I received my acceptance package from MICA in the mail on Saturday.  Despite my uncertainty about what I'd like to do after my AmeriCorps*VISTA year ends on June 24th, being accepted into a supposedly very competitive graduate program is a validating experience.  My scholarship letter cites my "outstanding qualifications" and "superior achievement in visual arts."  I may be hard on myself much of the time, but these words do manage to make me feel like perhaps the struggle of my undergraduate years and the hard work I have put in afterward was good for something.

Incidentally, my entire visual art portfolio was photography even though I concentrated in painting for my BFA.  Once again I am reminded of the intense struggle I felt every day in the painting studio.  I continually felt unable to live up to my professors' expectations and unable to compete with my peers.  How much of this came from my own high standards for myself I will never know, but I do think one professor in particular made me realize painting was not my true calling.  He was passionate, maybe even maniacal, about painting and favored students who felt -- or at least expressed themselves -- similarly.  He must have seen some sort of potential in me or he never would have tried to push me so hard, but I always ended up feeling like he was trying to wrench something out of me that just wasn't there.

In the end, I have realized (or rediscovered, since I was hell-bent on becoming a professional musician between fourth and tenth grade) that I just do not think visually.  It is why I cannot draw objects from memory and struggle to draw from a subject sitting in front of me.  It is why I painted more for the experience of the paint than I did for the images.  Maybe it is even why I often get lost, unable to visualize a map in my head.  Certainly it is why I found 4 Weeks to an Organized Life With AD/HD to be so unhelpful.

But if I'm not a visual thinker, why this continued interest in the visual arts?  Why am I still drawn to photography, and why did I submit a portfolio to a visual arts graduate program?

I really think photography allows me freedom from my inability to visualize.  I am at home behind the viewfinder because for once, my image has been laid out before me in perfect detail.  I can adjust angles and depth of field, work little by little until I have the frozen image that explains the scene exactly as I saw and felt it.  There is no other way to preserve it.  I adore photographs because they preserve a thought, a memory in a way my mind usually cannot. 

While I can always remember the tone of a voice that has called my name, photographs allow me to look into the eyes of someone I have lost.  They also evoke the spirit of a scene as I felt it at the moment I released the shutter.  While I dream of taking a sketchpad, india ink, and brushes along on an upcoming trip to Europe, I know I shouldn't even bother.  I should buy a special journal and an extra memory card.  I should take hundreds, even thousands of photographs.  I should write out all the words in my head while I'm sitting outside a cafe in Venice because this is how I will capture it.

As I continue to explore who I am, not who I convince myself to be, I am learning all over again that I think in music and eloquent words, but I see through my photographs.

This blog is about words and images, most frequently words about images.  Maybe there are some like it on the web, maybe not.  The great gift the internet has given us is ultimate control over content.  I create the content, edit it, filter it, and publish it. 

But then what happens to it?

The audience is where I lose control as a blogger, and the one major failing I see in self-published work.  Just like the zine scene, which I inhabited during my high school years, a few blogs rise to the top and gain some recognition while the rest remain adrift in the vast sea of the online universe.

For this reason and many others, I see submitting to real-life publications as a necessity to pull myself out of the crowded streets of the blogosphere and enter the more established traditional field of professional, paper publications.

The only trouble is, I am still trying to exercise that same control over content while not relinquishing total control over audience.  I pick and choose, this favorite piece of writing there, this photograph here.  I enter my work for publication only when I feel very strongly about the contest and am really invested in winning: which means, of course, I never do.

It's not about picking your favorite contest or magazine, and it's not about picking one favorite piece from six months' work.  It's about spreading your work widely as dandelion seeds and seeing what takes root.  It's about finding every opportunity that could possibly be relevent and going for it, even if it's not something terribly exciting.  It's about building a list of small accomplishments before trying for the long-reach, dream opportunity.

If there is one thing I want to take away from my short list of carefully chosen contests and publications, it is I need to do more in every way possible. I need to let as many eyes see these words and images as possible and just wait for something to stick.  And most of all, I need to keep working, keep thinking, and keep trying.

This week I started reading a book called 4 Weeks to an Organized Life With AD/HD. Usually I turn my nose up at “self-help” books, as I find the whole genre a little too new-agey and wishy-washy to take seriously, but this one caught my eye. For the first 100 pages, I felt like the authors had written a book all about me. All my emotional and practical struggles were laid out before me in plain, simple terms. I have already found myself using what I read to explain to others the difficulties I face in everyday life.

4 Weeks to an Organized Life relies heavily on the left brain/right brain concept, and explains how in a left-brained society, creative, visual, right-brained thinkers lose out. When faced with a number of thoughts or tasks, it is difficult for us to put them in a logical sequence, prioritize them, and figure out the order of the steps between Point A and Point B. This explains well my tendency to get overwhelmed easily when I have to manage multiple tasks or even one task with multiple steps. I never even realized that skill of sequencing and prioritizing came naturally to most people.

I could go on about this forever, but the point is, those first 100 pages really got me. I was sure the four-week program that followed would help me get my life together. Then I actually started reading the daily activities.

During the first 100 pages I had been okay with being described as a “visual thinker” -- of course, I have an art degree, right? The activities in the second half of the book are all visualization activities. Creating a crystal-clear mental picture, the authors insist, is the key to harnessing the strengths of the AD/HD brain.

The truth and trouble with that is, holding a detailed image in my mind's eye is like trying to grip the edge of a cliff with my fingertips. It's why I fell in love with photography and battled with drawing classes in college.

When I try to visualize a scene in my mind, even if it is my desk at work, a place I see every day, I can't force the image all the way to the edge of the frame: it dissolves into white around the edges, what little remains in the center losing detail in bits and pieces as if I am trying to remember a dream.

What does come through crystal-clear is sound. As I'm “visualizing” a series of steps in a task at the office, eventually I lose the image completely. It falls away to reveal a complex world of sound: my purse hitting the bottom of the file drawer, the door latching as I leave, my footfalls as they go from hallway to stairs to hallway to sidewalk. Sounds, it seems, can be created in my mind with perfection every time.

When I think, I think in words, spoken by a voice in my mind. I talk to myself when no one is around. If I don't understand a text I am reading, I read through it aloud. There is always music running through my head. A great song will literally tickle my ears and give me chills, a sensation a piece of visual art could never fully evoke.

So what does this mean for me? In grade school I was frightened when I was categorized as a “visual learner” because I was hell-bent on becoming a famous musician. Perhaps I was labeled so because I typically need to see a concept written or drawn out to understand it: I cannot pull words together from the air as easily as I can read them. But all the same, I have to wonder why music always came so readily to me while I struggled to keep up with my peers in drawing and painting.

With AD/HD and visual thinking being almost synonymous, I find myself in the minority once again, unsure how to overcome my difficulties. Maybe it is my fate. My Meyers-Briggs is an INFJ: we account for less than two percent of the population. I suffer from AD/HD but the visualization strategies that help most people are powerless on me. I have a visual art degree but I don't think in pictures.

That is, unless I am looking through a lens. Then I see pictures all around me.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the whole grad school equation and how it fits into my other immediate goals. Many people have told me I am trying to do too much, and for the most part I have dismissed them as not knowing me, not knowing my ideal operating conditions. Doing too much is in my nature. How would I survive without that constant pressure?

There comes a time, though, when I do question myself and wonder what privilege has been afforded me that I don't need to listen to others' advice. Maybe everyone else is right. But then what of my plans?

As a rule, I tend to over-plan my life. This would not be a problem if I was just trying to be prepared for any outcome, but I am most often creating a complex, carefully constructed ideal view of my future. With this mindset I set myself up for failure and disappointment every time.

Slowly, I am realizing I have to know how to be at peace with any solution. In the long term, I won't get anywhere by trying to achieve every single goal to its fullest. Everyone knows I can set goals and achieve them. I have nothing to prove but my ability to set the right goals and maintain my sanity.

So what of my plans?

Part of me has always felt I am entitled to an advanced degree: to be categorized in a certain way by my family, to feel satisfied with myself, and to prove that I stand on even ground with my partner if he chooses to go back to school. The only problem is, none of these are really great reasons to commit more money and years to my education. There are many definitions of success, and just as I have proven that success does not mean the highest-paying job, I need to realize success does not mandate a master's degree, either.

I would be truly happy in the MACA program at MICA, and I doubtless have the capacity to dedicate my life to it and be very successful. It is “what I want to do,” but it is one outcome out of many. My decision to return or not return to school is just that. It is not a betrayal of myself, my parents, or anyone who has written me a letter of recommendation.

For sure, I will apply to the MACA program. Until the reply deadline of April 1st, I will keep it in my hands as piece to my puzzle, turning it this way and that to see how it could fit.

But then there are other plans, other successes: moving to Baltimore, buying a house, getting a “real job,” saving money for someday children, settling into a life that promises to last more than a year or two. If going back to school compromises my personal career more than it promises to advance it, maybe I will defer for a year. Maybe I will accept the job that will surely be waiting to meet me at the end of my VISTA year. After all, they say one year at this particular job is equal to seven years experience in the non-profit world. There is no way I can fail to find a good job I will love.

I need to create my own definition of success and figure out what is most important to me. I cannot have everything I ever wanted, nor can I resent the fact that I chose one positive outcome over the other. And really, that's what I'm doing. My life is full of fantastic options. I can't have them all, but I can pick and choose to find the winning combination. After all, isn't that what makes options great?

I've always been successful in life, but the question I am asking myself now is, did I finesse it? Sure, I've proven time and again that I can sidestep prioritizing by working on everything at once. My life is reaching a point, though, where I want to slow down and take the time to do a few things very well. I guess it's not about fitting all the pieces into the puzzle, but collecting a lot of pieces so I can choose the ones that make the best picture.