I get an email at five pm every day reminding me to write a few hundred words, in a desperate attempt to maintain the incredible prolificness of my college years. Despite that push, I rarely get into my personal life (much preferring to create the lives of other people, since they’re generally more interesting) but was feeling particularly naval-gazy today. As five o'clock neared, I considered writing about what I was doing two years ago on this date (standing in Grant Park with 240,000 other people) or what happened to me on Tuesday when I woke up to vote (discovered that my car had been broken into for the second time in the past six months).
But then, I got a much better subject to write about. I got an email that a photo I took will be published in an internationally distributed magazine in their January volume. I will be a byline-credited photographer some time in the next few weeks, which freaks me right the frak out, but that’s neither here nor there. When I announced the news on Twitter, a ton of my friends jumped on to congratulate me. While this is pretty cool, what’s even cooler to me is that the article that features my photo talks about my mom way more than me. I’m a footnote to the fact that my mother raced her motorcycle on the Bonneville Salt Flats two months ago and went up into the triple digits (MPH, of course). She was one of five or six women riding, and I honestly don’t know if I could be prouder of her. My dad referred to her for weeks as “My wife, the Bonneville racer!” I wake up every day knowing that I am incredibly fortunate to have had a lot of amazing women pave the way for me, and that quite a few of them are related to me directly. I wake up every day knowing that while I may work in a company, industry, and profession dominated by men, I can use the power of their underestimation to prove myself in powerful ways. And I wake up every day hoping I’ll be half as cool as my parents are. ----About the author: Caitlin is a product & social media monkey. She blogs at youruinedmychildhood.com & tweets as @crosberg. Her parents didn't ruin anything.