blogger, say what?

OKAY. I've seen the recent entries from the group formerly known as the Blogging Wenches, and I get it. Somewhere in the universe (perhaps because of the loss of Lost?) there is a pull telling people to get their butts back to the blogosphere. And who am I to resist such a call?

There's been a lot going on in the life of me. Some good stuff, some not so fun stuff. This past year has been a mash-up of, "Awesome crazy adventure time!" and "My insurance will only pay HOW much?" --which should sound about right to any recent college grad.

The most exciting part of life is that photography is slowly becoming a more integrated part of my life, which of course is a big win. I just shot a wedding a few weeks ago which was not easy, but really rewarding. I'm going to be shadowing a wedding photographer for several dates in the summer. I just plopped down money for a backdrop stand and a backdrop which should be arriving TODAY. I'm working on rebranding and rebuilding my website (I'm learning a new type of code, which feels like the Newsies days all over again). I might be teaching an intro to photography course at the local homeschool group. I'll wait a bit longer and then grab the light I've been wanting. But last night I did an impromptu shoot at night with a friend with my flash, and it felt GOOD. Obviously, paying clients are the goal, but there's really nothing stopping me from just having fun. Because that's why I do photography, right?

All this goes to say, don't let the insurance and job search get you down. I'm trying really hard not to... and somehow looking at the awesomecrazyadventure things in life keeps it from being too hard.

good morning, starshine, the earth says hello

HELLO WORLD.

I am alive, believe it or not, though my long, unintentional hiatus from blogging would probably tell you otherwise. Much has been happening in la vida de Traci, and I will do my best to give more consistent updates, since I rarely see anyone that reads this blog (assuming people still read it). So here are the highlights of the past month... Consider this your very late "Christmas Newsletter" that everyone sends out, bragging about their family.

BRAINS: I have graduated from American University. I am DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE. The funny thing is, I don't even feel like it's really over - and in a way it's not. I'll be TAing another photo class this semester with a wicked awesome professor (last semester's prof didn't like me much) which gives me access to the studio which means more photography. YES. Also, I will begin my first class in over three years at Nova, beginning a slow start towards perhaps my Associates in Graphic Desgin.

HOME: I now live in a lovely townhouse nicknamed "El Barrio" for its delightful location in Sterling (for those of you outside of Virginia, Sterling is known for its high Hispanic population). My roommate is my best friend Matt, who I met during my original Nova days, and thus far we've managed not to kill each other - good, no? In all seriousness, we somehow are the perfect roommates, feeling comfortable enough to say anything and gaining inside jokes by the day. He appreciates my cooking (yes, I can make edible food!) and I'm glad he likes to clean.

LOVE: Still most definitely in it. JD and I will be celebrating one year in about a month - holy freaking crap...! We hit a rough patch from about Thanksgiving to Christmas, but we're back to our regularly scheduled relationship. And, cough, a certain word beginning with "M" has been put out on the table. No timeframe in any way, shape, or form... but HE brought it up. Not me. Go figure.

JOB: I am one of the unemployed masses. Actually, not really. My piano-teaching business is booming, which is super amazing. I really love teaching and I'm actually considering taking some music classes at Nova so I make sure I'm staying sharp for my kids. I still work at Paper Source, and it's fantastic - I'm less into scrapbooking now, but super into card making. I've gotten two of my friends hooked as well, so we get together every so often and sit and stamp together, it's baller.

PHOTO: I'm really pushing to get my photography business up and running - I've got two weddings in May and am setting up a fun shoot with a few brides for the next few months. I've landed a contract with a local theater company to photograph their season, which is fantastic to have a bit of extra money guaranteed! This past November I did a shoot with Pez with a pole dancing studio (yes, you heard me) and we'll be going back in a few weeks to do another shoot. Talk about unconventional, but it sure does help pay the bills.

MISC: I'm back to going to the gym and thanks to Matt screaming at me to go, I think I'll keep up with it, assuming I don't break my wrist like I did about this time last year. I miss my buddy, Mango, tremendously. I am totally in love with cooking. Matt's mom terrifies me. I'm watching Nip/Tuck, Gilmore Girls and DeGrassi, unashamed. I have a buttload of pics to upload to facebook. I miss everyone terribly, and I would love to hear from you in one way or another (phone, text, comment, facebook) to let me know you, as well, are alive.

2010... here we go!

someone like you and all you know and how you speak

He asked me what my issues were. I asked him what his were.

Apparently, I am afraid of attachment. He has trouble sharing his feelings.

We're now dating.

For someone as happy being single as I was, this was more of a fight than anyone could know. And at the same time, it was perhaps the easiest, sweetest and most right relationships of them all. I told him, had he asked me the night we met to date, I would have said no. Even a month in, I still told him I wasn't ready. But only two weeks after I said that... here I am. A girlfriend.

He taught me how to shoot a gun and drive a manual car. I taught him how to bake cookies. He loves the parts of me I try to hide, and I can't get over how he makes me laugh.

And I'm realizing, more than anything, that relationships are built on the differences, the pieces of ourselves that don't match up. And they're work to find the common ground, to open up, to let yourself fit together.

And it's the moments when you're sitting there and hands slide together and bodies curl around each other that you realize this totally absurd concept of (to quote my friend Tali) two independent people simply wanting to be together is actually possible. Not only just possible, it's the most rewarding feeling in the world.

if dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts

Life does not imitate art.

I've decided, instead, that art imitates the life we wish we led. Think about it. All successful art is based on the premises of practice and planning. And how are those ever really relevant in life? It's not like you get a test run of this being alive thing. You've got one shot! Sure, there are sometimes second chances, but it's not like in, say, a sketch that you can work on it, draft after draft, before finally releasing it. We, as humans, are published from day one.

And planning. I could talk forever about this illusive "planning" some of us strive so hard to accomplish. But really? Other than a lunch date here, a college there... how much are we really in charge of? SO LITTLE. What's even more frustrating is that we can do all the planning we want, and life will still come in and serve us something totally different. Think about art. What art is possible without months, sometimes years of planning? Look at movies, albums and theater. All of these are only feasible with considerable planning, and the ones that go on without - take Pollock for instance - ...well, they speak for themselves.

So art and life. Close- but not the same. Instead, I think that art is reflecting the level of perfection we as humans cannot attain because of our inability to plan and practice the game of life. If we did have a do-over? That's art. Think about how movies are scripted, costumed and scouted. Everything is so close to naturalism, but in the act of sitting and deciding, "I'm going to write about this," we've immediately changed it from life to art (hello, Heisenberg principle). I can sit on a bench and read a magazine while waiting for the bus. That's life. In a movie, I'll sit on a bench, reading a magazine, and the bus will either never come and I decide to walk to my destination and then meet the love of my life, or I get on the bus and we realize we're the targets of a terrorist organization that has a bomb strapped to the bottom of the bus that requires us to go a certain speed or we all DIE.

That's not life, guys. It's life the way we'd like to imagine it. It's life if we could plan excitement, romance and success just the way we like it served. Unfortunately, that's not the way the chips fall.

Every now and then, you meet someone that makes all that lack of planning and practice totally worth it. You start to hope that maybe life is better experienced without a trial run. You couldn't have planned it any better, and all the practice in the world wouldn't have prepared you for how the shit is going down.

Or maybe that's just what I tell myself as consolation that I have no idea how I ended up here, and I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.