Manifesting and Fear

I have imagined this trip with this camera (a Canon Mark II 5D with a 24-105 zoom lens) for about a year-and-a-half now. Maybe more. My friend Casey offered to give me the money. My kids wanted to get everyone in the family to chip in as a gift. And each time the possibility came up, I wasn't ready to accept it. Until now. And even though the way it actually did manifest is not necessarily the way I would have wanted (don't we all have a specific scenario about how we want everything to be?), and there were many challenges to overcome before getting here, every time I use this camera I am completely blown away by the way I feel - so absolutely absorbed in the moment. In the seeing of the world through that lens. In the beauty that is all around me all the time even though there are many moments when I don't see it. And I realized that photography, this camera that I imagined for myself, is my portal to seeing and being me. To living actually.

I've realized that not every photograph has to be a masterpiece. Some are links to something else. Some are simply exercises in the process that will bring me to the next place. And the inescapable joy that I feel in the doing is more than enough reason for doing it.

I've let go of comparing my work to those I admire and decided that to simply love the doing is more than I could ever ask for. Allowing this is helping me to define my own voice. I see that my work is good enough right now even though it will get better. Even though I've not yet captured that one incredible moment when the light and the energy and the action all work perfectly in sync. That my voice is unique and I do not have to look like someone else or be like someone else in order to be important. That if others do not see what I see or relate to what I value, it is OK.

There is no doubt that I have disrespected my voice and hardly recognize it as my own. And I am beginning to understand why it is I needed to let go of a house that I loved in order to get here. Why I needed to go through certain painful experiences, the life I thought I would always have, married, living with a guy I loved, comfortably entrenched in that as the envelope to everything else, be completely and irrevocably ripped apart. Without all the shake-ups, I wonder if I would be doing what I am meant to be doing right here right now.

It's funny the choices we make and why we make them and how that creates certain outcomes. How when we are at a crossroads and we choose to go left instead of right, how it defines our life. Many of our decisions are made from fear. Fear of loss. Fear of growing old. Fear of death. Fear of being alone. Fear of not having enough money. Fear of not being successful enough. Fear of being harmed. Have I left yours out?

If I had allowed my fears to drive me I would not be doing this. There were so many fears and not just my own. There were the fears of others weighing heavily on my shoulders as I packed my car and hit the road refusing to allow them to change my direction. And as I pulled away, the tears streaming down my face and the tension building in my gut, trying to resist looking in my rear view mirror, I saw my father wiping tears from his eyes. And my heart just ached.

Thank goodness for Sirius radio. I put on the "coffee house" and let the openness of the highway help me breathe. Gradually the tension lifted as I carried a car load of stuff and a dog towards the mostly unknown.