catheroominations

I’m tired. It’s 11:30 pm and we just got home from a surprise birthday party in San Francisco. We were at a wine bar that was overly packed and overpriced. The food was oversalted. But it was for a surprise 40th birthday party so we (really I) took the high road. It was fun, I just wish it wasn’t on a weeknight. I don’t do well with the going out on weeknights. Now we’re home and I am in sweats and a Flickr t-shirt, watching LOST. Also, I must post today, to make my NaBloPoMo deadline. Do you see how dedicated I am?

Before I go, I have to tell you a Desmond story. Yes. It’s about my cat. Kitten, actually.

Every morning, while I’m in the shower, Desmond sits outside the curtain on the bathmat, meowing. Today though, I didn’t hear him, so I peeked out from the shower to see if he was there. He wasn’t on the bathmat, but he was walking out of the bathroom, carrying my chonies in his mouth, as if he had just caught his prey for the morning.

After my shower, I found him in the living room flinging and flailing my underwear about, and generally attacking my Victoria’s Secret boyshorts. Well, I just had to grab a photo of this! So I took the hunted underwear, put it back in the bathroom and sat with my camera in my lap as I waited for the fierce predator to return. The little perv returned and absconded with my undies again. See the little perv?

Om.

Got a better caption? Leave it in the comments.

Rejection hurts. No matter what kind. Whether you’re getting your heart stomped on by a fellow 6th grader who doesn’t like you because “you’re fat!”, denied admission to a sorority because your daddy is not an attorney or a surgeon, or hearing that your photos are just not good enough to be part of an exhibit, rejection sucks.

I received another rejection email today. This one was for a photography exhibit that I really thought I stood a chance of getting into. But again, I was told “We’re sorry. You’re not good enough for us.” At least now, in the world of the Internet, people can apologize, and pretend to be remorseful for hurting my feelings. Freddie didn’t do that, but he was just an 11-year old punk. The sorority just didn’t invite me back the next day, and that was ok with me because they were all snobby bitches and I didn’t like their house anyway. But finding out something I created isn’t good enough to be included in something I so wanted to be part of makes me want to stop trying to get in.

However, for some reason, this rejection didn’t upset me as much as the magazine rejection. This one just made me introspective. When I received that first rejection email, I chalked it up to the judges’ stupidity. It was them, not me. And “Fine then! I’ll get my work seen some other way! Some better way! So suck it, you, you…magazine that I would still love to see my photo in someday! Pfft!

Maybe “thanks, but no thanks” email hurts less because it isn’t the first time? Does it get easier? Or do you slowly start believing that your work is not that great? You start to realize that you and your friends are the only ones who think you photographs are any good and you really have no business in the company of amazing photographers and who do you think you are? Go back to the kids’ table, you annoying little thing. Yeah, that’s where I am now.

I was planning to launch a photography site earlier this month. But I am uninspired to do so. With my recent rejections comes insecurity. Right now I feel like my photographs are nothing but snapshots with some nice depth of field. Some of them are pretty, or nicely composed, but really. Nothing special. Nothing that warrants a spot in a gallery or a quarter-page in a magazine, or an entire web site focused solely on them. That’s how I feel, anyway. So the photo site is on hold indefinitely. Maybe now I’ll just take photos because I like to. Maybe I’ll stop wanting my work to be in people’s houses, office lobbies, cubicles. (I wish I could do that. But I want more.)

I don’t aspire to be famous. But when I hand someone a photograph, asking them to publish it in their overpriced magazine or hang in their fancy gallery, I’m giving them a part of me. And when they do not accept it, they are not just rejecting a photo. They’re also rejecting me. And prior feelings of rejection come flooding back and I want to retreat to my safe place. So for now I am finished submitting my work to anything other than Flickr. I just can’t set myself up for further rejection.

Besides, Flickr loves me. And thanks to them, I can say my work has been in a gallery. Because it has. Technically. OK. So it was there for just a few hours. But still. Below is a shot from Flickr’s 4th birthday party, held last night at 111 Minna in San Francisco. 111 Mina is a gallery. Notice anything familiar?

And there’s a certain feline that Matte photographed in this one:

Here are a few other shots I took at the party. It was so fun to be in a room full of people who love to take photos. And no one thought anyone was a dork for zooming in on buttons, focusing on cupcakes or taking long exposure shots of the crowd as they admired everyone’s work. People oohed and aahed at Flickrites’ flash set ups and kickass cameras. And everyone went home with some sweet swag. Happy 4th Birthday, Flickr. (You don’t look a day over 3, by the way). Thanks for accepting me as I am and for allowing me to expose myself to millions of people.

Once upon a time, my friend Beth sent out a note about her upcoming 30th birthday celebration. She closed the note with “you’re all great fiends” or some similar sentiment. And yes, she left the ‘r’ out of friends.

It stuck. Ever since that note, my circle of friends has been known as Fiends. When our fiend Julie passed away, we started a Yahoo! group to keep in touch and email daily doses of support to everyone in the group. It was a perfect way to keep in touch, especially with those that were far away. Those first few months after Julie’s passing were difficult for us all, but having the support of each other got us through it. Slowly.

Life has been moving very fast for the Fiends lately and we don’t spend as much time together as we once did. It’s hard to get us all in the same place at the same time. But we’re still close and would drop anything to help one of us in need.

Tonight I got to spend time with 2 fiends, Tracey and June. We have all had some stress in our lives lately and it was good to just be together and talk about things, catching up with what’s been going on in each other’s lives. Tonight we didn’t want the loud “nn-tch nn-tch nn-tch” music of a bar, or to get all dressed up to go somewhere fancy. We just wanted to be. So we went to an old skool type place, that caters to a more mature crowd (the Blue Hairs, if you will).

Because I had already eaten a dinner of stir-fried chicken, asparagus and brown rice, I forwent (is that the past tense of forgo?) the meal and went along for the company, my camera in tow. I still had to shoot my last submission for the 7 Days group in Flickr. While they dined on the fine cuisine (note sarcasm), I had a glass of Cabernet. And because this was a night where comfort food was much in need, the girls ordered hot fudge sundaes. I still nursed my wine, and rather than knocking them over the head with the jar of sugar and stealing their sundaes, I shot a photo of one instead. Much fewer calories that way. The best part of the night though, was when we were discussing our trails and tribulations, the song that our beloved fiend Julie asked to be played at her funeral (Green Day’s Good Riddance/Time of Your Life) came on over the sound system. For some reason, that song comes on at the most appropriate times. And since we all became such close fiends because Julie brought us together, it was perfect that the song played tonight. It was like a little “Hey” from Julie. Interesting that I haven’t heard that song in awhile, nor had I spent quality time with my fiends in much too long.

Below is a photo of the delectable hot fudge sundae that I did not eat (nor did I taste! How’s that for will power?).

And this here is my last self-portrait of the week. Next go round, you should play with us. Click on the link to in my sidebar to join the 7 Days group. You’ll be glad you did!

Well, not quite friends yet, but the transition of Desmond into our 1- cat diva household is going better than we would have expected.