I’m sitting in Starbucks. When I first pulled into the parking lot it took a lot for me not to burst into tears. I’m a little dramatic by nature, not dramatic in front of people, definitely not in front of people, but dramatic all the same.

What brought on this sudden outburst of emotion, you ask? Public speaking. It’s been almost an hour and haven’t stopped shaking…. probably because in 35 minutes I have to be back in the same classroom in front of a new group of high school students talking about how I use my pictures to tell a story. It sounds so simple. You’d think it would be, but switching from Stacee: terrified, nervous girl, over to Stacee Lianna Photography: calm, collected, well informed, business owner was ugly. Ugly. I think I said “I’m so nervous” about 30 times in my 10 minute presentation, you could hear my voice shaking, and yep I said “can I start over?” mid-presentation. I’m so professional it kills me.

I wasn’t going to blog this, but when I sat down and started typing out a dramatic status to post on facebook I thought maybe this should go on the blog. Mostly so when this happens again I can send Steven a direct link to this page and remind him how ugly it was the first time, and that he should never ask me to do something like this again, but also because everything isn’t pretty. This journey my photography career has taken me on hasn’t always been easy, there are ugly days in my story, days I’d like to forget and days, like today, I hope to never repeat.