Strike One

Babe Ruth once said "Never let the fear of striking out get in your way." 



Great advice to hear.  Hard for some to swallow. 

I often look back and think, "Where might I be if I rethought every decision I've made that was motivated by fear?"  Then I look around and wonder how many decisions I'm still making that are motivated by a lack of self-confidence, fear, doubt or simply because some new and interesting things fall outside of that powerful invisible circle around me called the Comfort Zone.  That zone has amassed quite a collection over the years, like a big lint ball; boyfriends, jobs, clothes, hairstyles, habits.  I could have an Olympic logo of categories!

                                                   Some days I feel like I'm swinging at shoes too. 

These are shots from the City of Hope Celebrity Hope Softball Tournament at Greer Stadium in Nashville.  

                                                        Jake Owen, giving it his all.

                                                                   

Now here's a man willing to try something different.  Dierks Bently playing first base with a hockey stick.

Earlier this week while tweeting, I came across two different articles in the space of 3 minutes that addressed how fear fabricates our lives, affecting our choices of career, or lack of, the friends we choose, where we go, what aspirations we have.  That counterfeit feeling creeps up and envelopes us at every turn. Want to go jet skiing?  Oh, never done that?  Well, pack up your dishes and dolls and go home.  How about trying one of those trendy BYOB painting classes?  Afraid you'll manifest a matchstick man?  Sorry, can't play with you.  Lately I've been contemplating the theory that "Thoughts Become Things".  I suppose for a bit, I thought that was a load of New Age psycho babble, but the longer I've considered this, really THOUGHT about the whole idea of manifesting things by a power unseen, the more truth I can attribute to that very simple statement. I can see a lot of broad strokes that reflect this across my life.  I don't know why this seems like such a stretch.  I'm a woman of faith.  I believe in God.  I BELIEVE God.  This blog didn't exist a week ago.  I've considered starting a blog for over a year but didn't do it, for a myriad of self-doubting excuses. It won't be any good, there are enough people out there doing this, who will read it?  Well, the blogosphere is full of happily typing people who don't think twice about stuff like that. Now, I'm a photo-blogger.  Try saying that like photographer.


I had a  friend of mine recently tell me she didn't think she could do what she'd always wanted to do, modeling for print ads,  because she's a mom now and over 30.  This is a strikingly beautiful woman on many levels.  She maintains that her window of opportunity to create something interesting with her life has narrowed.  I told her she hadn't even gotten started yet!  Conversly, another friend of mine is a father to 10 grown children, a few dozen grand and great grand children, and just made it to Mount Everest's base camp last year.  So age notwithstanding, it really depends on you - if you make the choice to check out of your own life early and observe what's left with a wistful curiousity, or grab your gear and see where the path beckons.

Author Grant Von Harrison writes, "To a great extent, we accomplish what we think about.  Your thoughts, more than anything else, will be the determining factor in what you accomplish during your life."   So, let's distill it to the essence - If you think you CAN'T, your RIGHT!  If you think you CAN, you're RIGHT!  I'll ask my kids who they think they are and they'll tell me without hesitation, "I'm an artist!", "I'm a dancer!".  They think it, they do it, they say it and it is so.  It's that simple.  Think it. Say it. Do it, and make it so.    Enjoy the rush of something new.

Jake Owen's shoe on the pitcher's mound.  Sometimes you just gotta change the game.

Show & Tell

I live in Nashville, a cool town with a laid back, creative vibe.  A place where I've seen dreams actually come true and ideas materialize into reality.  Just as quickly, I've seen those same dreams and ideas vaporize for many.  What makes the difference?  Faith, talent, timing, planetary alignment...a combination of the Universal Hunger that makes some folks seek stardom and others content just being themselves, whoever that might be.  I moved here 19 years ago with a few dreams of my own; scratching out a life in Music City, starting a family, and becoming part of the fabric of one of the most comfortable and talked-about cities in the Southeast. That said, I am constantly amazed at the juxtapositions in my life.  From the mundane to the fantastic, often in the space of a few hours.  I'll be scooping the cat box, and then find myself here for instance, at the front of a great show, with 65,000 screaming country fans behind me as Lady Antebellum and Sugarland take the stage in 100 degree heat at LP Field in Nashville TN for a CMA Music Festival concert.  Fortunate?  Yes.  Do I take this stuff for granted?  No.

 I've always loved taking photos, and developed a keener interest in it a few years ago, when my husband gave me a nice Canon 35 mm point & shoot for Christmas.  Remember those kitschy 70's instamatics we used to have?  Sleek rectangular gray and black bodies (large by today's standards), with the big red square button off to the side and the bulbous flash perched on the top?  We thought we were pretty cool slinging those around by the wrist band on the last day of junior high, taking bad pictures of our first loves, favorite teachers and locker graffiti.  It's nice to know now that my awkward green and yellow tinged photos with the bad lighting were a sign of the times.  My smart phone even has an app that can make my pictures look just as "appealing" as they used to, the "retro look".  We'll play with that later, in another post.

Back in high school, when we were figuring out ourselves, what we wanted out of life, who we loved and that Love Hurt, what we thought and felt about everything from the Iranian Hostage Situation to Van Halen's first album, my mother liked to refer to my group of friends as the Motley Crew.  I was new to the mix of kids on the block, long before there were any boy bands of a similar name.  I was kind of shy, changing from a girl to a FOX, according to local teen here-say, and moving from pop to rock.  I get a bittersweet pang in my stomach when I think of those sweet growing-up days and my Motley Crew peeps. I like to think of it as an echo back to a simpler time that really wasn't so simple. We're still friends to this day, we still talk, text, raise kids and now celebrate births, deaths, the good, prickly and painful.  This past 4th of July weekend, I couldn't be with my Motley Crew -  this was as close as I was going to get to MOTLEY CRUE.

This blog is a creative outlet for me, an escape if you will, my way of telling stories with pictures.  Through this, you'll see glimpses of the ordinary and extraordinary, the mundane and artistic, the weird and the thought-provoking.  There are days we need a break from our own lives - an opportunity to refuel, to see the world through a different lens.  So, when you see a post from me, you'll know I'm in time-out, trying to fuel up.  Step into my shoes and kick off  yours for a bit.  I hope you enjoy your time with defriezframe.