Dear God...
...it's me, Rachel. I know we haven't talked in a while and that I don't know if you exist or not but I wanted to thank you for all of the blessings you have given me, for the blessing of love, friendship, children, career and home. Thank you for all the joy in my life and for giving me such difficult obstacles to overcome because I have built so much character during my struggles to overcome them. Thank you for creating the LapBand so I am no longer a fat ass and thank you for creating Nigel to be the extension of my old fat ass in the form of a dog. Thank you for giving me my sense of humor so I can laugh at myself and find humor in things that would otherwise crush me. Thank you for giving me so much. So in the spirit of giving, please send clients my way. Please send people with money to my studio so I can make a living and make a home for all the love you have bestowed upon me. Please make their wallets fat and could you throw in a dozen referrals or so from each client I shoot and while you are at that, could you steer me in the right direction with how to effectively market my business because posting on Myspace and Craigslist is not cutting it. And when all of this money rolls in, I will not throw it away on frivilous things. I will use it wisely and I will only treat myself to one thing...that will only help me further in my career...
So please God, if you are out there, throw me a bone? Or the winning numbers to next week's Powerball?
Thanks and um, Amen.
Labels: Canon 1-D Mark III, God, PLEASE, Thanks
Riddle Me This...
If friendships are forged on Myspace, is it fair to assume that activity on the site is a reflection of those friendships and where they stand? Within one month of moving out of state, I was removed off of half a dozen profiles that I have had a secure place on for the last 2 years.
INTERESTING.
While I have my own immature Myspace weaknesses like removing people I am mad at from my Top Friends List until I am get over it, it was warranted...I don't out toss people aside based on their location.
Are things like this a reflection of true feelings? I have to wager Yes. Aside from Myspace, I haven't heard from them. They didn't make time to see us before we moved. It seemed that as soon as they heard we were moving, we were erased. I guess for some people location is where the heart is. It seems to be.
Eh, easy come, easy go.
Labels: friends list, myspace, stupid
Valentines Day
Me: "Good morning, baby. Happy Valentine's Day..."
Him: "Happy Valentine's Day..."
Me: "I love you..."
Him: "I have an erection..."
Labels: erection, mornings, valentine's day
Little Face
Our daughter is six weeks old already. She is getting so big and just started really smiling. I had to get a shot of one to remember...
Eideann
Now I should take her out of the swing before her brains scramble.Labels: baby, beautiful, daughter, love
Valentines and House Fires
It's been three years since I started this blog and I'd wager it is as popular as it was when I started it. lol Anyhoo (god, I hate when people say that and I just said it. What does that mean?), I went through my archives to check out where I was in life three years ago and was reminded why I do not cook. For your amusement, here is my entry from Valentine's Day 2004:
"Being that he was broke and I am single mother/student (i.e. BrokeAssMammaJamma), we did the laying low thing all weekend. I got groceries and played house...Betty Crocker/Valentine/Drinking Buddy/Personal Loveslave all rolled in one for the long holiday weekend, Mr. Man…ok maybe more like Betty’s danger prone cousin. I somehow managed to overfill the casserole dish so the cheese from the lasagna spilled out and onto the bottom of the oven, thereby catching on fire and filling my house with smoke. The Man and The Kid had to watch TV in the front room shivering under blankets with the heater blasted on 90 degrees to offset the 35 degree draft that was coming in from all the windows being open while I ran through the house frantically waving dishtowels around over my head in an effort to air the fucking place out before the smoke alarm went off. THEN as if I didn’t demonstrate my housewife dysfunction enough Saturday night, on Sunday, I decided to barbeque a tri tip, I mean how can I fuck up BBQ??! Oh the reality never ceases to prove my logic wrong. It was all looking good until I went to turn it after 15 minutes and when I opened the lid of the bbq, the whole fucking slab of meat was on fire. Not just burnt but up in goddamn unrelenting flames. In a panic, I start hopping up and down (no clue why because it really didn’t help put out the fire) and beating it with the big ass bbq fork thingy, stab it through it’s center, yank it off the grill, sending it off the fork, into the air, over my shoulder and onto the pavement of my patio with a sloppy thud. Well, the fire went out. Looking over my shoulder to ensure the coast was clear, giving myself clearance, I then hosed it off, slathered it with bbq sauce and stuck it back on the grill. Hey, the ten second rule always applies in times of desperation and no one was harmed in the production of this meal. Overall, the food tasted really good with my side dish of humiliation."
Sweet. As if I needed to remember why I do not cook. Not only do I cause house fires when I cook but I blow shit up too. I can't even hard boil eggs without blowing those motherfuckers up. Hence, the reason Sean has banned me from the kitchen. Well, there are worse things in life than not being able to cook. I could be stupid.
We will see how this Valentine's Day pans out. Probably pretty uneventful since the idea of the grand production of going out to eat with a 9 yr old and an infant (who most likely will wake up demanding a nipple right before the food arrives which sucks because I end up breastfeeding through the entire meal and by the time she is satiated and I get to put her down or pass her off, my food is cold) is not exactly romantic. But I have enough romance in my every day life to make Valentine's Day less important than it was in past relationships with boys (not men) who didn't deserve me (hair flip) and whom I bent over backwards for (for no logical reason actually) and who always disappointed me.
So, in three years, I am still broke, still can't cook, and I am still funny. What has changed? I finally turned my backwards taste in men around. I fiinally took interest in a good guy and I am keeping him.
Hey, I deserve a pat on the back.
*pat*
Hey, another for good measure...
*pat*
Labels: house fires, nipples, valentine's day
Funniest blog post ever read
OK so maternity leave is rendering me bored to no end and aside from contemplating my purpose and bitching about why I am not there yet, I have been scouring the archives of the most hilarious blogger I have ever encountered (and that really says nothing because I have read like 10 tops) and had to share the best post ever:
Enjoy the masterpiece of Demonbaby
The Hill That Lies Ahead
I am back. Hated Livejournal. Much has transpired since I have last posted. Got married, had my second child and moved to Portland, Oregon from LA. The relief is overwhelming. If I got any more jaded, I would have turned green. I do appreciate the friends I met there and whom I miss dearly...and the time I spent there pursuing my dream of becoming an artist. I can't say I left Hollywood with broken dreams. It is more like leaving Hollywood with re-prioritized dreams. I worked hard and I wish I had had a little more time to explore it in the city of "industry" but opportunity is everywhere. It's all what you make of it. Maybe I will be less likely to get a magazine layout in a major magazine or with a celebrity now that I am no longer in LA but I leave LA with three things I didn't have when I got there: a career, a husband and a daughter. Not too shabby!
Since I have been on maternity leave, I realized that this is the first time in three years that I have not been enveloped in one project or another. The first time in a long time that I have had really nothing to do photography wise and I have had a lot of time to think. What do I want? Where do I see my career going? What are my dreams? Of course, I dream about growing old with my best friend, my husband and living out a long and happy life with him, watching our kids blossom into awesome adults and lead their own happy and healthy lives with their kids. I dream about doing what I love and not struggling and worrying anymore. I would love to make my living doing commercial and portrait work and doing my digital fine art. I'd love to shoot for magazines and have a space where I have a studio and a gallery. Something modest on a busy street with lots of foot traffic. Showing my own work, my husband's work, friend's work and artists from all over the world. Openings, photo shoots, bliss. And of course I dream about winning the Powerball. I mean $5 a week, we have to hit sooner or later...right? lol
Ahhh...think of it...just making a comfortable living, supporting myself and my family with my art and not having to struggle so damn hard anymore. My art. It sounds so weird to me still. I am an artist. It makes me a little giddy. I always thought of an artist as someone who can draw. Maybe I will post some of my prepubescent attempts at sketching. What the hey, maybe I will post that dragon-mermaid I drew while on acid when I was 14. So maybe I am a cliche...a struggling artist. The struggle comes from my ignorance. It is a frustrating ordeal when you discover what you want later in life and do not have the means or opportunity to educate yourself the conventional way. I am a mother of two. I don't have the luxury of internships, assisting, going to college for my BFA. Instead, I read everything I can on the subject, I push myself practicing until my work emulates the level of professionals. I have a long way to go. And maybe, in that perfect world where I was able to do all of the above, I would still be a struggling artist. Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna' get. That Forrest Gump was a smart ma-aaan.
Now, in this new place, something is happening to me. My interest in digital art has grown so intense that it is all I have been thinking about lately. And when I get focused on something, I am hyperfocused. My work is not where it needs to be. I need to learn. I need to practice. I can do better. But how...I look at the work of artists like Maggie Taylor and I swoon. Intense desire to create like that.
Spending late nights up with the baby, I keep myself awake while cradling her by perusing profiles and websites online, admiring the art of many. A pang of regret here, a surge of jealousy there, the longing for my talent to be matched to theirs. My work to be shown in galleries and limited edition prints coveted by legions of fans. Wondering how different my life would have been if I was able to go to college, learn photography and design and...intern for a big time photographer, learned the ropes, and where I would be if I had had those opportunities presented to me. If I had known when I was young what my calling was. If I had had the self confidence to propel me forward and not keep me dazed in a ten year haze working out my daddy issues. If, if, if...then the rhythmic breathing of my little 6 week old daughter snaps me out of chasing the mice in my head and I realize that while I may not be where I want to be career-wise, I would not trade my family for anything. So, onward we go...reevaluating...redefining...envisioning...empowering...doing. There is no reason why my art can't be as good as the artists I admire. I got this far on my own, I can keep climbing. So photography isn't all that I want to do anymore. I want to focus on fine art...I can do that. While it makes it a harder hill to climb, I am going to continue climbing it until I get there.
That being said, I need some motivation. I need to go back to what sparked the love for art in the first place. Women. I love photographing women. Erotic photography, if you please. How can you not love taking pictures of beautiful nude women? I honed my skills in this genre and I miss it so I decided to go ahead and accept an offer from SG to shoot for them here in Portland. While I was in LA, I was advised against shooting anything erotic in order to be taken seriously in the "industry". It's funny, I busted my ass to appeal to commercial clients in the "industry" and reworked my entire portfolio to give it a commercial look to attract commercial work. Well, truth be told, I did not get commissioned for any commercial work. I did a damn good job with presentation, eh? lol I get letters from people asking for jobs, intern positions and advice on how to break into the industry. Well, as flattering as that all is, those are all things I would really like to know too! When you find out, let me know!
I am going to start figuring out this marketing thing so I can land some commercial and portrait work. If anyone reading this godforsaken blog has any advice that would be useful here...it will come back to you tenfold! If you don't may you be get crabs from the next public toilet that you use.
Now, I gotta go...gotta get climbin' that hill...
XO
Rachel
**Edit** Due to the P.I.T.A. factor, agreement terms not turning out to be what I agreed to and ridiculously low buyout price for my work, I decided not to move forward with the SG gig. My time would be better spent marketing portrait clients than busting my ass fulltime for someone else's web site doing eight shoots a month when I could make the same amount on two portrait clients. Sometimes you have to believe in yourself and the quality of your work and not sell yourself short.
