Author: Ward

Today I met with Paul of VeloTransit about a travel back-pack (more on that later) while at INSCAPE.  In the course of our conversations he noted the Nikon D90 hanging around my neck and asked “Are you a photographer?”  I hesitated.  Am I?  I mean, I take photographs, certainly.  And I even have some semblance of an online gallery at Ward’s Pics.  But am I a photographer?  I hemmed and hawed.  I am not even sure exactly how I replied, but it was not in a simple affirmative or affirmative of any kind.  The response I wished I had given came to me, albeit too many seconds and too late in the flow of our continuing conversation for me to say: I am a photographer dabnabbit!

Flashback to mid-March this year when Tracy and I both joined AmazonTote; she as our user experience designer and I as the technical program manager (aka, technical gofer).  Tracy is not simply a 40-hour-a-week kind of career person; she intentionally moved from a position as a full-time designer at Microsoft to full-time contractor in order to pursue her first passion: art.  It is without exaggeration she has become not only a very near and dear friend, but also an enormous inspiration in my life.  In the past few weeks we have ventured into the art of Seattle together, she in some ways taking me under her wing.  I have had the pleasure of coming to see her art at COCA and also this past weekend at Gallery 40.  And as I met her many friends and acquaintances and constituents (did you know she is the self-effacing “mayor of Pioneer Square”), she would introduce me as “Ward; he is an artist.”   Hold on!  Me?  Scratch that, I am no artist.  No!  Artist?  No?  It had a way of seeping into me, this qualification on myself: artist.  I did art, sure.  But I was not an artist, right?  What constitutes being an artist?  Certainly I thought I might be one when I was younger but I turned away from all that when I decided to become an engineer.  Since high school when had my art been shown in an exhibit?  Nor have I ever received a commission.  So how do I qualify as an artist?  I do not, right?  Certainly it is no secret I love to sketch.  I have even dabbled with oils and acrylics.  I spent a year studying sumi-e.  I attempt to write poetry and aspire to one day write children’s literature.  And I may even consider my recent adventures into photography as more than mere technical machinations.  But as Tracy introduced me as “Ward, he is an artist” I came to question how I viewed myself.

Granted, like most folks in the world it is not unreasonable for me to claim I am many things. I am an American. I am Japanese, or at least a reasonable approximation of one when I get going. I am Canadian. I am male. I am heterosexual. I am 36. I am WonderBread white. I am a son. I am a brother. I am a divorcee twice over hoping I never go for the triple crown.  I am a friend.  I did not get into Japanese manga and anime until 12 years after learning Japanese. I am now reasonably fit. I was once morbidly obese. I have traveled a bit of the world. I have held more than a few jobs.  I like that I commute to work on a bus. I am an avid coffee drinker and cafe lounger. I am that guy in cowboy boots whose only experience riding a horse is at a family dude ranch outside of Yellowstone Park.  I am a dork.  I am the guy next door. I am a lot of things to a lot of different people.  But it was not till I met Tracy that I even ever thought I was an artist.  But why not?  I am an engineer, am I not?  But isn’t it the four degrees in engineering that make an engineer?  Well, sort of.  Maybe it is a consequence of lack of self-confidence that I spent much of my life pinning my identity on external validations such as degrees.  How much of myself did I try to cram into the tin box of a career, thinking that is how to discover form, solidify definition?  How many of my hobbies I have rediscovered in the last year that I have found more rewarding than my work will ever be?  And none of those required me to get a degree to qualify me to enjoy them.  None of things that I have a deep passion require me to get board certified.  I can do and do do them whenever I please.  And as I stood listening to Tracy introduce me to her friends, it dawned on me.  Who I am is what I do, and what I do is art.  I am me who takes photographs.  I am me who sketches.  I am me who is a photographer.  I am me who is an artist.

Thank you, Tracy.

Fear evolves.  What scared me as a child no longer scares me as an adult.  Well, that is not quite true but that is for a future post.  Every day, just as we shed our body’s cells, so do we our fears, just as we do grow new cells we discover new fears.  Frankly, my own fears fascinate me.  I find a part of them compelling, intriguing things to pull out from their box and put down on the floor to examine.  I find this process comforting even, a warm welcome reminder of my own frailty, my own humanity.  It is a good and healthy thing to be warm and cozy with my fears, to become acquainted on a first-name basis.  Then again, I do not have to do as I do, do I?  I can fear my fears, can’t I?  I can merely nod my head in their general direction, but never quite make eye contact with them, as I sip another drink lounging on my couch.  We share the intimacy of secrets with our family, but fears are just guests at just one more cocktail party.  How very 1950s—and boring, no?

Self-confidence (or self-esteem if you prefer, although I have yet to discover a distinction with a difference between the two), or its lack thereof, as a form of fear, is a very interesting and personal one.  Self-esteem issues are more than just the fear that we are not good enough.  We literally fear ourselves for who we are.  It causes us to do any number of spiteful, hurtful things all in a weary string of vain attempts to hide the fact that our failures—our unhappiness, our not feeling appreciated, our sense that the world is taking advantage of us—are all rooted in the simple fact that we are not able to accept ourselves for who we are (and are not).  We build up our defenses to keep out the hoarding heathens and then forcibly project from trebuchet our fears and subconscious anger of ourselves onto others.  We live in the shadow of self-denial, refusing to admit that we are angry with ourselves.  We are angry, yes; but, we are angry with anyone who exposes the weaknesses and faults we are embarrassed by.  At later stages this fear warps us into a kind of self-nominated, self-inducing victim.  We come to blame everyone but the person responsible and with the power to do anything about our condition.  We come to blame everyone but ourselves.  And lo and behold!  We become in all dear and precious actuality our very own victimizer, our very own jailer.  And I know.  This form of fear will lay low any city, no matter its grandeur, right to the granite foundations more quickly and permanently than any other fear.  It is a ruiner of lives, a destroyer of dreams, a humbler of the “mighty”.  And I know; it was mine.

In my past I used to be afraid that neither did I nor would I amount to anything, that I was not smart enough or strong enough or wise enough or talented enough or kind enough or frankly human enough.  I used to even think my ambition drove me; it did not.  It is overly simplistic but sufficient in this context to write that it was fear that drove me: I feared that if I rested for long enough I would reveal myself for the fraud I believed I was.  Because I feared my humanness, or more specifically because I did not have the courage to love myself—all of myself—I hurt and then lost the persons I loved most.  And now?  I fear dying alone.  It is not death itself that I fear, though.  I fear that I will die a life lived without love and loved ones.  I fear I will be alone at my death, no child or wife to hold my hand, to lay down head on shared shoulders and to permit ourselves to hold onto that one last moment in the afterglow of a life well-loved well-lived.  It is natural these fears.  Certainly loneliness and fear are cousins we need to accept to our table; nevertheless, we should never allow them to drive our decisions.  But how often have my own fears motivated me in my past?  I fear the answer is: too much.  And if that last bit did not make you laugh then I fear nothing will. SEMI-COLON CLOSING-PARENTHESES.

I feared, even came to believe, I was a fundamentally broken human being.  And I emphasized the way I did for a reason; I believed (nota bene my use of past tense) my condition was an inheritance of my birth.  Irrevocable.  Irreconcilable.  Permanent.  But of course, I am human.  Nothing is irrevocable.  Nor irreconcilable.  Nothing is permanent except change itself, trite as it may be to write that.  It may be possible to live without fear.  But I do not think it is a healthy thing to attempt.  Such a success only removes us from our ourselves, from our humanity.  We need to experience loneliness.  We need to experience fear.  It is a part of our shared human condition; a requisite, payment even, for being self-aware.