I can’t say how grateful I am to have Sara Friedman in my life. The President, CEO and staff of Socialmomentum.org, Sara is a major influence in my life. She brought me to videos, helped me expand my Facebook page (which has grown by 50 per cent in the past few months) helped me organize my technology and computing, and rushed out to the farm numerous times when things went wrong. It is essential to know somebody like Sara if one is to intelligently cope with the demands of new technologies. She has also undertaken to help me buy the new Canon 5D Mark III by selling off some lenses on E-Bay. She has already sold one, a 300 mm telephoto, and today I brought her six more. Sara is smart, quick, and without drama or foolishness. She gets it done. More than anyone, she has helped me understand how to use technology in my creative life and work.

We had fun, rendezvousing at the Stewart’s Convenience Store in Argyle, N.Y. We felt like two fences trading hot stuff and expected the Troopers to come roaring in and bust us. But we handed off the equipment, and it will be up on E-Bay shortly.

It’s hard for me to sell off my lenses. It’s hard for me to sell off anything. I lived for many years on impulse and whimsy, and with little reality. In one sense, this is great. I spent a lot of money, got a lot of great equipment and the photography has really worked for me – the blog, children’s books, my adult fiction and non-fiction, my life and sense of myself as an artist.  On other, it was typical of my problems and issues – didn’t think much about money, got everything I wanted, and was creative at inventing rationales for everything I wanted to do. My wonderful current camera, my 5D is wearing out and the new one is right up my alley, perfect for the kind of photography I do and a big improvement. It is also expensive, and I no longer hit the “buy” button so quickly. A friend told me I had to get the camera, it was the engine of my creativity, and I loved her for it.

But I think it was a set-up, an echo of the way I used to get things. I’d ask friends to encourage me, and of course they would. I recognized that emotion – I have to have this camera now –  as magical thinking. Like everybody else, I have to watch my credit card bills and check on my bank account and those are two things I do not like to do. So if I want a camera, I have to find the money and Sara is putting my stuff on E-bay this week – a 300 mm telephoto with tripod and lens case, a tilt-angle landscape and architecture lens, a 50 mm, a Zeiss landscape lens. I don’t really need any of them right now, and truth is, I never could really afford them. For good measure, I’m bartering one of my point-and-shoots with Sara for some of her time. I suppose that’s one of the reasons the farm is for sale, also. Doesn’t quite fit into the scale of my life now.

I’m not sad to sell the lenses, really. Seems very fitting, and I have good lenses left to use. If I sell this all off, I might buy a new 24-70 zoom as well. If it is difficult to stop magical and impulsive thinking, it is good to be growing up. At last. And when I can afford it, I will enjoy my new camera all the more.