The crew from last year's NYC meetup.
This creative community is powerful. It's changed my life. I've met people who inspire me. People who make me feel like I'm not alone. Like I am loved. Not because I look like I'm expected to, or say what I'm suppose to, but because I am strong enough, crazy enough, to honestly be who I am. No games.
I am very grateful for the experience of these three plus years. An experience that came to me unexpectedly through little, low res pictures.
I'm grateful, but to be honest I'm also a bit concerned.
I am naturally introverted. To a fault. And I'm concerned that I might have a tendency to loose the big picture in the stream of shiny images and pleasant comments. Bare with me and I'll try and explain.
The truly powerful thing happening here is not about pictures at all, but about friendships. So I don't want to settle for platitudes or niceties. Here's the hard truth. It is sometimes very tempting for me to take the praise in but still keep to myself. I call it hermit mode. :-) a
And hermit mode is not a good place for me.
Can you relate? If we're not careful, social media is kind of like "relationship junk food" isn't it? Tastes great. . . but not much substance really.
So this week I'm gonna make the time to buy someone a drink instead of liking their picture. I'm going to make an effort to go deeper than a three sentence comment. I'm not going let the hermit win. ;-).
I don't want to loose sight of the big picture. Because, in the end, if this thing is going to work, it's not really about the pictures. It's not about an app. It's not about a quick little digital boost to our egos.
It's about really connecting. It's about friendships.
Things have changed. This one time, SLR camera nerd, is now surprisingly comfortable shooting small, square, images with my phone. And, in the end, I guess I'm ok with lowering the pixel count of my jpgs. :-). But I DON'T EVER want to be ok with low resolution friendships. In the end, that's the big picture. That's what's worth while. Isn't it?.