Month: April 2019

Officially Professional

It might not look like much, but it’s kind of a big deal… representatively, anyway.

This, my friends (and people I definitely do not know), is my first official photographer pass and credential as a professional photographer.

Sure, it was for a friend’s band’s performance…, and it isn’t exactly the kind of photography I am aiming to do most of the time…, but it was also for real – I, Hannah, was listed as “Photographer” on the special guest list.

I declared myself a photographer and that I am doing photography (not just ‘trying to get it going’ or ‘trying it out’) this past Wednesday night, and, here I am, Friday night, with an official photographer pass.(!)

How cool is that?(!!!)

Again, it isn’t the style of photography I’m aiming to do with most of my photoing, but it is still totally fun and totally cool!

Special bonus that they are totally okay if none of the photos turned out… I had never photographed a band in a club with uber-nuts lights flashing everywhere except on the band members’ fronts, so it was a good low-risk opportunity to practice and to learn.

(Aah!)

Yay!

Post-a-day 2019

Stressed irony

Jump– jump– jump– jump

—-jump-jump

Aaaaaaahh!

Fleas are just darn terrible, especially without a pet… at least, with a pet, they stay on the pet… without the pet, they spread everywhere, and attack every warm body that passes through (which happens to be my warm body, my being the only one who actually lives here and isn’t a big of some sort)…

Ugh…

Help me, Lord… I have a struggle beyond this, and the fleas are just making everything worse and somewhat terrible.

……..

You see, have you ever heard the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette?

This section has lived in my head off and on ever since I first learned the song, way back when:

A traffic jam when you’re already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It’s meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife…
And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think
A little too ironic, and yeah I really do think

It is all too ironic, I dare say, that this line about the man and his wife always stuck with me as a child, and now it has resurfaced in the face of reality hitting the mark of a reasonable validity in the statement.

That is, in more sensical wording, that line has come true for me.

I met this “man of my dreams” several months ago – and he even became the actual man of my daydreams over time.

Every time we are together, I am filled with light and love, and I am inspired to be the best version I can be of myself… and I want him to enjoy himself and have a wonderful time, and I take care to help along his enjoyment in the interaction.

We inevitably have a wonderful time.

And I drink up his smile.

And his eyes… those eyes that keep contact… they are that kind of eyes.

Every new thing I learn about him and every new experience I have with him increases his perfection as this “man of my dreams”.

Everything except the seemingly inevitable, that is…

I finally paid attention enough to his hands this last time I saw him – something I never seem to check on people, and so it had to be a conscious effort this time – and discovered a wedding band.

…::face palm::…

He had on another ring, too, so there was a chance it was just a ring and not a wedding band…, but then I learned of his beautiful and wonderful wife, and their beautiful darlings of children.

It was confirmed…

When I considered it all, I discovered that I truly was unsurprised by the information… just bummed.

All the good ones really are taken…(!!!)

A somewhat jokingly thought thought, but it seems to strike rather truly these days. :/

I never really expected him to be single, available… he’s too great, too comfortable in himself and with me and others… he has confidence in his place with his partner and family.

But there’s always a chance that a great guy won’t be unavailable, I tell myself, because I’m not with anyone, you know, and I’m great…

Anyway…, moving onward…

It stresses me sad to know that this guy, for sure, is not a potential partner in my life.

And… surprisingly,… yet not surprisingly,… I find hope in it all.

Firstly, that this guy exists suggests that it is possible someone else like he is could exist, someone so wonderful.

Secondly, that this guy is such a good guy that he can have a wonderful, non romantic time with me, even though he is married, makes him an even better guy than thought….

Which, then, makes the first point an even bigger and better deal…

Thirdly, there were two tiny, unchangeable aspects to him that I don’t particularly love (but that I found myself to be okay with reasonably quickly as I spent more time with the guy), and perhaps this is a piece of why he is not the one for me nor I the one for him… and perhaps the one for me will share many qualities with this guy, and yet those tiny disliked aspects will be gone in the one for me…

So, ultimately, it’s a good thing… all of it.

And… I’m even relieved a bit… no offense, but I didn’t and don’t want to have those tiny drawback aspects if I don’t have to have them, you know?

I mean, I definitely am still not quite over it all… it is still a blow to know for sure something like this, even when you had somewhat suspected it all along…, but I also can see that I will be over it, and likely rather soon.

I don’t recall at present which character where said it, but pain demands to be felt… I agree with that… when we ignore pain, it changes, but ultimately worsens.

So, I talked with my cousin, just to communicate my frustration and sadness today, because I realized it was time to let this all go… we discovered that I think I need to have a final cry to get the last dregs out and gone in the matter, so that then I can resume a wonderful friendship with a wonderful, inspiring guy.

Post-a-day 2019

Smiles

I am always overjoyed and heartened whenever I am granted the opportunity to experience these beautiful smiles from beautiful people with beautifully arranged, pretty teeth.

It makes me see that fixing up my own teeth actually could have the potential of bringing a similar breathtaking joy to those around me…

Kind of puts a new perspective on the whole idea, as opposed to its being merely a point of vanity and self-confidence for myself…

Something new to consider, I suppose… 😛

Post-a-day 2019

BruiseFit much?

It’s only been about a week and a half that we have been gym-ing…

I’ve attended eight classes in the past nine days, taking two days off over the weekend…

Today, throughout the day, I kept finding new marks and bruises on various parts of my body…

I have no idea when or how specifically I obtained these bruises – the cuts and scrapes I know – but I am guessing that they all have the same locational origin: the gym.

I wonder how many more I’ll find tomorrow, and how much worse the already found ones will be…

As for the most recent discovery just barely below my elbow, on my back arm, directly where I usually place my arm onto a desk or a table (That’s how I discovered it in the first place, putting pressure on it via a tabletop, and suddenly withdrawing in pain.) it has already gone 3-D since I first discovered it.

Yikes…

What a life this is… 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Before and Later(?)

My brother mentioned for me to do a before and after photo of myself, to show how my future self has progressed physically from this new gym deal that my friend and I are doing.

My initial thought was a worried sort of, “No.”

I worried of having a photo exist that shows my current bodily state, up close and personal…I’m doing this exercise, because 1)I have a goal for my body fitness, and 2)I am not even comfortable anymore with how my body had engrossened, shall we say, lately.

If it were only the first reason, the photos would be great…, but the second reason is a big reason against the photos – I don’t want any more visual memory of my current state than I already will have in my mind from my own eyes’ direct and mirror viewing.

I considered that, perhaps, the gym could find it useful to share with people considering the workout, showing how drastic a positive change even my current body shaping could have.

I have people not understand why I feel so out of fitness – ‘You are Not fat,’ they regularly tell me.

I don’t disagree with them; I just mention that I have much more fat on my body than I want to have, and I also sometimes mention that I have much less muscle than I prefer having.

And then I see that I kind of want to be able to compare myself down the road, so I can be proud of my results, and even more so since I’d have side-by-side photos to show the progress…

But perhaps I could just measure things, have a brief written numbers account of how body parts are…

I don’t know… there are faults with that, too… ideally, I would do numbers and photos…

But I also don’t feel like hassling with it…. neither for the physical effort of actually doing it nor for the mental effort and strain of constantly thinking about how the numbers might have changed (probably every single day, at least a couple times a day, if I know myself… which, I do)…

So, perhaps I’ll just leave it… I’m already a week at six workouts into it, anyway, so this wouldn’t even be from the very beginning if I did a photo now…

We’ll see… I need to make sure I do or do not for the reason of what I want, and not for a reason based on fear… you know?

Yeah… we’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow…

Post-a-day 2019

Wasted

I wonder what it is that has people do the whole ‘hard core party scene’, filled with drinking, sometimes marijuana, and even the occasional illegal drugs.

Is there something we are seeking, and we search in the self-losing experience of extreme alcohol consumption?

Is there something that feels inadequate, but seems to be fulfilled when under the influence of increasingly strong effects of alcohol?

Are we afraid of or hating something in our lives, and we avoid the thoughts of it through alcohol’s removal of clear thinking?

Are we full of worries, and the alcohol pushes them out of our mind so well, we keep drinking more and more, until the law of diminishing return has been ignored so long that we hardly even function anymore?

Is it something else entirely?

I had a brief time of drinking in certain settings as a sort of camaraderie, or a group participation activity… sometimes even as group participation with ‘the cool kids’.

(I say ‘the cool kids’, but am definitely talking about adults… I wasn’t into law-breaking when I was under 21, and I definitely am not now.)

However, it didn’t last very long.

The worst of it, which was really only a matter of being tipsy in certain group drinking settings, not even drunk, was when I was very much hating something going on within that group setting, and I kind of wanted to avoid it while, at the same time, getting to be one of ‘the cool kids’.

(I did have a wonderful time of regular alcohol consumption at one point in life, and I believe the traditional German (and European) attitudes toward alcohol could prove quite helpful to the US… Biergarten evening drinking in summer in Germany is wonderful… but I didn’t even always drink then.

Anyway, the reason I was mentioning the Biergarten is that I do have positive memories and associations with alcohol… I just don’t much care for it.

I can have it, sure, but I wouldn’t be in the least bit concerned if I never had it again in my life.)

I’ve never understood what drives people to the degrees of drunkenness at which they are not functioning human beings, but merely stumbling babies all over again, twenty-plus years after the original state of babyhood…, but I have wondered much about what drives them to such a point in alcohol consumption.

And I’ve wondered, too, about if there is something comparable for me and my life… I haven’t come up with anything, but I haven’t looked too deeply into that specific piece of the idea.

We even call it being “wasted”…, yet do we consider that it could be a small piece of life that we have, indeed, wasted by being in such a state?

Just a thought, but it’s getting to me tonight…

Anyway… happy life, happy night

Post-a-day 2019

Photos

I took portraits for someone this evening.

I have no certainty as to how they turned out.

They looked quite decent on the camera screen, though, and I also know that I have learned lots about settings for the camera, and that I have a very high likelihood of having good photos in there, if not spectacular ones, anyway.

I am excited to find out… 🙂

Bedtime for now, though… delayed gratification is so much better than delayed disappointment, so let’s hope I have the former, eh? 😛

Post-a-day 2019

Score(!) + Ugh(!!)

Two things:

1) I learned loads at the class this morning… my evening internship was cancelled this afternoon, so I went to cheer on my friend at the evening class she was attending… moral support, you know?

Then we could have dinner together afterward.

When they were gathering for class, the coach asked about why I wasn’t joining their pow-wow… we explained… he continuously encouraged me to join, and I somewhat quickly accepted – I learned lots of technique this morning, and so certainly could use the extra practice, but also could use the weight training that I had to give up for technique training this morning (now that I know the technique, I can add weight to it all, you see).

Sure, there was plenty in the workout that wasn’t the technique-based stuff I had just learned… that mattered little – I had done the beginner version this morning, and I managed to complete the advanced version this evening (for the rest of the workout, that is, because the weight I used in the weightlifting part was still for not strong muscles… though no weight was listed on the actual workout, so I technically did everything on the advanced level this evening… cool!).

The coach was joking about enjoying our results by late summertime, and I asked if we really had to wait that long .

He said, “It depends on how hard you work.”

My friend replied to him, ‘This is only our first week, and she’s already doing two-a-days(!).’

It was a good body love and pride day.

2) The vacuum broke down as I was almost finished with everything that needed to be vacuumed before the main effective flea treatment tomorrow morning… there has got to be a lesson in all of this somehow… just what in Heaven and Earth is it???????

Ugh.

Post-a-day 2019

“Love”

I really love when younger adult men (e.g. aged 20-40) call women “love”, “sweetheart”, “darlin'”, and the likes in an entirely and obviously non-romantic but loving way.

I mean like how the guy in the student ID photo-taking station wished me well as I left, by saying, “You, too, gorgeous,” or how this particular cashier at Trader Joe’s always calls me “love” – ‘You’re all set, love.’

The first was perhaps around 35, and the cashier possibly around 25… and neither gave off even the slightest hint of desire or sexual connotation to the use of the endearing terms… they were, simply, terms of endearment on a friendly, human-to-human level.

And I love that.

Today, after class, a coach said to me, “Great job today, sweetheart,” and waved me a goodbye… it was clear that he intended encouragement and care on a friendly level, and nothing at all on a romantic level… and it felt so good…

To be cared for by the opposite sex, without there being an alternate agenda of any kind, is really, really nice.

Certainly, when someone uses the same words in a derogatory or demeaning, looking-down-at-me sort of way, it is dreadful and, even, somewhat inappropriate.

In these contexts, however, it is clear that I am respected for who I am, and the word is used as an expression of human love and concern for one another…

(I’m not sure how else to put it right now, but I hope you can see what I mean with all of this.)

I just love that these men have started doing this again – it once was somewhat normal, here in the South, anyway, but has fallen away almost entirely in recent decades, leaving only the really old men to use the terms with women.

But these younger guys are somewhat bringing it back, and I love it.

Perhaps it can be a sort of step toward showing our love and concern for one another more openly in the world, like how I always told my Starbucks coworkers every time I left work, “Okay… love you guys… bye!”

Perhaps we are on the path to show one another and to share with one another our mutual love as human beings, who are together here on this Earth.

You know?

Post-a-day 2019