I brought cookbooks to work the other day. I had all these good intentions of spending my lunch hour planning out all these delicious meals I was going to start cooking. There visions of perfectly cooked Miso Cod dancing in my head. (No clue what that is btw…but it looked kind of tasty.) I was going to grocery shop after work, and be the picture of domesticity the rest of the evening, while my deliciousness cooked and I cleaned my apartment.

Instead, I ended up having a very funny conversation with some of my friends at work about how cookingly-challenged I am. Let’s put it this way…if it has more than 4 ingredients, or has an ingredient I have never heard of or can’t pronounce, or takes more than 30 mins (TOTAL) to make…I probably won’t try it. This is very sad, I know. I’ve been informed.

But the thing is, not only am I cookingly-challenged, I am directionally challenged. I can’t read a map or remember how to get places to save my life. And I figure cookbooks are basically like maps for cooking, so I’m double screwed. Cooking and directions all at the same time? Hahaha…yeahhhhh….not a good thing.

So, instead of meal planning, I laughed with co-workers. Instead of grocery shopping, I spent my drive home complaining to my mom about how much cooking annoys me (and probably made her motherly heart cry a little for her not-so-domestic daughter). Heck, what’s one more night of cereal for dinner?? I figure I’ll tackle the cleaning the apartment thing first, and then maybe I’ll venture into some new aisles of the grocery store and attempt to make something yummy sounding. I’ll keep you posted…the attempt at cooking could be a very interesting blog post…

These photos have zilch to do with what I keep rambling about, but I finally got around to editing some photos I took in St. Louis back in May and thought I’d share. I guess we could tie it all together by saying I took these photos on the way to and from a winery, where I ate delicious food, so really these are so totally relevant to the topic of this post.

Ok, let me begin this post by saying that it feels very weird to call myself an “artist.” I feel like that word should be reserved for painters, sculptors, people who are classically trained and produce works of art that should be in museums. But, I guess if you think about it…an artist is someone who takes their passion, their eye for beauty, and their desperation to capture feeling and emotion, and turns it into something interesting, beautiful, meaningful, or provoking.

I am not classically trained, and I can’t paint to save my life. But I feel deeply, I express myself in a medium called photography, and I hope that someone, somewhere finds something interesting, beautiful, meaningful, or provoking in my work. So therefore, I will tentatively call myself an “artist.”

So, as an “artist” (even after all that justifying, it still sounds weird), I swing back and forth between complete confidence and paralyzing insecurity. It’s funny…I think it takes both of those things to bring out my best work. If I was completely confident at all times,  I wouldn’t push myself, I wouldn’t keep learning, keep stretching my abilities. If I was too insecure at all times, I wouldn’t even pick up my camera for fear of failure. It takes equal parts of both to keep going, keep creating, keep putting myself out there, keep loving what I’m doing.

But some days, the insecurity creeps in. The discouraging words that hover in the back of my mind take hold in my heart.

…Everyone and their mom are starting a photography business these days. With digital cameras so accessible, it doesn’t rquire any real talent to pick up a camera and call yourself a photographer…or worse, an artist…

But then something usually happens on those days when the confidence slips and the insecurity threatens to pour in. Something reminds me that there are kind, encouraging people in this world, who believe in me and believe in what I do. Today, a friend’s words brought a tear to my eye and a smile to my face. A simple Facebook post from my lovely friend Erin of Photography by Erin reminded me why I do this. Because I love it. Because I’m passionate about it. Because I believe I’m good at it, and that it’s something I’m supposed to be doing with my life. Because it makes me happy.

And the thought that living my passion could encourage someone else to live theirs…well, that’s all the reassurance I need.