Steppin Out of my Comfort Zone!

Someday I won’t get to share my craft with the youth in my community, today is NOT that day!

When my friend Myke, a counselor at Alki middle school, asked me to speak at his Career day I panicked.  I knew the right thing to do would be to accept, but I wasn’t sure that I had enough confidence to pull it off.  I love to talk, but am usually a wreck speaking in front of large groups and I didn’t feel that I had anything of value to share with these youth.  I decided that it would be counterintuitive to this journey that I’m on to decline, so I put on my big girls pants and accepted.  I put together a slide show of my work(set to Ed Sheeran’s perfectly suited song “photograph”), gathered material about careers available in the field of photography, brought my equipment for a demonstration, said a prayer for confidence and turned my worries over to God.  True to His word, God never leaves me hanging and I survived 🙂  I spoke to 4 classes of about 27 kids each.  The first session was a bit rough, but things started to improve as I began to relax (the wonderful teacher in charge graciously helped me out when I got stuck as well).  My hope would be that I inspired at least one student to give photography a try.  You can do so many things with photography, but my passion lies in discovering, bringing out and capturing the inner beauty of my subjects.  I’m grateful to Myke for his invitation and support that forced me out of my comfort zone.  He and the rest of the Alki staff have done a remarkable job creating, organizing and putting together this career day for their students; it was an honor to be a small part of it.  Margaret Mead said it well, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  Today was an accomplishment!