I look in the mirror and I don't even know who I see anymore. It feels like I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out who that person is, but also a lot of time trying to drown out who I know that person to be.

I'm applying for grad school right now, in photography, but I've already applied in student affairs and social work. I got in to the schools I wanted both times, but turned them down because I decided to work on different things. They were both things I know I'd be good at and that I'd like to do, but I turned them down. Turned down student affairs because decided social work would be a more flexible degree for what I wanted to do (which meant it would give me the flexibility to do lots of things and not be forced to make a decision about what I would actually do). Turned down social work because decided wanted to pursue my passion in photography. Now I'm dragging my feet with applications for photography, maybe because I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. But what do I have to lose? And what happens if I get accepted to photography and suddenly turn it down because I've decided to do something else? That'd be fucked up in a "flush life down the toilet" kind of way. I don't think I'd do that... I'm more worried that I'll get all locked up about applying that I won't actually get any good applications in and I'll have no options. Maybe the whole procrastinator thing where if I don't try, then I won't have something to fail at, and if I do fail, then I can blame that fact that I waited until the last minute and had a lot going on and blah blah blah?

Until recently I was going to apply to both social work and photography and then decide which to do. Now I'm only applying to photography because it's what I really really want to do. But I'm so terrified that I'll keep going down that path and either not be good enough, or be good enough but not be able to leverage it into an actual career. What if I spend all this time working toward this, and then it just doesn't go anywhere?

I think I've noticed something in me that I've noticed in a lot of other people. The belief deep down that we're amazing and talented, and feel that we should do great things with our life... while at the same time being terrified that we won't achieve greatness, so we sit and worry and get neurotic, and in the process we don't do shit with our time because we're too afraid to channel our talent into working 110% at getting to the point where we can convince the world that we're destined for greatness. If we just got over it and realized that 99% of humanity does ok with their lives without being a superstar, maybe we'd spend our time doing something rather than having a mentality where it's either all or nothing. Superstar or nothing.... but there's a lot in between the two extremes.

I've talked about it with my roommate a lot, and also I think indirectly with my two best friends M & C, and with others, about how when we're young we feel like we're so full of potential and we have so many options, and then as we get older those options seem to dwindle, but we still feel like we have this well of potential, and it can be frustrating when we don't feel like we're living up to that potential.

I think a lot of us are very talented but we don't always have the self marketing skills to do something with that talent and have our talent recognized. Because talent that doesn't get out of our brain really won't take us anywhere.

I'm sitting here with way too much caffeine in my system, unable to sleep, while my beautiful girlfriend sleeps in my bed, and I won't let her know most of the things that are bothering me. I need to be getting all my application stuff done for grad school, but I'm afraid to talk to her about it because going to grad school means eventually leaving Texas and I have no idea what that means for our relationship. We have strong feelings for each other that we rarely discuss because we don't know what effect it will have on the other. She tries to bring it up occasionally, and I avoid it because committing to feelings about a person scares the shit out of me right now. I'm too afraid to even think about and even figure out how I feel about her, because I'm afraid I'll hurt her someday no matter how I feel.

And when went home for Christmas and New Years, felt like I barely opened up for my family, even though it's something I've been working on. Lots of opportunities, and even had lots of conversations in my head with them, but never opened my mouth. I've been so shut off from everyone lately. I'm being torn up inside, and I've been around the people who I can talk to the most (sister, mom, family, my best friend C, my girlfriend A, etc), but I just keep my mouth shut and think about it in my head, even though that gets me nowhere without bouncing it off others. Plus just opening myself up to find out what's going on with them... something I've neglected.

Damn, too much going on in my head to feel like I'm making any sense here. I feel like I'm squishing 4 or 5 different topics together and not figuring out the details of any of them. Should just try to sleep again, but I know there's too much in my head to do that. And too much caffeine. Could try to stay up and work on stuff, but don't want to wake A up. Could take a Tylenol PM and see if that'll put me to sleep, but don't know if that'll mix well with all that alcohol I had earlier (and the beer I'm working on now). I just know that I need to do something about it all and stop just wining in my own head and turning myself into a victim of myself.

Two pix I uploaded recently. I have thousands of images from the last few years that I haven't edited and done anything with. I spend all my time concentrating on my "art" stuff, when I have tons of other stuff I'm ignoring in my hard drive.

First one is from a workshop last year with Scott Church (look him up, he's awesome), and the other one is of my roommate when we were just messing around in the studio: