I can’t remember whether I mentioned it at the time, but way back in August some good friends of ours hired me to be one of three photographers shooting at their wedding.

I still remember how thrilled I was when they asked me—I had just recently purchased my fancy pants digital SLR camera, and I was beginning to discover more and more what joy photography brought me. This was my chance to prove myself.

The wedding was absolutely gorgeous—highly photogenic, and I enjoyed myself more than I ever expected to. I drove home that evening satisfied that I had captured some truly unique moments, and that the bride would love my photographs.

But here’s the catch. Because of our very casual agreement, the bride and I never set an expectation for when I would deliver her disc of edited photos to her. And because I am the busy, procrastinatory person that I am, the school year started and I still had not edited her pictures. Unacceptable, I know.

Well, I’m lucky that she’s so forgiving. But I hope the photos were worth the wait. Today, I delivered to her a slidehow of (in my opinion) the best photos from her wedding. (You can view that set here on Flickr) Her reaction as she watched it was absolutely priceless. I felt a warm fuzzy feeling watching her. I love the fact that my simple photos can remind her of one of the happiest days of her life—fantastic!

As it happens, this evening I met with another couple to discuss photographing their wedding. The bride is the daughter of some long-time family friends. Tonight, as I talked to her, her parents, and her fiancee, I caught some of that infectious excitement again. I really can’t wait for their wedding at the end of December. (And don’t worry; we already set a delivery date for the photos. )

I would be the first to admit that I am no kind of hotshot wedding photographer. I do not have the skill or the experience that the people who charge thousands of dollars do. Also, I think a walrus has more business sense than me.

But what I do have is an intense passion for capturing important moments in people’s lives in a beautiful, memorable way, an eye for detail and composition, and a growing technical skill. At the very least, I have promise. I have no idea what I will do with that promise, but… for the time being, I am loving every minute that I spend photographing people.

In addition to a number of habits, I seem to have picked up a set of accouterments for productivity this quarter:

Now, whenever I am studying or writing or doing basically any kind of work that has to do with paper, I feel incomplete without my lovely colored pens and my iPod and my reading glasses. Shallow, I know, but these items actually make me feel more like studying. I liken their effect to that an actor feels when he puts on a costume and becomes that character. I put in my earbuds and put on my glasses and I am studious.

Which, incidentally, is what I should get back to being right now. Cheers.

• Thinking
• Walking
• Talking
• Living out of my backpack
• Drinking coffee
• Wearing reading glasses
• Still periodically behaving like a five year old

And… heck! The quarter’s not even quite over. Who knows what might happen in the next two-ish weeks.

Who decided that it was a good idea for me to walk out of the house today wearing a bright purple sweater, a bright turquoise cardigan, and bright red shoes?

Whoever she is, I should fire her.

Also, the person who decided that it was a good idea to just fall asleep last night without first getting ready for bed and then was so rushed this morning that she left on the exact same pants—and MAKEUP—that she was wearing yesterday?

She should be fired too. For making me look and feel like a hobo. All day.

(P.S. I don’t think I should be allowed to write blog entries when I am tired and snarky. )

… Camel hair jackets smell like decomposing wookie carcasses when they get wet.

Okay, maybe that is not strictly true. Maybe it is only camel hair jackets purchased at “Value Village” in Springfield, Oregon that smell like decomposing wookie carcasses when they get wet.

You see, I have this really fantastic jacket. It is cute, it is warm, it is made of camel hair. But Oregon has this funny thing called “rain,” and camel hair, as it turns out, is not a fantastic rain repellent. Nor is it fantastic at not smelling foul.

But I am boycotting my puffy blue raincoat in favor of this camel hair coat anyway. Why? Because my raincoat is ugly and makes me depressed, and this coat is cute and it makes me happy.

I’m sure my friends will be willing to hold their noses for fashion’s sake.

(P.S.: Do you like how neatly I managed to reference wookies twice in one week? I may have to make this a tradition.)

Tonight Gutenberg held a meeting with some architects to discuss the possibilities for a hypothetical future campus. I say hypothetical, because the school does not currently have the resources to realize said campus, but they are recognizing the need to plan because the school is bursting at the seams.

We talked about lots of qualities that Gutenberg has that we would like to carry on and emphasize in any new facilities—a homeyness, a sense of togetherness and community, good nooks in which to study, a total absence of boring sterility… stuff like that.

We also suggested that it look like Hogwarts and have gun turrets.

If that doesn’t sum up Gutenberg and its student body, I don’t know what does.

I would like to think that I am a pretty great person.

I would like to imagine that people like me and that I am in many ways the pinnacle of God’s creation.

I don’t articulate that literally, of course… but, if I am to be brutally honest about it, that is the way I usually carry on my life.

But no matter how many right answers I give or how many smug, self-centered jokes I tell, I still manage to sometimes shove my foot so far down my throat that it is in danger of coming out my rear end.

It is then, in those moments of shocking clarity, when my balloon pops and comes plummeting back down to earth, that I realize I am just as capable of hurting other people as the people that I tend to judge as being hurtful. Turns out I’m really not so great after all—in fact, I am decidedly human.

And that is when I say, “God? Thanks, but… no thanks. I could use a little less ‘being humbled’ right now. It is seriously messing with my plans to be the awesomest person in existence.”

… Add that to the list of “prayers we don’t really want God to answer.”

My car has… a rather quirky sound system. Anyone who has ridden in it in the last two months can tell you this is true. Before this spring, when my CD player’s faceplate got stolen, it was perfectly normal. But after living the whole summer without any music at all, I installed a friend’s old tape deck right before the school year started, and that is when my stereo started to manifest some of its more unique qualities.

I still remember the first time I drove some of my new classmates in my car at the beginning of orientation week. I was all flustered and worried about impressing them with my impeccable taste in music (silly me ), so I plugged my iPod into the tape deck and put it on shuffle. The first song that came on was a Beatles hit—great, everybody liked that. This was going well!

One of the back speakers suddenly stopped working—”Oh well,” I thought, and I turned the volume up to compensate. That, of course, is when the speaker suddenly came back on and blew out the ear drums of the poor impressionable freshmen sitting in the back seat of my car. Then one of the side speakers went out. Then both the side speaker and the back speaker came on and went off and came on and went off until we reached our destination, and until my car’s audio system had been firmly established as a running joke.

So much for impressing them.

Since then, I have observed a few things about the behavior of my car’s stereo:

1. The speakers come on and off when jarred by something like a bump in the road. Or, like the door opening or closing. Or like me breathing. You know, reasonable stuff like that.
2. There is a sweet little spot on the dashboard directly above the temperature control panel that seems particularly receptive to such jarring impacts. If, for example, my speakers were to stop working and I were to level a blow with my hand, or my water bottle, or a nearby book at that exact spot, my speakers might magically begin working again! (Not that I would know from experience.)

I actually only discovered “the sweet spot” in the last couple of days. But now that you have that picture in mind, let me describe what this afternoon’s drive home from my friend’s house was like.

“Can’t buy me loooooo…”

bump.

WHACK.

“…oooooove! Everybody tells me so…”

bump.

WHACK.

“… Can’t buy me looooove! No no no, Nooooo…”

bump.

WHACK.

“…ooooooooooo!”

This was, quite literally, happening multiple times every minute. And as I ‘bump-WHACK’ed my way home, my hand was growing tired and the song was growing less enjoyable and I was growing irritable. And it was right about then, when I had reached the “pretty darn fed up with my speakers” stage, that I stopped at a stoplight—and my speakers went out. Again. I wound up, ready to slug that dashboard for all it was worth, when I happened to glance over to the car next to me.

Now, the nicely-dressed man sitting in the sports car next to me was not actually looking at me when I looked at him, but I swear I saw him glance away right when I turned my head.

And suddenly I realized what it must have been like to be driving next to this car for several miles, and to notice this crazy redheaded female inside striking her dashboard with her fist—Repeatedly. Over and over. (And possibly swearing at it as well.) That is probably about the time that you would think to yourself, “They should not have given that women permission to operate a moving vehicle.”

That thought was enough to make me slink a bit lower in my seat with blushing cheeks and not “adjust” my stereo anymore on the rest of the way home.

But the point remains, whether I am embarrassed about it or not, I need a more long-term solution for my speakers.

I’m thinking about purchasing a mallet.

So, you like me, right? And you like my pictures? Well, here’s your chance to help me out.

JPG Magazine is a really cool new photography magazine that to which photographers can submit their work—and they give out prizes to the photographers whose work ends up getting published!

This month, they have a theme called “Embrace the Blur” posted on the site. The prize for getting published in this particular theme is a free Lensbaby lens! Needless to say, I would really like to win that lens. I don’t know whether I have any chance, but I am trying anyway. I think this photo fits what they are looking for in this theme:

This is where you come in. I submitted my photo, but they decide what gets in based on votes from the website’s visitors. So, if you are willing, I would be thrilled to have your vote. Just click here, and you should be given the option to say “yeah,” or “nah, next time,” about my photo. You probably know which way I am hoping you vote.

Tonight I did something that I did not expect I would be brave enough to do. I opened up my journal.

I have always been a bit fickle about keeping a journal. I have a shelf full of half-empty diaries and notebooks starting from the time I was six that I simply stopped writing in for some reason or another.

But despite my inability to stick to one journal and finish it, writing in a book appeals to me. The sensation of pen stroking paper has always made me tingle with a happiness to which blogging cannot compare.

Anyway, this afternoon I bought some new pens, and I felt that I needed a good way to break them in, so I decided to bring out my latest journal and write a little—the old fashioned way.

The journal in question is one that I started in April of 2004. It is also a book that I have not touched since I broke up with Elijah earlier this year. I could give you a whole list of reasons for this—but I suppose it really breaks down to a combination of my native procrastination and the fact that I was terrified of what I would find inside.

But tonight I bit the bullet and looked through the entire journal. And a funny thing happened as I read through those entries that talked about my years with Elijah, through the good times and the bad—they didn’t hurt.

Instead of finding pain in the knowledge that things didn’t work out the way I hoped they would, I found lessons in every naive word I had committed to paper. I also found a certain peace about my relationship with Elijah. Not that I exactly was not at peace about it—I honestly have not been thinking about it much for quite a while—but reading through those journal entries resolved issues that I did not even know I had. Time truly does bring perspective—a fact that you cannot appreciate until that time has already passed.

A couple of entries leaped out at me as being particularly clear—and still helpful to me in my struggles today. So, although I am still debating the wisdom of posting such personal thoughts on the internet, I want to share two parts of entries with you because I think that some truth crept out of these words that might be beneficial to others, just like it was to me:

“Erin, this is more important than anything: keep your life in perspective. You are not made for this life; this is not the place in which to seek fulfillment. This life will fail you—its fleshly pleasure will fail you. You will fail yourself. Elijah may be your ally, your true friend—he may be a person that can boost you above the treacherous waters once in a while, but he is not your life preserver. You, he and your relationship are all subject to one person: God. God is the One to whom you must cling in stormy weather. He is the One on whom your life must be centered. Your relationship with Elijah is a wonderful gift—and hopefully you can help each other stay centered on the truly important Truths. But that is the key: you must stay centered on God and the Truth. The moment that Elijah becomes more important to you than God, you jeopardize your relationship and both of your salvations. So, Erin–please keep your life in perspective. Even if it changes what you thought you wanted, it will only make you stronger.”

From another entry, about three months later, some thoughts on death:

“Death is a hideous beast that creeps up on all of us. It is the elephant in the living room that everyone is so desperate to avoid noticing. … I take my youth and energy so much for granted—but the answer is not to become so grateful for them that I cling to them to save me. Each one of us must come to terms with mortality. It is not wrong to hate death; it is an ugly, soulless vacuum that taunts us. It is not wrong to hate it, because it is the embodiment of what is wrong with this world. It is not wrong to hate it—as long as we realize that it is not the end.

If I could have one truth tatooed in my brain so I could never forget it, it would be this: This world is not our home. IT IS NOT MY HOME. You see how clearly everything falls into place when illuminated by that truth? All of the sin, and grief, and pain and chaos, and despair, and heartache—all the silly priorities we set up for ourselves—all the times I’ve set myself before another person, when I should have helped them—all of it can be seen in heartbreaking perspective. God is in control. This is not our home.

Death is still difficult to accept. It is a hard pill to swallow for every human being on the face of the earth. But we must come to terms with it, not hide from it—because God is in control, and death is a necessary step in the journey to meet our creator.”

There you go. Two letters to myself, from myself, written about two years ago. I hope they give you some food for thought.