Fun! (and Scary!)

(stay tuned for the credits. I am having [surprise! surprise!] technical difficulties.)

Oh, big fun. I always get so nervous the first time I try some new technology, and then I muddle around in it and fiddle with it and try to figure enough of it out to actually make it work. I don't even know if this will actually work until I post it. How exciting.

It's two firsts... well, actually three if you stay tuned and let me tell you about what else I did.

My first first is that this is the first time I have done a meme and posted it on my blog. It's my fear of jumping in to the big wide world, my chicken High School kid who is afraid to sit with the cool kids at the lunch table. I wasn't invited to do the meme, but I saw it over at Leah's Blog, and at Blue Poppy and finally said, hey, that looks like fun, so I invited myself in.

This is how the meme goes:

Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search.
Using only the first page, choose an image.
Copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker over at FD's image maker.

The questions:
What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you attend?
What is your favorite color?
Who is your celebrity crush?
Favorite drink?
Dream vacation?
Favorite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One word to describe you.
Your Flickr name

I agree with Blue Poppy that it's great fun. And it really is like a kind of poetic portrait without words.

My second first is that I went ahead and tried to make this mosaic. Oh, technology. I have had so much trouble with photos. Well, actually, in addition to making this mosaic, I tried to upload some photos to Flickr, (something that was actually on my to do list) and that didn't work... do you see what I'm saying? I think the files are too big, but anyway, I didn't need my own photos for this project, I just needed to play with Flickr, and I think the more I get used to Flickr, the more I will not be afraid, when I finally make my way to posting photos.

The third first was actually something that I did yesterday. Late at night as I was browsing blogs and links, I stumbled upon something new and scary. It just so happened I was watching a horror movie (Evil Dead, if you're wondering) and I needed the distraction of the internet to keep the creeps at bay. But what I found was even scarier than fiction. It was this. I was almost forced to join in when I found out that she had taken up her own challenge again that very night, just hours before I had found her. It was her beautiful badge that made me click it. The challenge is to do something brave every day. As I read about her project I kept thinking that it was a cool idea, but I wasn't really in the place to take it on, I mean, it's not brave to change diapers, but as I kept reading, I thought maybe it was the perfect project to get me out of my diaperland domestic rut.

I want to get out into the world and do the things that are important to me... which also happen to make me scared out of my skin. I don't know how brave I was to keep my scaredy challenges to something over the web, where I don't really have to face my true fears of getting out into the world, but you know, small steps really do get us where we want to go, often more so than the huge dives into the unknown without and safety wires.

Let's see if being brave actually does change my life.

(With all the new technologies and games I'm playing with, this post took about ten times longer than it usually takes me. And I have had to go back in and edit a half a dozen times. I'm not even done, yet. New things are hard. I'm a little scared of my oafishness here.)