triggered

just when you think you're completely healed and over your year in lego, something happens that opens up the baggage and you're right back, smack in the middle of how terrible it felt. it turns out that feeling rejected and like i don't belong triggers that awful feeling in me again.  yesterday, i posted one of these ducky swim ring photos in the toy photographers group on g+ as a contribution to their inspiring hashtag - #nofigurefriday. i posted it and then left to go pick up the child. when i got back, i refreshed the toy photographers page to see if anyone had commented and to see what others were posting.

weirdly, my post was nowhere to be found on the page. i refreshed again and scrolled down and down, thinking perhaps g+ stacks the posts strangely by column. there were other new posts there that had come after mine, but no sign of mine. my heart actually began to pound and i could hear the blood in my ears and i flushed in embarrassment - had my post been deleted because it wasn't good enough? did i put it in the wrong category? i had selected "photo challenge" because of the hashtag, but what if that was wrong? were they really that strict? had i been too silent for too long, so i was no longer welcome to contribute? what was going on?

notice in all of those thoughts, i immediately felt that i must have been inferior and deserved to have my photo deleted. it didn't make me angry, it made me very sad and it made me feel like i didn't belong. i posted a comment, asking what happened to my original post and people jumped in, giving me helpful advice about how to share in the group, as if i were tech-challenged. that didn't help me feel any better.

later, i got a report that it was some kind of issue with g+ and that a lot of posts weren't showing. but that somehow didn't make me feel better either. i still feel wary and hurt and have a nagging feeling that i don't really belong in that "community." i wonder if it will fade with time, or if my lego wounds are so deep, they'll never really scar over.

the view from sunday night, which stretched well into tuesday

it's a sure sign that spring is on its way when you spot the first sharks in the garden.

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my pocket notebook is filled with jotted down must-blog ideas, but here i sit, keyboard before me, and nothing really comes out. i'm not sure why that is. maybe it's a lazy sunday afternoon (usually conducive to writing). the grey, cold, rainy, blustery day out there. a sense of contentment that makes me feel too at peace with the world to write. or maybe there are too many things happening in the world that bear commenting upon, so it's difficult to settle on just one.

it's rather interesting how the joy of the hunt for the new minifigs has returned now that i don't have ready access to whole boxes of them. i'm pretty happy about that, even if i do have to pay 7 kroner more per minifig (that's $1). it's a small price to pay for joy. and the excitement of feeling up the bags and trying to determine what's in them is worth every øre. funnily enough, i actually do better when i just grab some than when i try to go for a particular one.

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norway's slow tv movement.

the one that started it all, 7 hours on a train.

* * *

the S.S. United States - still the titleholder of the Blue Riband -
the fastest to ever cross the atlantic ocean in a westward direction. 

look at me, using capital letters.

* * *

smart, feisty pieces about beyoncé's culture-shifting formation.

bitter gertrude. awesomely luvvie. new south negress.

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some hungarian ruin porn.

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WFT!?! is going on the state of my birth?

can you say regression back to the stone age?

the season's first amanitas

hey man, get those poisonous things away from me!

that story from my hometown just gets worse and worse, so i thought i'd lighten things up with the season's first gorgeous amanitas. they are so bright and beautiful - they're the stuff of fairytales; every year, i feel delighted and surprised by them. i never tire of their bright red polka-dotted beauty. and today, with all of the bad news coming through (i didn't know these people, but somehow, i do feel the effect on my hometown, even here across an ocean), finding a small moment of delight in nature was much needed.

hold onto your moments of delight, you never know when you will need them.

how about a little snack?

fun with LEGO in my own backyard.

wordless wednesday