The deaf speaker, presenting to an audience of people who knew ASL pretty well but not fluently, fingerspelled a number I wasn’t entirely sure of. I thought I got it, but wasn’t 100% confident in my perception. I didn’t have a team interpreter to support me in voicing. Someone in the audience said the thing I wasn’t sure of, and it turned out I was right. Yet, after they did that bit of work for me, I asked the presenter to reiterate the lexical item. I was doing consecutive interpreting, and while I was watching the deaf signer, yet another audience member said the thing I wasn’t sure of. I said, “Just a moment. I’m getting this.” And then I said the thing we all thought the deaf person said, only this time I was sure of my interpretation. The dialogue between me and the audience members was quiet, and it didn’t seem to be a big deal for anyone, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it after the assignment.

Why did I do what I did? Was it the most appropriate and effective behavior? What could I have done differently? Why didn’t I just let it go when the audience member guessed rightly? And, even if they had guessed wrongly, would it have mattered? These are the questions that nagged me this morning.

I think I did what I did for several reasons I’m not necessarily proud of.

1. I didn’t trust myself.
2. I overestimated the importance of the little thing I missed.
3. I wanted to control my work.
4. I didn’t want to set an unfavorable precedent.

Notice I said, “not necessarily proud of.” That is not to say that it’s never okay to do these things. It is just to say that, in this case, I don’t think any of those “intrapersonal demands” in Demand-Control Schema (Karasek, 1979; Karasek & Theorell, 1990; Dean & Pollard, 2001) were well founded. First of all, I need to get better at trusting myself when I’m 90% sure I’m right; second, I need to get better at realizing when something’s just not that important; third, control is an illusion (or so they say); fourth, and the point of this post, is what is so wrong with letting consumers doing our work for us once in a while?

Could two different members of the audience both be wrong about something I’m 90% sure I’m right about? Unlikely. As far as precedent is concerned, there may be times we want our consumers to let us do our job because we are the interpreter in the room; they are not. It is sometimes not a good thing to have more than one person interpreting at once. And it is not a good thing if the “peanut gallery” gets the interpretation wrong. But we have to look at each case individually and not be rigid. In this case, I don’t think it would have done any harm at all to allow what happened to happen and let it go. It would have modeled good interpreter behavior, acknowledged them for their linguistic ability, and let the speaker go on unimpeded. If I had it to do over, my “control” in Demand-Control Schema would be either to say nothing or say something funny like, “what she said!” Next time, next time…

Incidentally, after I analyzed this interpreting scenario this morning, I read this today in a book by one of the world’s foremost experts on interpreting:

It should be noted that in interpreting, unlike translation, all parties concerned are aware of the communication situation, including possible difficulties associated with the interlingual and sometimes intercultural transfer. Since generally all parties wish to communicate, more cooperation can be expected from them than in translation…. Cooperation may also be forthcoming from listeners, especially in consecutive, where they can help the interpreter with word equivalents and generally listen sympathetically, though this is not always the case. In other words, although the interpreter essentially works alone, he or she may be helped through on-line interaction with both Sender and Receiver, while in translation such interaction is rather rare (Gile, 1995, emphasis mine).

It was so great to read something this afternoon that reinforces the reflections I had this morning! We interpreters should always strive to do our best. One way we can do our best is to be humble enough to let our consumers do our work for us sometimes.

Resources

Dean, R. K. & Pollard, R. Q (2001). The application of demand-control theory to sign language interpreting: Implications for stress and interpreter training. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 6 (1), 1-14.

Gile, D. (1995). Basic concepts and models for interpreter and translator training (p.24). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

… the deaf community (and by that I mean, the deaf, not the interpreters, etc because I believe its ridiculous that a party who benefits heavily from the community be considered a part of it)…

First, let’s dispense with the fallacy that a party who benefits heavily from a community should not be considered a part of it. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker are members of their community even though they prosper by selling their wares to other community members. A Rabbi is a member of her Jewish community even though she benefits from their synagogue dues. But the interpreter requestor has a point: why are people who are not deaf considered a part of a community of those who are?

The short answer is that hearing people are members of the deaf community when deaf people say they are. We interpreters do not presume to be members of the deaf community, but deaf people invite us to be, and we are proud to be. The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker are not members of the bovine, flour, or iron communities because inanimate materials do not form communities as people do. Deaf people, on the other hand, are people, and their language is inseparable from them. An interpreter must, therefore, enter the deaf community in order to possess an intimate knowledge of their language and culture; otherwise, they cannot be bilingual. And more important, they will not be trusted by deaf people who rightly view hearing people as potential threats to their way of life.

When I went to the Conference of Interpreter Trainers in San Antonio last October, I attended two presentations that spoke to the issues of interpreter identity and community membership, by Robert G. Lee and Arlene Gunderson, respectively. Allow me to share some insights I gleaned from them.

Lee, in his presentation “Across the Pond But on Familiar Turf: Sign Language Interpreters and the Nature of Identity,” emphasized that our identity as interpreters is granted to us by deaf people. Also the interpreter identity is a lasting one that persists even while we’re not interpreting or even, in Lee’s case, if we’re in a deaf community abroad. Lee shared three powerful statements by Richard Jenkins about identity: “Individual identity – embodied in selfhood – is not meaningful in isolation from the social world of other people” (Jenkins, p. 20), “…what people think about us is no less important than what we think about ourselves…” (Jenkins, p. 20), and “Social Identity is never unilateral” (Jenkins, p. 21). [Lee's Reference: Jenkins, R. (1996) Social Identity. London, Routledge.] In other words, it is deaf people who say whether or not interpreters are members of the deaf community. I don’t brag that I’m a member of the deaf community, but I gladly accept the membership deaf people give me and I accept the responsibility of the interpreter identity.

Gunderson, in her presentation “Understanding & Teaching Avenues & Membership into the Deaf Community – Past & Present,” stressed the importance of ensuring that all interpreters have a strong understanding of both cultural and medical views of deafness both past & present. She talked about the Four Avenues to Membership in the Deaf Community— audiological, political, linguistic, and social. This model was constructed by Dennis Cokely and Charlotte Baker–Shenk in American Sign Language: a teacher’s resource text on curriculum, methods…. Deaf members of the deaf community may grant hearing people membership as long as those hearing people have the right attitude. Obviously, audiological is not an avenue for hearing membership into the deaf community, but political, linguistic, and social are. Also, Carol Padden wrote in 1980 that “a deaf community may include people who are not themselves deaf but actively support the goals of the community, and work with deaf people to achieve them” (Padden, C. in Gregory, S., Deconstructing Deafness). Interpreters do actively support the goals of the deaf community and work with deaf people to achieve them. Interpreters do have political, linguistic, and social avenues to the deaf community. That is why deaf people consider interpreters to be members of the deaf community.

Frankly, I’m amazed that in 2011, the best we have to offer the deaf is ASL interpreters. With all that technology has to offer, I’d be upset we didn’t have better systems than one that relies on expensive human interaction.

Far be it from human interaction to take the place of all that technology has to offer! Seriously, though, this statement is also addressed by language and community. For many deaf people, sign language is the best form of communication the world has to offer. The visual–gestural mode of communication suits their abilities, and sign language is much more than a mode; it is a language, and entwined in every language—be it ASL, French, or Swahili—is culture. History. Identity. Deaf people give us sign language so that we can give it back to them. It is what they want. Of course there are deaf people who prefer realtime captioning, but that is just as expensive as interpreting. Anyone who thinks technology trumps human interaction should never have anything to do with a conference, since a conference is all about human interaction.

And, yes, human interaction is expensive. Not to brag, but to demonstrate the commitment to professional growth that I and other professional interpreters have, it was very expensive for me to attend the Conference of Interpreter Trainers. Registration was about $400 for four days, and four nights’ stay at the St. Anthony Hotel was about the same (half of what it cost to stay at the conference hotel, the Omni La Mansion del Rio). In addition to this $800, there was the airfare of about $300. Add to that a week’s worth of lost wages, and you get a grand total of about $2500. If an interpreter is willing to spend that much time and money on human interaction for the sake of professional development—that is, to be a better servant to the deaf community—then perhaps conference organizers and others who request our services should respect what we are worth.

[Comparing deaf people to other groups is an] unfair comparison to other special rights groups. Those groups, say, based on color or religion or sexual preference are asking for equal rights, not special rights. That’s not what [the deaf attendees] were asking for.

Oh. I must have heard wrong when people were saying that gays were demanding special rights. Hm. Ahem… Be that as it may, even if deaf people are asking for special rights, that doesn’t make them wrong. Hearing people don’t need to demand special rights (because they already have them). For deaf people, access to communication in the hearing world is a special right— a right granted them by the American people when our government passed the ADA— and given them by generous people even when the ADA doesn’t require them to.

If anyone reading this blog post thinks it is an inadequate representation of the issues, that’s because it is. Interpreters spend years learning the medical and cultural views of deafness, the intricacies of sign language, and new trends in the deaf world and the profession of interpreting. I have been interpreting for over twenty years and I am still learning. There are many times I feel inadequate, and sometimes, for certain assignments, I am. Any professional interpreter will admit the same. We interpreters who are certified by the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) know that we are never done learning. We complete 80 hours of continual education every four years. Our field is constantly changing as the language and culture of deaf people is ever changing. Many articles, dissertations, and books have been written on sign language, deaf culture, and interpreting. I cannot hope to comprise it all here.

If I still feel I have so much to learn this many years into my career, I can only imagine how baffling it must be for hearing requestors of sign language interpreting services for the deaf. I am happy to do what I can to educate people. I only ask that they admit how little they know.

Are you a hearing requestor of sign language interpreting services who has learned things about deaf people and interpreters that you never knew you didn’t know? Are you a deaf person or an interpreter who has learned that there are things you never knew hearing people didn’t know? I would love to hear from people who have had positive experiences working with deaf people and interpreters to provide equal access.

Sometimes I want to talk with people in person about how we talk with people on the Internet. I know I can get very “meta”– I mean, look at my website, where I sometimes blog about blogging—but I think it’s very important that we take some time to talk about how we’re talking. When I say “blogging” and “talking” I’m talking about any kind of media that you share with people on the Internet. Whatever you put out there, you are in effect “talking” to people. When you write comments, fave or “Like” something, rate something, etc., you’re talking to people. You produce and consume enough of these social media (photos, videos, stories, updates, links, comments, etc.), and you’re talking with people. But you’re not talking with them in real life, and you’re not even talking with them in real time. The communication is abstracted and asynchronous.

This evening, I went out with my husband Andy to a local brewery for something called #evfn, or East Valley Friday Night. As the description says, “Some folks calls it a tweetup. I calls it an #evfn. Remember the agenda: no agenda. Have fun. Meet people. Party on!” I’ve been to several of these, well, I calls ‘em Tweetups, and sometimes they can get pretty meta about social media. How do we share updates? Photos? Videos? Personal stuff? Work stuff? What kinds of relationships are made, bettered, or broken online? How do we bring those online relationships offline and vice versa? I love talking about that kind of stuff. In fact, no matter what I’m doing at the moment, I have an intense need to talk about it with others who are doing the same thing and are willing to talk it all out.

“Remember the agenda: no agenda.” I can accept that. I know that some of these people work in social media and Internet industries, so they might be tired of talking about their work. I understand that. People need loosely structured milieux where they can just relax, mingle, and–in the words of Auntie Mame–”Circulate, Patrick, circulate.” And sometimes, sometimes, to “circulate” is just what I want to do. But other times I want a rap group– a structured, moderated discussion. That’s what I wanted tonight.

I did get a bit of what I wanted. When I first got there, we sat around a table and talked about various things including employment, health care, spousal benefits, and how unfair it is that I have to pay a “Domestic Partnership Offset Tax” to keep Andy on my health care plan. We all talked for a while at that one table, and somehow the conversation got around to social media, though I don’t remember whether I steered it in that direction or not. People talked a bit about whether they feed their updates to Facebook from Twitter, whether they share personal updates on Facebook or keep it acceptable for business associates, whether to have a separate Twitter account for protected tweets, etc.

Then I brought up my dilemma about the photo I asked the waiter to take of us (shown above). I said, “Nowadays I could post every bit of media I create to so many channels that I sit there with something for a few minutes thinking, ‘should I post it to my Facebook personal profile, my Facebook Page, Flickr, Twitpic…??’” One person gave an answer in the form of, “This is what you do…” and I felt like it was a move to lay the question to rest. Then more people showed up and the conversation got dropped. I tried to pick it up again and the person who had answered before gave me a card and wrote on it “Read [with three underlines] convinceandconvert.com Jay Baer.” That was the end of the conversation. I felt shut down. I really can’t complain, though. I was probably “holding them hostage” on a topic they no longer wanted to talk about. I was probably the one who was out of order, trying to create an agenda when there was no agenda.

I get that people want the freedom to talk about whatever they want to talk about with whoever they want to talk about it with. I have no problem with it. What I do have a problem with is that I read and read and read but I don’t get a chance talk and talk and talk.

I need a forum for discussion– a structured, moderated, real life, real time conversation about social media. I need to listen to people’s personal experiences with social media and I need to talk about mine. I don’t want the conversation to be about how to “drive traffic” and “target markets” and “strengthen your brand.” I just want to sit around with people who create and share a lot of stuff on the Internet not because they want to make money but just because they want to share. The question for me is: how do we share things with other people. I don’t think that reading another article or attending a social media lecture or listening to a panel discussion is going to satisfy me. I want a rap group with an agenda. Anybody know of one?

[P.S. I spent two hours working on this post last night until my husband literally whined (it's our thing, we mimic our dogs) for me to come to bed at 11. I thought I clicked "Publish" but I actually clicked "Save Draft" which is just as well because I lay in bed worried about what I had written and whether it would hurt anyone's feelings or hurt my standing with the group. I just kept replaying the post over and over in my head while Adam Young's voice singing Alaska played over and over in my head. Tormented, I am. This morning, I woke up early and could not get back to sleep. Again with the blog post and song tormenting me. So I got up to look at this blog post and realized I hadn't published it. Great! Gives me more time to make it right. Now I'm sitting here on the sofa with my laptop over my legs and our dog Buxley swatting my arm with his paw to get my attention. And now it's an hour-and-a-half later and I think I might just be ready to publish this thing whether it's perfect or not and whether or not it ruffles any feathers.]

As I was saying, anybody know of a real life, real time rap group about social media? What ways do you find to have meaningful and satisfying conversations with people who are doing what you are doing and learning to do it well? Can you give me an example of how one of these conversations changed you and made your life easier?

One more thing I must share about NAOBI— something that moved me and touched my heart. Now, I know it sounds funny to talk about “black people” and point out the differences between their culture and mine— black people’s and white people’s. It seems “politically correct” to be hush-hush about the differences between black people and white people, but I want to tell you some positive things about what’s different about black culture! And this is so neat. It seems — now, I interpreted for a full week last year at the NBDA (National Black Deaf Advocates, a deaf association) conference, and at the end of the week, we danced!— It seems to me that black people cannot get together and not dance. It seems that every conference I’ve been to — and that’s only two, but still — in my experience, when black people gather for a conference, they’ve got to dance together. And it’s so much fun! They had a DJ playing music loud, and everyone danced together— deaf people, interpreters, everyone. And they line up facing each other while people dance down the aisle, you know, like Soul Train. That’s where everyone lines up in two lines facing each other, forming an aisle, and as people move up to the front of the line, they dance down the aisle and do their own thing, show their personality, express what they’re feeling. Everyone on the sidelines cheers them on, goads them on, and roots for them. You strut down that aisle, you dance, you swing, you move your body, and you do your thing, you express yourself. Oh, it’s fun! And people are fiercely supportive.

One thing I noticed at both NBDA and NAOBI is that they do a lot of line dances and “slides”— you know, like The Electric Slide. Maybe you know that dance, maybe not, but anyway, I noticed a lot of that at both conferences. And not just once, but several times each night. It’s like a form of communal bonding. Loads of fun. And I used to do a lot of country-western line dancing, and I was a pro at it, but that was a long time ago, so I’m rusty. But the black people there helped me, guided me along, and showed me what to do. This one woman dancing next to me in the line saw that I was missing steps and didn’t know which direction to go it, so she put her hands around my waist and gently pushed and pulled me forward and back, took me by the arm and gently pushed and pulled me from side to side. And all the while she was so full of friendship and hospitality. It was like she wanted to include me in her family.

Gah! I get so verklempt every time I think about it. I get all choked up and tears come to my eyes. Because during one of the other songs, everyone stood around in a big circle and danced to “We Are Family”— you know the song, “We are family / I got all my sisters with me”? I’ve been to other conventions where that song was played, but I’ve never felt it so deeply, so truly, as when I was at NAOBI. Deaf and hearing people alike were signing the song together in that circle, and as I gazed around that circle of people — and I know it sounds cliché — I felt the love, I felt the sense of family, I felt the interconnectedness. And even though I’m white, I felt like I was included in that family, that I was helped, led, guided, and beckoned to join that family. That — whew! (tears) — that was a great experience. I felt honored that those people welcomed me into their world.

Now, I know that we’re both human. I know that we’re all part of the human race. I am aware of that. But the truth is also that black people have their ways and white people have their ways. They have different cultures, different skin colors, and different historical backgrounds. And that’s important to recognize. We can discuss race; we can discuss our differences. But likewise we can acknowledge our similarities and what we have in common. And the way they welcomed me, I felt like one of them. I felt like an “honorary black person” that night at the dance.

In fact, it’s funny. I grew up with black people at school, thanks to SCPA, the School of Creative & Performing Arts. That experience — because it was an integrated school (voluntary integration) — that school taught me a lot about singing, acting, and dancing, but it also taught me about respecting the diversity of cultures, races, ethnicities, instilled in me a sense of cooperation and collaboration. When we put on a show at that school, the directors who auditioned the players cast them regardless of skin color. And when two people were cast as a married couple, one could be black and the other white, and their kids could be Chinese or Mexican. They could be any color or ethnicity— white, hispanic (and I know there are white hispanics). But that schooling was really, well, a lot of fun. And it taught me a lot, not just about the acting profession, but about dance, and fun, and jazz.

And, to be honest with you, as a gay person, I’ve been around black gay men and black women, and I’ve seen and studied their ways, their mannerisms, their slang, their dance moves and so on. And what was really funny was there was this one white girl who was doing this — it’s funny, I’ll show you at the risk of embarrassing myself — this “back it on up” dance move. So, okay, I can play with that! So I showed her a move I learned from a black gay man, like this— uh, uh, uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh “shake your booty like a bee.” So, these black girls on the dance floor caught me doing that and cracked up and said, “You just got a new nickname: ‘White Chocolate’!” So, I am White Chocolate! LOL. It’s funny. I felt like I was welcome in their world, like I was an “honorary black person.”

I know I’m white. I’m not trying to be black. But it’s still fun to be included. Anyway, I’d better wrap up this vlog and bring it to a close. Thank you for your attention. And if any of you in NAOBI are watching this vlog, thank you. I felt great to be included in your conference. So long!

I was criticized by a deaf person for posting a one-minute long closed-captioned spoken video on YouTube the other day. The deaf person said that they were disappointed that I didn’t sign my video and that, being a sign language interpreter, I “represent the deaf community.” This is my response, signed and closed-captioned.

Lately, I notice — especially with Facebook — that I get pain in my elbow and wrist from so much mouse clicking to follow everyone’s posts. I read all my Friends’ postings, regardless of how well I know them, and I just keep reading and commenting and reading and refreshing pages. There are people in my Friends list that I’ve spent more time with on Facebook than in real life. But no matter what our relationship in real life, I find myself reading everything they post. It begins to seem as though my “best friends” are the ones who interact with me the most on Facebook. Yet that’s insidious, because it doesn’t mean they’re closer to me; it just means they’re on Facebook a lot and they like to interact with people on it. It’s seductive to sit there clicking, clicking, clicking on everyone’s content, yet I have to do something about my overuse strain. I am, after all, a sign language interpreter, and I have to save my hands and arms for work.

And speaking of seductive, it is so tempting to add all the people Facebook suggests to me as Friends– well, all the people I know, anyway. I never went and added all my friends Friends or anything crazy like that, but I did add almost all the classmates, coworkers, and friends I recognized. It got to the point where I had 378 Friends! As I started following more closely, I realized that I hadn’t even remembered some of my classmates correctly. In one case, I thought I was following a guy who was one class ahead of me until I realized that I was following his brother who was two classes behind me. He seems like a great guy, but the last straw was when he made that “tell me something you remember about me” prompt in his status message, and I realized, well, I didn’t remember anything.

Even more seductive is the ability to develop a fan base that will respond to what I post. But again, those who respond are not necessarily my friends. They are people who appreciate what I produce. They are fine people. Nothing wrong with them at all. But I have to be realistic with myself and ask myself why I need their validation, and why I’m spending time doing this when I could be doing other things that are more creative and productive. Or just spending time doing nothing at all, soaking up life and resting my wrists.

I’ve gotten overwhelmed with Flickr. I have 275 contacts right now, and I think I had even more at one point. There’s no way I can do them all justice. I tend to look at a few photos that show up on my home page, and sometimes surf from there onto other photos. I leave some comments and favorites. But I used to go crazy with it. Just as I do with Facebook now, I would view and comment on almost everything and then refresh the pages to see if there was anything else. I’m thinking about weeding my contacts list– not that I spend that much time on Flickr anymore. It’s been mostly about Facebook this past year.

And I just deleted about 250 Friends on Facebook. Many of them didn’t use their accounts much, but some of them used their accounts so much that I felt I had to remove my connection to them because I was overwhelmed by all their updates. Some of them, as I said before, weren’t even the people I thought I was following. Every single one of them was someone I spent more time with online than I ever did in real life. Yet, you know what’s sad? I now look at my Facebook home page and click Refresh because it looks so dull. But that’s real life! My real life doesn’t have that many people in it, so why should my online life be so peopled? I had Friends on Facebook from theatre, photography, interpreting, Flickr, the gay community, the deaf community, the deaf gay community, San Diego, Phoenix, Junior Theatre, the School of Creative & Performing Arts– and those are not the only communities I’ve ever made friends in! If I added all the friends I’ve ever known, my Friends list would be in the thousands.

But you know what saddened me even more? The fact that some of my friends from the past didn’t want to be my friends in the present. Sure, they added me as Friends, but they didn’t do anything with their accounts, didn’t call my cell phone when they said they would… or they didn’t add me as Friends at all. Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the past.

A lot of this struggle is about the distinction between past and present, reality and fantasy. The fantasy is that friends are forever. The reality is that friends are the people you spend time with, either in the present or the recent past, with plans to see each other again in the near future. When people aren’t doing things together, there’s less reason to remain friends. Due to the joy and pain I’ve experienced in life, I tend to want to heal my past and sooth my present with it, or reach back to my past and validate it with my present. I see the past, present, and future as a circle, and I want to mend that circle, let it be unbroken, integrate it. I want to be integrated, to have integrity.

The struggle is far from over. May we all find peace.

So, what are all the things I’m doing (and/or avoiding doing) right now? Well, there is the matter of taxes. My husband’s employer somehow forgot to take out any taxes for him in 2008, and he somehow never noticed this. So I have to pay his tax debt with my tax refund. But to get my tax refund, my tax accountant needs to return my phone calls and e-mails, which so far he hasn’t. The sooner I get my taxes filed, the sooner I get my return, and the sooner we can file my husband’s taxes along with the money he owes. I would be nice if filing jointly were an option for same-sex couples.

Then there is the Arizona RID State Conference this weekend. I am presenting a workshop on Saturday afternoon titled “Knowing What They’re Going to Say Before They Say It: Using Genre Recognition to Improve Your Predictive Skills.” I’m in a competing time slot with Ari-Asha Castalia, Sharon Neumann Solow, and Teddi Von Pingel, so no pressure there. Oh, and the company I work for, Purple Communications, tasked me with staffing the booth in the exhibit hall with at least one or two Purple employees at all times during the weekend and recruiting in-house interpreters such that there are four of our interpreters in the conference interpreting team during all the workshops on Saturday and Sunday. So far, I’ve succeeded in staffing the exhibit hall and the interpreting team; I’m just crossing my fingers that everyone shows up when they’re supposed to. Note to self: send reminders! In addition to teaching a workshop and staffing Purple’s presence at the conference, I will also be taking workshops to earn my much-needed CEUs so that I can remain nationally certified and licensed to interpret in the state of Arizona. And while I’m there, I’ll have my camera with me to take photos, as I’ve been asked to do this as well. One last thing: I really should attend the business meeting at 4 PM on Friday since I am the Bylaws Chair, but I work until 5 PM at HOVRS, so I don’t see how I’m going to make it. I’m going to need to see about that.

So, that’s this coming weekend. The weekend after that is my husband’s 50th birthday party. So there are preparations to be made, things to be cleaned around the house, invitation reminders to send, etc.

Plus, there’s the little detail of preparing to interpret William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for the Southwest Shakespeare Company on April 18 at 2 PM. Somehow, I have to find time to work on that even this week when things are so crazy.

I’m also, along with my husband, the vice-president/secretary of our neighborhood association, which is trying to take the neighborhood historic. We have a meeting tomorrow night which I need to send out reminders about today and I must preside over tomorrow because Andy will be working. I’ll have to ask someone else to take minutes. Then we have our big meeting with Vice Mayor Tom Simplot on April 28, at which we hope that many residents will appear to show the vice mayor how keen we are on going historic. (Many dollars and hours have been spent by residents before me and my husband even moved here four-and-a-half years ago to document this neighborhood and apply for historic designation, and it looks as though, with the Vice Mayor’s help, all those years of efforts may finally pay off.)

So, there you have it. That’s what I’m up to these days. And that’s just the planned stuff. We all know that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. I probably shouldn’t have even spent the time to write this blog entry, but at least it’s productive in terms of getting these projects out of my head and onto the “page,” as it were. And by stating these things publicly, I hold myself accountable and perhaps I ask for help. Or, at least, patience.

My friend Robert, who took this photo of his daughter after a self-portrait of mine, writes:

I’ve wanted to take this pic for a long time. I saw Daniel’s pic and thought to myself “I have one of those whistles somewhere around the house.”

My daughter didn’t need any coaxing to pose for this as she’s always had a very high opinion of Dan. She’s in good company.

Wow! I’m flattered. When someone takes what you’ve created and creates something else in response, that’s interactive, co-creative art! That’s community. I love it!

P.S. I’ve met Robert and his daughter Stephanie on a few Flickrmeets and photo strolls.

I thought I’d put out some feelers at about 7 PM (#evfn started at 6), so I sent three @replies to people I know at least a little bit. None of them responded to my messages. This was when I began to imagine myself a social outcast. I thought, “They’re having too much fun to bother answering me,” or worse, “They’re having too much fun hanging out with the cool kids and they don’t want me to come and spoil their fun.” I hate it when I get like that. It could be something as simple as they don’t have their mobile devices set up to alert them to @replies right away; it could be that I should have sent them Direct Messages. In fact, when I finally did send someone a Direct Message, he responded. But by that time, it was already 7:45, the Tweetup was officially over at 8, and even though Evo said it might run long, I was afraid I would show up just as everyone was leaving and feel like the biggest loser for driving all the way out there for nothing.

By the way, I didn’t even notice the “end time” on the Upcoming event page until about 7:30. By that time, I was kicking myself, saying “I should have just driven out there at 6:45.” It’s ironic that the event description specifically says, “yes, you are invited.” Perhaps they meant that for insecure souls such as mine. Or… maybe they just meant that for the cool kids.

At any rate, I decided to stay home and watch The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 with my husband and our two dogs (the dogs don’t watch much, but they sure do cuddle). In the movie, the character played by America Ferrera of Ugly Betty fame says to an erstwhile friend, “You reminded me that no one can diminish you but yourself, so thank you.” This is a lesson I’ve learned before, but oh do I have to learn it again and again! It seems old wounds are hard to heal.

So, let’s look on the bright side: someone did respond to me when I sent him a Direct Message, so apparently that’s a better way to get someone’s attention on Twitter. Check! The whole oh-my-god-i’m-a-social-pariah thing was probably all in my head. Check! I shall let no one diminish me, especially myself. Check! And, last but not least, there’s another #evfn next week! This time, I’ll just go and get there when it starts and skip all the drama. Whew!

Just as a boat is chained to the sea, sometimes I feel chained to Flickr.

I am now going through the 420 photos I took during the six days of my trip. Four hundred and twenty photos that all came out well. Yes, there are some things that I took multiple shots of in order to get the best one, but still… how do you work your way through all that and post it on Flickr without boring people? I’ve been limiting myself to posting only three or four photos a day so that people will look at them, which seems to be working, except I have to ask myself why I share all these photos with the world. I took this working vacation on my own, and one of the reasons I took these photos was to share them with my husband, Andy, who couldn’t come on the trip with me. That makes sense to me– to want to share with my husband everything I wish I could have shared with him while we were apart. And I suppose it makes sense to want to share photos with family and close friends. But I’m starting to wonder why I care whether people I’ve never met will stop and look at my photos. I hardly make any money giving my photos away. I could write travel articles and get paid for the work I put into taking, geotagging, editing, organizing, naming, describing my photos… but I don’t. Instead, I spend several hours each day on the computer and on Flickr. I post photos and look at other people’s photos. I enjoy this, but often it seems like work.

I sometimes look at what I do as a creative outlet and a chance to share information with others just for the sake of sharing. I guess there’s a part of me that appreciates all the hard work other amateur photographers and bloggers put into what they publish, and I want to give back. I’ve always had a work ethic that demanded that I contribute to my community, be it local or global. So I guess this is my contribution.

But I have a B.A. in English, and I often think I should be writing for a living instead of writing for nothing. And with my 18 years of experience as an American Sign Language interpreter, I think I should be developing and presenting workshops on interpreting, or even writing books about it. But I’m not. So why do I keep giving away hours of my day, day after day, to Flickr? I don’t know. I guess, in a weird way, I’m lonely. I have a husband and two dogs, a few close friends and family who love me, yet I still crave an audience. I want to communicate with people, have them listen to me, receive their response and feedback. But couldn’t I do that as a writer? Sometimes I fear that in the process of communicating with images I am losing the ability to communicate with words. Perhaps it is my purpose in life to paint images with words, not just by capturing them in photographs. It is harder to say what you want with words than it is with images… or is it? I guess if the image above said it all then I wouldn’t be writing this now; would I?

I don’t have answers to any of these questions yet. But I need to keep thinking about what else I should be doing with my life and how being chained to Flickr may be stopping me from fulfilling my potential as a human being. I don’t need to prove that I can take a good photo. I know I can. But then again, one doesn’t do something again and again just to prove he can do it, does one? I mean, if I write a best-selling book, I will have proven that I can write a good book, but I’d still probably want to write another book, and another, and another.

I do know that I get a lot out of photography. The act of shooting photos is meditative; it allows me (or forces me) to really look at things, to see them from various angles, to see them as they are and to capture them as I imagine them. And when I take photos of people or other animals, looking at the photographs afterward helps me to see them, to really gaze at them and take them in in a way that might not feel comfortable for either me or my subject in the moment. I also get to explore my moods and the moods of others, including the earth’s (if you can consider a cloudy day or the flowers of spring as an expression of the earth’s “moods”). My moods often mirror those of the earth, and through capturing images at those times I can share my own feelings with other people.

I do have a need to be seen and heard. Always have. Call it what you will, but I accept it as a fact about myself. I have almost never worked behind the scenes. Even the work I have done behind the scenes (writing, photography) ends up in the public eye. So just about everything I’ve ever done for money or for nothing has been for an audience. Heck, look at what I make my living at nowadays– interpreting phone calls, being heard by hearing people and watched by deaf people.

I hate to think that I need to keep writing, acting, singing, photographing, etc. to feel loved and lovable. I would like to believe that I am loved and lovable regardless of how much I produce or create. I sometimes wonder if it is the occasional photo that gets a lot of response and/or ends up in Flickr’s Explore pages that keeps me going, makes me feel like a star for a day, gives me the feeling of being not alone, but a member of a global family. I don’t know. Whatever my reasons are, I aim to practice moderation and feel completely unchained and free to choose just how much Flickring I do.