Exposure Vs. Privacy

My biggest fear as a very private person is exposure, hanging out in the wind by my toes.

My biggest fear as an artist is being invisible.

Naturally, the two things clash quite frequently, and as I push myself as an artist, my lifes' me-only comfort zones get demolished in favor of new expectations of myself.  I push my art: my anonymity slips away.

So it's tough for me every time I take a further step out my doorway. But I must because I know without a doubt that it's the danger and the challenge that makes me grow.


All this is a really dramatic way of telling you all that I've entered the Cloth, Paper, Scissors Artisan Search 2012 contest.


It should be nothing, taking photos of my work and sending them off to be evaluated- I've done it before, and of course I do it here, in this blog. I should be used to it by now. But halfway through the process of putting my packet together, I freaked out a little. Quietly. Panicking.


I slipped out of the house and without even changing clothes, I plunged into the pool in the back yard. I floated around, my hands over my head, my face almost in the water, thinking, "I can expose myself! No, I can't! I can expose myself! No, I can't! I am so afraid to expose myself but I can, dammit, I can!!"


It took nearly an hour of this nonsense, floating and worrying and floating and talking to myself, before I unlatched my fingernails from the proverbial ceiling and climbed down to earth, again.


I can. And I will.


What part of you will you expose, today?