Well, hello again

I feel a little bit like Brian Williams this morning, minus the rockin’ paycheck and coiffed hair. I just read a piece on him in Broadcasting and Cable, where he said , on his decision not to go on Twitter:

The details of my own life bore me, so I cannot imagine anyone expressing interest in them. My blog has so far proved to be enough of an outlet for me.

Uh-huh. I get this feeling/fear/worry that readers must be bored, even about my own blog, because what’s so great about the details of living? I’m sure everyone cares that the we need to mow the grass or that I have a recent obsession with edamame and chicken pot pies (not together, ew). The devil on my shoulder shouting, “No one cares! This stinks!” is deafening at times. It’s one of those things writers frequently think and struggle with, I suspect.

Still, TONS of things have been going on during the last few months. Important things. BIG things. Things like: my sister had a baby boy, I got pregnant, Pat and I started building a new house and my grandmother passed away. On the professional front, I’ve started co-managing an experimental networked journalism project for the Asheville Citizen-Times and became the home editor for WNC magazine. These are just a few things that have been going on. I also managed to spend a blissful week at the beach with Pat, started weekly cook-a-thons and read my weight in pregnancy materials and books. The past few months have been hectic and emotional and challenging, to say the very least.

I also managed to try my hand — for the first time — with pinhole photography. I’ve been meaning to share these with you for a while. I love the process of pinhole, trying to figure out the exposure times, what to shoot and highlight contrast, and even experimenting with camera housings (these were taken with round cookie tins). Here’s a photo of the back of a building on Haywood Street in West Asheville, just up the street from where I live now. I love the spiderweb effect the ladders leave behind. I think I stood around, waiting for the exposure to be just right, for about three or four minutes. It doesn’t sound long, but it is when you’re balancing a cookie tin on a fence post while trying not to look like you’re standing around waiting for your dealer to show up.

And here I am, all ghosty. I found an old box next to a store, balanced it on bug-encrusted boards, put the camera — again made out of a cookie tin, this time a smaller, taller one — and tried to sit still. I couldn’t for very long, which ended up giving my portrait that fuzzy look. Just in time for Halloween, right? And it’s a fitting image, really, considering I’ve been practicing my disappearing act here on roam and rove for a while. I promise to (try to, anyway) get in sharper focus here. *ahem*