On Thursday this week, I brought my half-sister a book to borrow for her last few days in San Antonio, and in exchange, she took me out for coffee at a local cafe, Mildfire Coffee. We hung out for a couple hours at the cafe, and at one point, we paused our conversation while Julia used the restroom. When she was gone, my ear picked up a conversation going on behind me, two folks discussing an otherworldly nature area and fantastical portraits. I mean, come on, that’s literally bullseye on my interests!!

Now, I could have just ignored it, or eavesdropped, but instead I decided to break out of my comfort zone. I got up, approached these two, and started a conversation. As it turned out, one of them is a nature photographer who had an idea for a fantasy/dryad photoshoot in the location they’d been discussing, and the other was interested in fantasy portraiture! I showed them the photos from my January Gutter Glitter photoshoot (post coming soon), and we talked about collaboration and exchanged Instagram handles. It turns out that the second of these two was an employee at Mildfire who knows my sister (because my dad, stepmom, and sister have been going to Mildfire regularly for years!).[er =\-=] <–the stuff in [] was written by my foster kitten running across the keyboard…ha!

Anyway, it was a lovely conversation and I made two new friends that I’ll hopefully be able to get to know better and work with in the future. The whole thing made me feel so warm and cozy and happy, and I know that if I had decided to stay quiet like my normal self rather than put myself out there, I would have instead felt disappointed and ashamed and hopeless. It’s a thing I’m trying to learn, but need to be taught more regularly: Don’t be afraid to speak. Reach out. Do the thing. More often than not, humanity will surprise and delight me when I do.