i used to be really insecure about my photography, and i still flinch inside when i call it “my photography.” i never learned how to take photos, and i only have my iphone, and i also never learned how to edit photos properly, tinkering around on photoshop and lightroom but never really figuring anything out. i use lightroom on my phone to adjust lighting and brighten things, maybe fiddle with the color balance if that’s off, and then i have one vsco filter i use for everything. the vsco filter makes me feel like a cheater.
maybe i am a cheater, but i’ve come around more to wondering why it matters. i’m not trying to be a professional photographer. i’m not trying to shoot events for people or content for brands, and i’m not trying to sell prints or anything. i am, however, trying to sell a cookbook, one that i intend to shoot myself, and that took years for me to work up to — i don’t know anything about lighting or how to stage food in a studio setting, but the deeper truth is that i don’t want to do any of that. i think we have enough perfectly styled cookbooks out there, and that’s great. i am in awe of what these cookbook teams turn out, but it doesn’t mean that that style or look or vision is something i need to aspire to or want for myself, especially when that isn’t an accurate visual representation of my cooking or my personal self.
occasionally, i get peevish about instagram and social media because it feels so one-sided and i wonder why i have this constant impulse to make myself knowable in as true of a way i can on a curated platform. i do recognize that a lot of it stems from loneliness — i’ve had few friends i’ve been able to lean on fully, which is not a judgment of them as it is a reflection of me and my fear of being hurt, and, in general, i got into the habit very young of using my online space, from xanga to livejournal to tumblr to my blog to instagram, to talk. it didn’t matter if someone was on the other side reading what i was saying; it (wherever “it” was at any given time) was at least a space where i could talk to an imaginary someone, the key being imaginary because i’ve also long kept the belief that no one actually reads what i write. even these words that i’m tapping out on my phone to post on this blog — i don’t believe anyone will hear me, but it gives me comfort at least to say something somewhere when i don’t have a physical someone to turn to.
is that sad? maybe, but maybe it also doesn’t matter. well into my thirties, i used to look around and marvel at how full people’s lives seemed. they have their partners, their families, their careers, and there i was, flailing, trying to “be a writer,” and going home to my empty, quiet apartment. even now, i haven’t fully shaken that, though i guess i’m already trying to do something about the career part by going to law school. i guess i am a writer because i have a book coming out next year. the silence, though — the silence just seems to be my lifelong companion.
my mom tells me that friends are great, but friends have their own families, and families will always take priority. i don’t think she’s necessarily right about that, but i also don’t think she’s very wrong. a partner, a child, maybe should take priority, but it leaves me often feeling a chump, someone who is always making herself available because she’s desperate for people to like her and will, thus, cling too much to the people in her life and turn them away. maybe that’s why i’ve become less and less comfortable being vulnerable directly with people — i don’t want to be a burden. i don’t want people’s pity over my sadness, especially when i know they’re also busy and have their own lives and burdens.
i don’t know, though — i used to think my loneliness marked me, but i think more people are lonelier than i thought they were, but some people don’t have the ability to say it loud. maybe that’s why i do, because at least i have the words and i have the lack of care for what strangers on the internet might think.
so, yeah, maybe that’s why i come online to share that i went to pavé today and ate my favorite jambon beurre, that i have a pavlovian response to the word “burrito,” that all i want to read right now is translated literature from korea and japan because they are both free from whiteness (even as americanness culturally has been built into them since the post-war) (i do want to write more about this later). i had to pull out my hair dryer because the price stickers kinokuniya uses are too sticky and would not pull off cleanly. i miss my dog (i always miss my dog), and it’s too hot and humid, and i feel sluggish and slow and stupid. summer is the worst season for me because the weather makes me hyper-aware that i exist in a body, and that’s made worse this year because of the medication i’m on, so i’ve been sliding down this depressive episode i can’t seem to pull myself up from. i deactivated my instagram yesterday, and i assume i’ll go back next week before i go down to virginia for a booksellers conference, and it feels nice to be unplugged for now, though i miss scrolling my explore page everyday for yoongi content. i miss yoongi.
