I coach, sponsor and encourage people to ask for help a lot of the time but it’s still very uncomfortable for me to ask anyone for help. Today was my day to go take photographs of a building that could best capture the problem set about color that was assigned to me for a class.  After some thought, I decided to go take photographs of the new Austin Public Library that had just been built in the Bouldin Creek Neighborhood (South Fifth and Mary).  The only clue I had that I really didn’t know how to go about doing what I needed to do for this assignment was that I kept dragging my feet about everything this morning.  Feeding the dogs, feeding the cats, feeding myself, washing the dishes, everything just seemed to take a long time to accomplish.  I’m so glad the angels whispered in my ear loud enough for me to hear the suggestion  that I call a friend who lives right down the street and just happens to be an artist and is married to an artist/builder.

I’m wondering if in my head’s rule book under “calling friends for help” it says “only in extreme emergencies” because just my friend calmly walking beside me and pointing out different aspects of the building and landscaping that I could photograph helped ease my unrest about this project.  I actuallly began to have fun finding various funky angles to shoot. By the way, for anyone living in Austin you must go see this library. It is gorgeous and they have done an incredible job with the building and landscaping.

I’m an extrovert so I get my juice from working with other people when it comes to work and play so I need to remember to ask for help when I feel overwhelmed about a project even if the judge in me thinks I’m being ridiculous.  I’m sharing this with you in hopes that if you don’t already think of asking for help (and then go ahead and ask for it) from friends, that you will consider doing this for yourself now.  Besides, two of my friends that I spoke with about this class (one of them is an architect) both wanted to take this class with me because it sounded like fun!!!  I was really worried about making the perspective elements of little people, furniture and trees for later on when we make our models but now I have two friend, at least, who are actually looking forward to helping me make little people.  Go figure!  What may cause my hands to break out in a cold sweat may manifest in my friends’ hands as that tingly sense of anticipation!

Just remember, people who really love us will be absolutely happy to help us when we tell them specifically what we need and if they can’t (or don’t want to) help us, hopefully we’ve grown healthy enough friendships by now that they will tell us that too.

So much color….so little time……