: gather 25 photos that we are most proud of to share with the class. A class of 35, I might add. (Eek!) This was hard. Not because I'm not proud of my photos, because I am, but to actually show strangers a piece of my heart made my insides scream and do somersaults. I toyed with playing the "I forgot my disk" card, but I told myself to shut it and woman up. This is what I was here for! So I began to choose my photos.

When I saw my teacher reached for my cd, I almost excused myself to the ladies' room. Actually, I almost bolted to the ladies' room. However, my classmate sitting next to me was leaning back so far in his chair, he was blocking my escape route. So I convinced myself, in a matter of seconds, that I didn't care. But I did. It didn't matter anyway, my photos had already loaded and were blown up to movie-theater-screen-huge for 36 strangers to critique.

By the time my teacher was handing my cd back to me, I had a giant, goofy grin plastered across my face. One I couldn't even hold in. I had nervously begun to preface that none of my photos had been edited when my teacher interrupted me by asking if I did wedding photography. Upon hearing my obvious answer, and an admission that I wasn't merely pursuing photography to pass the time, he said it. The moment that was filled with words I never expected to hear: You're well on your way.

Take that Fear!