Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

-Henry David Thoreau

When we last met, I was pondering the fact that multitasking isn’t working for me. I’m tired and distracted and…apparently I can’t stop. I’m getting better, I guess, not doing 50 things at once. Only…maybe 20.

(Photo above: planning a photo shoot AND writing out the timeline of my memoir.)

October has been super busy. Today is my day off. This is me…not working. Right. That. But I DO have two days off scheduled at the beginning of November, and I really really REALLY will not work. Really. Anyway, as this is my day off, I’m blogging, finally. And hoping to write a little. And take another long Epsom salt bath. And vacuum the house. And cook some sort of dinner since this is the very first night I’ll be home since the 13th.

The day after I posted my last blog entry, my body turned on me. It does this often, perhaps its way of screaming ENOUGH! Not that I listen or anything. That would be silly.

It’s been run run run, go go go. With The Tiara Project all this month, I expected as much. What I didn’t expect (but should have) was that virtually nothing I had planned would go smoothly. From my health issues to my landlord letting me know last-minute the house was being inspected, my carefully laid out calendar has been scrambled. All the photo sessions I had so fastidiously scheduled to allow for time to work through at a decent pace piled up into one week – and of course that week was the week my right arm was being totally lame. Add to that the assault case from early August went to court this month and I’ve had to spend time on that (as well as emotional energy), and you’ve got me nodding and thinking, “It’s cute how I thought that would all work out exactly like I thought it would!”

Here’s the thing: I’m not complaining. I keep trying to slow down and I find I just seem to thrive on being busy and juggling. Last week, my amazing chiropractor (I’m claiming them as mine now. Deal with it!) mentioned something in passing that stayed with me. I chewed on it for hours and hours. “Ah, you are a classic Type A.” I thought, “Ah, you are so wrong!” But then I carried my happy butt home and looked it up. Hmmm…very interesting.

This multitasking thing I do? It seems to fit this personality. It’s how I am, how Type A people are. I texted my son. He said he believed the same, that I AM Type A. How did I not see it that way? I don’t know. I just haven’t. So I’ve been thinking on it, trying it on to see what it explains to me about myself. I’ve been on this journey of reclaiming myself, doing what I need to do for ME, not for others, and just trying to unearth who I really am. And I see this personality thing as another piece of the puzzle. Conclusions I’ve come to include why I feel the need to have a J.O.B. sometimes, even though business isn’t bad. Or why the subject of returning to school comes up so often for me, despite how I don’t REALLY want to go. It’s the competition, the ladder. It’s the ability to compete and achieve, and that doesn’t always present itself the same way in running my own business. A certain need…desire isn’t fulfilled because there isn’t a boss telling me I’m doing a great job, or a teacher giving me an A.

Whether this makes sense to you or not, it makes ALL kinds of sense to me. And understanding how I think and operate helps me to make the changes I want to make – or keep things the way they are because they aren’t broken.

Yesterday as I was driving to the final photo shoot in my week-long marathon of sessions, I was struck with a thought. I was pondering what I needed to do to really step it up and be noticed in the industry. How can I be … let’s be honest here … I was wondering how to be one of the popular photographers. How to have a popular site, to have people flocking to me, to be featured on industry sites, etc. Perhaps it’s the same line of thinking in how to build a platform for my writing, to be published, yadda yadda yadda. But what hit me was this: Why can’t I be happy just to be working in my field? Why isn’t it enough to have steady business, to have those who are interested contacting and hiring me? Why does it have to be about being THE BEST in a popular way?

Needless to say, it was a very “get your head out of the clouds” moment. But let me explain it better. I KNOW I need to be known at least a little to get the business I need to stay in business. I KNOW I have to be the best that I can be and continue growing. And I KNOW dreaming big is OK. What I also realized is that if my goal is to be “famous,” that’s the wrong goal. It’s not even who I am, but yet I fall to the idea of it so often, it drives me crazy. So I wonder if that is the Type A thing, my own way of competing, or if it’s just the human way, the desire to be seen and known and deemed worthy by the rest of the world.

This is a very interesting journey of self. Ultimately, who knows if I’ll ever know myself fully, but I’m getting there. And I like me so much more these days than ever before, taking all the good and the bad and discovering the whole me that I truly am.