Back from the brink

It has been a difficult day.  Nothing earth shattering.  Just what has felt to me like a long slog.  The house is clean, so having to try ignoring dust on the lamps and dog hair on the floor (for a change) isn't what has been gnawing away at my equilibrium.  Almost everything on the drafted-this-morning "to do" list has been highlighted.  I'm not beating myself up for having procrastinated.
Actually, the problem is no mystery.  It's just that I have been resisting owning up to it.

Here's the deal.  I have finally begun work in earnest on the photographs from what I'm calling the "Waterways Trip."  While we were away I did manage to download images every day, but I did nothing to or with them.  No key words, no captions, no editing.  (I described the current process of doing that in the post for July 11th.)  Until today, things have hummed along.  Today I met up with disappointment.

Many and I mean many of the photographs I made on May 23rd, our first day on the Erie Canal, are just terrible.  The composition is OK, but they're either muddy or slightly out of focus.  Initially, I tried "fixing" some of them, a process I don't actually know how to do, a process very different from what it takes simply to "develop" an image in the software program I use.

Gradually, I realized it wasn't worth it.  That the images themselves weren't worth the time and the energy I was expending.  And, beyond that, that they weren't worth the sadness and the sense of failure I felt building up inside me. 

My friend Sarah to the rescue.  No.  Not a visit or even a telephone call.  For Christmas Sarah gave me a page-a-day calendar written for busy women.  It didn't take many days into January until I began looking forward to the morning ritual of tearing off the old page and reading the new one.  About every four-to-six weeks the author, Anne Wilson Schaef, makes a distinction between perfectionism and excellence.  I have kept a few of them to ruminate over:

Excellence is being willing to take risks.  Perfectionism is being overly cautious and fearful.  (February 20th)

Excellence results in feelings of personal power.  Perfectionism results in anger and frustration. (March 31st)

Excellence is spontaneous.  Perfectionism results in control and conformity. (April 11th)

Excellence results in giving.  Perfectionism results in taking.  (Didn't write down the date for that one.)

And, here's today's page, that one brought me back from the brink:

Excellence results in quiet confidence.  Perfectionism results in doubt.

All I really want to do is put my photographs in order.  All I really want to do is (1) be happy with the memories they bring back of a marvelous time Tal and I had together and (2) feel proud of the handful of images that are really good -- and there are a few.

With all that in mind and with great calm I returned to my task, assessing what I had before me and simply deleted what I could not save.  Dozens.  It was like ripping off a band-aid, to use an over-used expression.  But, it's over.  Well, at least for that particular day.  I've not looked ahead ...

I don't know what I did wrong halfway through that pretty day, up through the Waterford Flight, the clouds puffy-white and huge, the sky a bright blue.  But, something was amiss with me or the camera.  The truth is, though, it doesn't matter.  The lost photographs don't matter at all.  Being miserable about it isn't going to help anything or anyone, least of all me. 

Yes, I want to make pictures I like.  I want to enjoy the process.  But, I'm not going to obsess over getting it right all the time -- or ever, come right down to it.  I will strive for the best I can do.

So, I'll end with one more quote.  This one -- from Maria Schriver -- a little less heavy than those from Ms Schaef.

Perfectionism doesn't make you feel perfect.  It makes you feel inadequate.

Amen to that.

Put it in its place

I removed the color from this photograph for a reason.  I wanted the eye to fall not on the flower but on the seed head sans seeds.  But, yes, the flower is yellow.

Yesterday it was the flower that slowed me down on my circuit through Orchard Estates, a stalled subdivision near the local country club. There are lots of yellow flowers along the way, but only a few with petals like this one.  I made several photographs to detail the flower, seed head and leaves in hopes I could identify it beyond the term "dandelion-like."  And, I kept walking.  Breakfast was waiting.

I am disappointed that it does not appear in my wildflower guide.  I am frustrated by the whole identification thing.  I was so busy thinking about getting that flower named that I missed that the seed head itself is an intriguing and beautiful structure.  I am sad that when I returned this morning to give the seed head attention of its own it was gone.

For all my wanting to put this flower in its place, or the place where we humans have put it, I failed to see what was before me.  But, it's what we do.  Whoever wrote Genesis knew that, proclaiming the idea that God told us to name things.  My vocabulary is full of it ... categorize, sort, classify, identify, group, name, rank, arrange, order, catalog, organize, file.

I know how important the process of arranging things is.  Life would turn pretty chaotic pretty fast without some sort of organizing.  And, I do enjoy being able to name flowers and birds.  But, what is the point of categorizing, classifying, cataloging?  To know?  To understand?  To find meaning?  In part.  I suspect it's also to keep ourselves feeling safe and in control and superior (likely a primary point of the Genesis story).

I am sorry to have missed admiring that seed head.  I'd like to be less intent on putting the next thing in its place.  I hope I'll be able to let myself linger awhile and admire what I'm seeing.

Closed doors

Tal and I had a plan.  After canoeing the Allegash in September and touring Utah's national parks in October, we had decided we would take only one trip during 2011.  That trip was going to be a long-talked-about train trip across Canada from Quebec City to Vancouver.

Yesterday afternoon I settled in front of the computer to sign up for the trip.  I was met with a single word:  WAITLIST.  Wrongly, we had thought four months to be enough lead time.  I cannot begin to describe the disappointment.  We had been so pleased with the prospect of that trip.  And, disappointment isn't even an adequate description of how I felt as a sat there, the news sinking in.  It was a state of bewildered inaction.  Plus, I was going to have to tell Tal.  Further, now what?

At some point during the remainder of the day, from the recesses of memory, the Erie Canal came to mind.  A short online search ensued accompanied by rising hope.  It turns out we are going to have a pretty terrific adventure after all. 

Seems to me that more frequently than not disappointment doesn't have to mark the end.  An end, perhaps, but not the end.  It was the mother superior in The Sound of Music who advised a disappointed postulant Maria that God wouldn't close a door without opening a window.  In that story and in her real life story Maria ended up with a family and a life she could never have imagined.  A convent it wasn't.  Her life's calling it was.

Likewise my photographic efforts.  Generally, I set out to photograph something specific.  If I am not concerned about time or personal safety and if I let myself get involved in the process, it often happens that eventually I see something else entirely or that I see the original subject or some aspect of it in a new way.  When that happens the results of my time with the camera bear little resemblance to my initial intention, more pleasing almost without fail.