Smiles

photo by David Wittig

This photo was taken in Chicago on the beach about a month ago. David and I have a great chemistry and I love the photos we've gotten.

people sure seem to love it when I smile.

Which is nice, because I want to be happy. But sometimes they are lies. I struggle with that whole "fake it til you feel it" thing. I want to be honest with myself and everyone around me, but I also know that the happier you are, the better things go for you. So maybe if I keep smiling, good things will happen?

Honestly, I feel strangely happy, though (considering). New York City does that to me.

rambling ranting ignore this entry

NOOOOO

I knew there was something else in my car that I didn't want to be losing... my super awesome biker boots. Ugh, they were one of the most expensive things I owned and I wore them every day- How it's taken me a week to realize that I didn't have them is beyond me- I guess maybe cause it's so hot out? All of my jewelry was in there, too. ALL OF IT. I loved my collection... Oh and all my clothes... I mean sure sure, I have some more at home, but some of my favorite things were lost, and I am left here in Brooklyn with no fuckin clothes. I literally have a pair of shorts, a couple shirts and two dresses. But I'm used to having a shit load of clothes to choose from! Meh. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I had money to buy some new things, but I don't. Yet.

I'm looking at all of this as a new start, cause what else is it? I literally have next to nothing and I am just so so so grateful to the powers that be that I have my main cameras, my laptop, portfolio and wallet. It sucks I lost my car and everything else in it, there was so much in there that I really loved, but the cameras mean more, and the portfolios of images I've spent hours to print...

And I'm really going to miss my school and everything but the prospect of moving down here to Brooklyn is really amazing. I've just got to take care of some things and make money and pay my retardedly high phone bill somehow and find an apartment and and and... it's all very very overwellming but I don't care, I want it, I want NYC... Everything I want is here, everything. Most of my friends are here, money is here, photography is here, it's all here and I love NY so much it hurts...

I was talking to this painter, Dave, the other night, and I was going on and on about all of these things, telling him about how since I can remember I've dreamed of traveling and growing up specificly of NYC. Living in the same state as such an intense city, so close yet so far away... Anyone with talent and ambition moves to the city! It's obvious. And so I chose not to do it, for one reason or excuse or another, even though I've been dreaming of it for most of my life. Dave says, "people all over the world dream of moving to NYC. There is nothing like it."

When I think of these things, when I think of the mathmatical equation to lead up to me living my own life in NYC I just get so excited....

A hard route I always seem to take - but living off of dreams and love of life is the sort of freedom most people never taste.

RIP Car...

So... My car was stolen.

For those of you who know me, you know that my car is one of my favorite possesions, right up there with my camera and computer. Often it comes in first place, seeing as it can take me away- a constant real escape at my fingertips. A thought is all it takes, and I'm out the door and in my car driving down the road with the wind whiping my hair because I have no AC and I don't mind. Radio crap or driving in silence because my tape deck is broken. The dash alight with warnings, check engine and barely able to pass inspection last year but the little garage in upstate NY that I've gone to forever and so has my grandmother, they said they could pass it again this year and the sticker was there, marked July, and it's almost the end of July....

Fuck.

Honestly having it stolen isn't a bad end to the car, but I wasn't done with it yet. We were suposed to drive to California together, me and that car. We were supposed to let her die on the road, where she belongs, not melted for metal scraps and torn apart and sold and destroyed alive. There was life in her! Given, not that much, and she was kinda dangerous to drive anymore... but she was mine.

Have I meantioned I've had that car since I was 16??

It's strange, because while I am very upset about it and terribly stressed over what I'm going to do, I also feel oddly quiet about it. Perhaps "sobered" by it. Or even liberated.

It's that last kick to the ribs when you're down and beaten and suddenly you say, no no Fuck You and you realize you got a lot of fight left in you, come up swinging like a person possessed and scrapping for life, the fury really tapped into and unleashed.

Except I'm not mad. I just sorta feel like I'm watching myself, with a nod, yes- shitty things happen. Yes, you feel like extra shitty things happen to you. No, there still is no option of surrender.

If anything, this just adds to the fire.

Dear Mister,

You know... I look at your website and the pictures you have posted of me and I find myself crying, bursting into tears at the person you see me as, of who you portray me as, a person I hate and I hate you for not seeing more than that of me, of not seeing me as any sort of pretty or good person, slandering me next to pretty pictures of my sister, torturing me with regret for ever trusting you and letting you take my picture and pretend to be my friend, forgiving you over and over and putting my faith in you. I really hate you for it, I hope you know... and you're so fucked up, you'll probably read this and be happy to know you continue to cause me distraught anxious frustrating tears of regret. You are the worst thing that happened to my modeling, and I'm sure you're not done fucking me over. I am not the person you portray me as, the person you so desperately want to see me as. You are a fucked up old man and I don't know why you chose me to be at the receiving end of your nasty attacks.

and I have you blocked in my email and I think, I wonder if he's emailed me and low and behold there is more hate mail from you. I shouldn't be writing this for you to find, I shouldn't be letting you know how much you hurt me, but you do, you hurt me a lot, and I really don't deserve the hate you give me, I really don't. You talk about how much you hate me and what a terrible person I am but I don't even talk about you anymore except to tell people I don't like you because I trusted you and you stabbed me in the back and you continue to do so.. There is so much worse I could do to you or say about you but I don't.

I really wish I never met you.

Just Kids, by Patti Smith

Today has been filled with this feeling of dread and I cannot for the life of me place it's meaning. I feel unsettled and left of center, so left, I feel left- my body gone from my soul, wandering somewhere in the vast depths of my own stream of inspiration and longing, lives upon lives of options lost to me and drowning in my seemingly endless possibilities....

And I feel my ego is misplaced, or that I am without ego entirely, somehow. It is not my ego that speaks of my possible endeavors or accomplishments or success, but the knowledge of such great opposite, of such failure and inability. Wasted youth, wasted talent and space and love and everything and God, am I scared. I hate to admit it but I am scared. Or scarred? fuck, play on words. fuck, prose.

back up, Meagan...

I got a package today, it's a book and I knew there was a note inside, because the friend who sent it to me, she would never send something without a note, or maybe she would, but I knew she hadn't and I flipped through the book without looking at the cover, searching for her handwriting... and found it on a scrap of paper bag in the front, asking me to please read it- which is and isn't strange... is strange, because if you send a person a book, you expect them to read it, and isn't because she knows me enough that if she expresses her desire for me to understand something that she found in it, she knows I will put all my other books aside and I am already so distraught with inspiration and words and feeling that she is right, and I open the book almost immediately and I am happy she signed her note with love, because God knows I need real friends with real love and she is one person I know to be real and honest, like so many people are not. Honest with herself, and I know if it meant something to her, that this book will jar me in all the ways I need right now and I am thankful to have it.

God help me, I feel like I'm exploding

I am the Same

Brooke, May 2011, Annapolis

I don't know how this happens, but I've not only maintained the number of followers I have on this blog, but I've gained a few as well. How does that work? I haven't barely updated in so long... Maybe this blog is as interesting as I'd like to think it can be, or maybe my ex who tells me over and over how good it is, isn't the only one who thinks so.

So... Why don't I update very much? Mostly because I know there are at least 58 people reading my blog, which while it's nothing compaired to how many people follow my Tumblr, I know that those people (and possibly more) are actually reading and many of them still check to see if I've posted anything new, even though it's been months and months since I was actively writing. The fact that so many people are still looking to see what I write makes me very nervous, and has caused me to get stage fright, if you will. I mean, don't get me wrong, of course it's flattering and makes me feel really good that people enjoy what I write... But the whole part of a blog for me is to be able to write whatever the fuck I want and pretend no one is reading it, though with a hope that there are people out there who are and who enjoy it. Does this make sense?

Anyway, I put Finding Nemo in. Third movie of the night, and I'm feeling left of center and there's really no reason for me to feel this way. I want to cry for hours and the only explination is my over emotional girly nonsense cause I have nothing to cry about, I am not unhappy. I am actually quite content, and particularly pleased with myself lately.

Though I always feel like I'm grasping at air, that nothing can happen fast enough and that I am cursed with forever being dissatisfied. Always wanting more, always wondering what else is out there for me, and ever wanting to better myself.

I wonder, often, who I used to be verses who I am, and it's comforting knowing that my friends from growing up all say that I haven't changed at all - which I'm sure can't be true, but at least at the core I am the same Meagan Sample.

Rant first, Birthday update later

People keep telling me to go digital.

Yes, yes, I get it, I understand where you are coming from...

But when was the last time you told an artist who uses oil paints they should use Illustrator instead? Like common, stop telling me how the fuck to do what I do.

Or you could give me $2,000 and shut your face and I'll get myself a digital camera.

I LIKE film. I understand that digital is faster and more convenient and blah blah blah but I LIKE film, okay? It's not just some hipster kitchy thing I'm doing, it's just my medium of choice. Yes, I would love a digital so that I can make my turn around faster, I can test shots out and experiment, I can shoot in lower light and I can take tuns of shitty pictures without burning through my film.

See? I get it, I really do. But I dont' have the money to buy a camera, anyway. Hopefully soon I will but I live my life like a straight vagabond most of the time. Doesn't leave much room for thousands of dollars of equipment.

besides... stop telling me what to do and how to do my work.