“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left…
Currently Viewing : Sweet and Sour
I’m a nester. A mole. I love to burrow into my comfortable, safe spaces that I create around me, knowing that I’m in control. Because when I’m in control, things will always be the same. And same is safe. But Jeff … well… Jeff has the confidence of a Honey Badger. He just don’t care. He has this relentless ocean of self-assurance that makes what little confidence I have look like one of those smelly puddles on the street next to the sidewalk – everybody avoids it and nobody wants to talk about what’s in it. We got these free…
Yesterday, Jeff and I had some work to do (on a Sunday I know – we can normally take the whole day off but there were pressing deadlines), and my mind was everywhere but where it needed to be. My brains were in a fog – I couldn’t think, I couldn’t focus, and I wasn’t getting any work done. I slogged through the two red hot must-get-done-now items on my to-do list and then I wandered around the house, grabbed a swiffer and vaccuum and began working on the floors. But ten minutes later, I found my foggy self standing…
I don’t know what we’re gonna do when we have kids. They’re gonna have the worst abandonment issues… October. It’s our busiest time of year with weddings, travel, and speaking, so life right now is chaos. Controlled, organized, systematized, non-stop chaos. Monday the 17th, we hopped on a red-eye flight that began an entire month of non-stop travel. We flew to Indiana to visit Jeff’s brother Dan for the week and to speak to a group of photographers at the Indianapolis PUG. At the end of the trip, after four hours of sleep, we hopped on a crack-of-dawn flight back…
I have spent the majority of my life feverishly covering up the fact that I am not a perfect person. And you know what the terrible irony is? The fact that I am imperfect is completely obvious to everybody out there. You don’t even have to meet me face to face to see that I am an insecure, imperfect person with lots of issues. I’m sure you can feel it right here on the blog in my writing. It’s everywhere. That’s the problem with insecurity. The more we try to cover it up, the more obvious it becomes. As a…
This week we photographed a wedding, a portrait session, and a two day photo shoot for Exquisite Weddings Magazine. Yesterday we flew into Chicago for a beautiful wedding that’s happening later today. Tomorrow we’re hanging out one on one with a lovely photographer and then we’re speaking to the Chicago PUG and the South Bend PUG. That will bring us to Tuesday. When we get home on Wednesday, we have an engagement session and a family session, and then a fabulous wedding next Saturday. In the life of a photographer, busy is good. And even though we’re in the midst…
It was a plate mounded with beans and brown rice, a fried banana, a scoop of what looked like potato salad but turned out to be salt fish, two thin chicken drumsticks, and some sort of fruit that had the consistency of bread and tasted like a crumbly, half-cooked yam. I didn’t eat it. Actually, I took one bite and slowly spit it back into my napkin when the shop owner wasn’t looking. I love traveling. There’s nothing like showing up hot and sweaty at a random roadside building that looks like it’s supposed to be a restaurant, asking for…
I woke up with a horrible case of the Cranky Pants on Monday morning. And like most Cranky-Pants syndromes, it was for absolutely no reason. Jeff and I have learned to communicate in very special ways and we’ve figured out that when I wake up a little *eh-hem* off-kilter that I just need to let him know. That’s it. I just need to say right away that I’m not feeling in a very happy mood, and then I check myself into a Starbucks for the rest of the day and just write about it. So as I was rolling out…
It’s the only time that I’ve ever swore in front of my mother-in-law – at least I’m pretty sure it was. It all took place last summer, after a really crazy month of shooting and traveling. Of stressing out about the messy house. Of laundry. Of album designs. Of blog posts and workflows. It was after planning Jeff’s birthday party. Of coordinating every detail, gathering RSVPs, ordering the food, cleaning the endless mess that is our house, and then – after weeks of planning ahead so that I wouldn’t be late with anything – being late to our very own…