Never going to be in a picture again

It's funny, Matt's birthday is in two-weeks, but his present came today (well, part came today, and part he stalked the UPS man waiting for the package to arrive.  Literally, stalked.  We got the notice yesterday and starting last night at 10pm Matt was on the phone with dispatch scheduling a pickup.  Fast forward 12-hours and the package was still on the truck so Matt started calling the truck driver and dispatch figuring out how they could meet up - end result, package came and Matt's a happy birthday guy - two weeks early).

As soon as Matt finished opening up the boxes and putting the camera strap securely in place he looked up, grinned, and said "I'm never going to be in a picture again."

Of course I need to tie this to the whole mom angle.  As soon as I had the boys, it was as if my face fell off - never to be in pictures again.  Strangers frantically wave when we walk around the city, and when I smile and wave back - oops!  The hand flapping and oo'ing is for everything under my chin (and not in the Dolly Parton way - in the Cole and Wilson smiling and being the raddest babies ever way).  On the mom note (or parent note, more), we still don't let the boys watch TV.  We only cook organic foods and try for local when possible.  We read to the boys in Spanish and in English.  We always talk about how amazing the world is.  When the boys are sleeping we kick up our feet on the couch and drink imported (non-local, non-organic) beer, eat candy, watch trashy TV, and talk about all the doofuses we came across that day.  Hm...

Taking this whole "those who do, aren't in the limelight" concept to another level, I started thinking about work.  I work for an open source software company with some of the most brilliant coders in the world.  Are they coding because they'd rather not "architect" software solutions in silos for companies?  Would they rather enable developers and architects around the world to use our software solutions for anything they want?  Hm...

Switching gears to race land, I noticed a handful of the race coordinators for runs I've been doing lately aren't exactly runners.  They put on awesome races - literally over rivers, through the woods, up ladders, and up another 3k+ feet to what feels like the top of the world.  Then they celebrate with the runners giving candy, banana bread, and more goodies.  I'm not complaining!

So here's my thinking ... are those that enable sometimes those who can also "do," but always those who want to see others happy and excelling?  Are passions not necessarily things we need to be part of, but things we can enable (e.g. photographers don't necessarily want to be beautiful photos/subjects, but they want to take and give the world beautiful photos/subjects)? 

Enough deep thoughts - it's time to get back to my online class (oo - teaching marketing while taking a break from doing - fitting), eat some candy, and watch some trash TV.