Artomatic: How Do You Like That?

Time for a little pat on the back for yours truly. I did it. I cannot believe it happened, but it did.

I sold one of my photos.

That is right, someone actually thought my photography was worthy to hang on their wall. And it wasn't my mother, either.

It was a total stranger who contacted me over the weekend who went to Artomatic, loved my Bay and San Francisco photo and bought a copy for herself.

I'm stunned. Yes, I had hopes of selling some pieces in order to recoup some of my expenses for doing the show. But after three weeks of showing and tons of talkers but no buyers, I was beginning to chalk the show up to a great first experience showing my work publicly and call it there.

Now, as someone said to me today, "You have sold something. You can really call yourself an artist now." That was weird, thinking of it that way. I still won't believe it, but it's a totally different feeling than writing my game column. There, I know people are reading it because newspaper editors choose to put it in there and I get feedback from readers. This is different: someone actually thought my stuff was worthy of paying money for it.

I am done talking about it. But I cannot help but feel weird and happy and shocked and all sorts of things because this thing that I never thought I would be good at actually turned out to be something someone else wanted that was not directly tied to me by blood or friendship. I'll just stop now before I sound like an idiot (too late), and just say thanks to Marilyn, Leigh and Kristin for constantly pushing me to show my photography to outsiders because they saw something in it that I was missing.