I originally wrote the post that follows last year when I was tinkering with blogging. I grew frustrated with and overwhelmed by not knowing enough about the technology side of things and made that blog defunct when this photography site offered blogging as an option. I don't have to know stuff to write and publish here (smile), for which I am ever so grateful. Being in the middle is a numinous place to be for sure!
Adventures Await
Beginning in the middle
In this stage of my life, I don't often follow the unwritten rules, or even the stated guidelines, of any given societal expectations. So, let me begin in the numinous middle, against all of what any of my English teachers ever told me. From there, I can choose to go back in time or forward into the unknown. Either way, adventures await the both of us ...
Compliments Offered
Photos of nothing
I have a friend who has several chickens. When she and her husband go on vacation, I get to chicken sit for them. I tell everyone that I'm going to "chicken farm" for the week. It is a mini-vacation for me. I stay in someone else's home and eat someone else's food. Cindy spoils me to no end. I get homemade, delicious, dairy-free desserts and other dairy-free treats. Cindy is also the one who, after looking at my chicken farming photos, said something to the effect that I take the best photos of nothing. It was the best compliment!
I do take photos of nothing. It's my specialty. It's also my way to escape. That is how I process whatever is going on in my life. Taking photos allows me to be in the moment without regard to what just happened or what might occur. At no point in my earlier life would I have ever guessed that I would be here in the middle of my life. Oh how I have grown through the sights I have seen, the decisions I have made, and the words I have studied.
Calm Abiding
Big words
During the past 8 years, I volunteered in South Africa, flew to Thailand with a friend and her family, and participated in a Philippines awareness trip. I have often made the "right" decisions, but I also have made many "mistakes" that have brought me to the space where I am today - in calm abiding.
Big words grab my attention: ubiquitous, deleterious, obsequious, prosody and, of course, numinous, just to name a few. I have read voraciously and continue to read, just not as much as I used to. If you have any doubts about my loving to read, look in my high school senior yearbook. One page near the end of the book asks "Where Will We Be in Five Years?" They answered that I would be the "only person to have read 1,347,956,208 books by the age of 28." Someone certainly had a sense of humor and also couldn't add, but I did read a whole bunch.
Edges Coming
Living in plain sight
I spent my early years living inside my head for multiple reasons. That is not what I am doing now in what could perhaps be called my numinous middle years.
I've lived in the middle nearly my whole life. My middle name is Jane, as in plain. I have been the neglected middle child since I was 3. I worked hard at staying hidden in the middle of whatever was going on. Not wanting to be in the wrong lane and not wanting to take the wrong turn, I stayed in the middle of the road. While I did begin my life in the numinous middle, the middle isn't for me any more.
I'm stepping up to the edge and taking the lead. I'm saying "yes" to adventures, I'm facing so many of my fears, and I'm embracing this "me" who doesn't now mind if you see her or not.
Sending you wishes for you to see what you need to see and for others to see you, too,
Angela Jane
