So, I’m in San Francisco. And I forgot my phone. I realized this on the way to the airport, at
the precise moment where we could no longer turn around to get it. Apart from the whole keeping-in-contact-with-my-child-and-husband
thing, the lacking phone is inconvenient because it is my only camera. And so I have been wandering around here for
the last two days and nary a snap to document my travels!
Normally, I quite enjoy instagram. I enjoy looking at other people’s photos –
both of everyday life and glamorous travels.
I enjoy the desire to find the beauty in every moment, every day. And I was really looking forward to
instagramming this trip. As I walk
around though, I’ve been thinking – why?
Is it really because those bunches of little red chillies at the UN
Building Farmer’s Market this morning ($1 a bunch! Very hot!) were such a
beautiful contrast of little bullets of shiny red against branches of green
leaves? Or is it actually just me
wanting to show off? Look at me, I’m in San Francisco! I’m important! I travel. I don’t just stay in
Canberra all the time.
Shamefully, it is both. The chillies were very pretty, and probably
would have made a nice snap. But I can’t
deny there is an element of wanting to portray the exotic parts of my
life. I don’t instagram the laundry, or
the daycare run, or the weekly grocery shop (ok, sometimes I do the
latter. I obviously am a sucker for
fresh produce). But for this – my first
conference, my first trip to San Francisco – I want to be able to just drop it,
ever so casually, into the photographic conversation. But I can’t (so I’m doing it by a blog post
instead. I’m aware of the irony.). What
I’ve come to realize though, is in a way, being camera and phone-less has been
strangely liberating. I can’t document
this trip, and I can’t show it off. So I
just have to observe, and absorb, and be content in my own memories.
Of course, there are moments – like the
Chihuahua in a baby bjorn – that I really, really wished I had that phone.
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