Last Wednesday I was scheduled to have my picture taken by a professional photographer in a concrete, echo-heavy North Hollywood studio for the podcast logo. No, the demon won’t be the main center of attention anymore—it will be me. My head. My expression. My soul, which will have exited my body through my bulging eyeballs. 

Since we began filming the new podcast episodes in early December, I have been fighting through all the self-loathing and insecurity that exists in someone not used to being on-camera to suddenly having five of them filming them from several unflattering angles in order to find the best unflattering angles to use throughout the show in order to not scare away potential YouTube viewers. “Just forget they’re there!” is the most common, least helpful advice. I’m doing my best but believe me I know those cameras are there—sometimes menacingly zooming in on my shirt-stains and neck hairs—and will continue to know they’re there for the foreseeable future. I don’t like it, but it’s just how it is. 

And the level of anxiety I had about this photoshoot was even more taxing. Having my picture taken in the past few years has been something that’s always possessed me with severe enough dread that I sometimes want to fake some sort of exotic injury to avoid getting pulled into a cellphone pic with any of my more photogenic friends. “I have this possibly fatal eye disfigurement that gets activated by the blue lights.”  

I showed up to the photography studio at 11:30 and finally finished a few minutes after 3. It was an exhausting day—it sounds like carefree and relaxing to have your hair poofed and your face creamed with hydrating solution (that part definitely is, can’t lie) but the actually physicality of looking at the camera, turning to the left, then the right, aiming your chin high, pointing same chin to the right while keeping your eyes to the left, no, no, to the left, drained me. 

This was not my first professional, super-long photo shoot, either. Back in the blog days I was profiled by a couple of men’s mags and suffered through the carousel of wardrobe changes and silly smirks and tough-guy poses but didn’t get bothered too much by the whole thing. It was thrilling, even when I knew the accompanying words written about me would be less than glowing. I thought at the least I’d have a glam photo of myself wearing expensive clothes (while stooped in a bathroom stall) for posterity. 

What was the shift that made me so camera-averse and self-critical? Sobriety, mostly. When I got sober, I got more insecure. A common problem for many people in their early abstinence, but it walloped me a few years later. I simply woke up one day everything about my face and body felt off: crooked, vacant, hairier, puffier. It’s gotten better for sure, but the Wednesday morning photoshoot still loomed large on the calendar, like periodontal surgery or finishing tax paperwork. 

The man in charge of taking my picture is named Storm Santos. He’s a big, red-headed Old English Sheepdog with tattoos and stories behind all those tattoos. He was vibrant and loud, but just mesmerizing in the way he worked. 

Being self-conscious around him felt almost like an insult to his craft. So I let him move me around in all the poses he needed and I dropped the insecurity out of duty and deference to him. He made me feel like I was serving something he was excited about. Honestly, if the man had asked me to strip down, dip myself in maple syrup, and swing from the rafters I probably would have done so. He had my trust and I was eager to help him do his job.

I peppered him with questions throughout about how he got started when he realized he had talent for it. He was a guitar player who got sick of the road and then veered to photography because it was just something else he thought he could do. LA jobs were scarce until they weren’t. He got his first big break photographing a superhero show, and then the rest was the usual friend-who-knew-that-friend Hollywood network. Then zoom, off he went.

Sounded logical, but I kept pressing him about how he could go from freelance hobbyist to full-time to now trending into icon territory in what seemed like a fairly short amount of time. He pulled his camera down for a minute and he looked right at me, tapped my shoulder and made me pay attention. “You know what it is? I have audacity. People think you need to be authentic these days, but no, you actually need more AUDACITY.” And, goddamn, I wanted to run through a wall for him.

 I’d heard that word before. It always carried a negative connotation in my mind, like a super-charged obnoxiousness mostly used by small-time bank robbers, but then Obama kind of reframed it for me and everyone else who needed something to believe in. Storm’s version of the word kind of lives between those two poles, I gather. 

His version was also actionable. That’s what stuck with me: that there is a broken part of me that needs to be more audacious in order to be more authentically happy. I should hurry up—there is only so much time. 

*****

This week’s fears, gratitude, daily reading additions (including my new favorite poetry compilation), a new playlist add, and one photo from the Storm session are all after the paywall. Follow us down—and thanks for your support. — AJD