This is all happening right now. There’s an annual photography event tonight. People are dressed up and drinking martinis and eating cheese off sticks. It’s a silent auction. Perhaps there are persons who never really thought they’d sell anything, selling something.

I thought about going. I almost went. I didn’t go. I didn’t go for lots of reasons. I didn’t go because of my exile project. I didn’t go because it seems to me a large group of people dressed up and being social would have been an overly ambitious reintroduction to society. I didn’t go because one of three things happens when I go to photography gallery exhibits: I am jealous of other people’s talents, I am jealous of other people’s gear, I am jealous that people who are doing what I can do or perhaps what I have done are actually doing it, not just at home thinking about doing it, wishing they were doing it but not quite doing it. I didn’t go because I’m crap at marketing at public relations at schmoozing. I wanted to go to see what other people were doing. I wanted to go to see what sells. A silent auction is perfect for grading what sells. I wanted to go to make some connections, to be inspired.

But I didn’t go. I didn’t go because I’m a chicken shit who might rather think that he could do it and just that he hasn’t then try, try at last, try my hardest, risk it, and find out I can’t.

Maybe I don’t want to know if I’m good enough. But of course, besides good enough, there is also courageous enough.

And if it’s true that I suffer my own over-potential and under-kinetics, and if it’s true that I’m too chicken to put myself out there, something has to break.

I’m just so disappointed in myself right now that hopefully the next time opportunity comes I will get off my ass, get out of my secret cave, and put it on the line. Or maybe even, rather than wait for opportunity, make opportunity.

SS