When I was in my twenties I had a brief moment when I was an “actor”. Being an actor is kind of a prerequisite to living in New York City as a young person. Of course that meant that I was also in the restaurant business. How else can one support an acting career if you aren’t also working a job with flexile hours that both allows you to pay your rent and go to auditions during the day? Exactly. Actors in New York City are a dime a dozen, as they say.

One audition I went on was for hand soap or maybe it was hand lotion, I actually can no longer remember. I had to stand and gesture, while the camera was trained on my hands. It was during that audition that I was told I had prominent veins, something I was not aware of until that moment. So I would hold my hands above my head and when the camera began to roll I would put them down and do whatever it was that I was supposed to do, hoping beyond hope that my veins would behave themselves. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

Now I work with my hands all the time and being vascular is not a hindrance, thankfully. However because I am often demonstrating something to do with stitching for my YouTube channel, I am painfully aware (usually after the fact) that the blueberries I was cooking with or the Caran d’Ache pastels I used to dye an old t-shirt have stained my fingers strange and unnatural colors. Sometimes I’ll notice that a cuticle needs to be trimmed or I wonder if that arthritic lump on my left index finger is getting bigger or I become painfully aware of the lead that is embedded into the skin on the tip of my right index finger from that time I jabbed a pencil into my finger by mistake. These are the kinds of things that I now see, but wish I didn’t. Still, it’s important to know one’s priorities and well manicured, beautifully kept hands and fingernails is not something I’ve ever felt I had time for. I work with my hands too much to make that practical, but even so, I do my best.

I’m grateful that hand modeling career never took off, as I would surely be out of work now. It’s important to find gratitude where one can. ❤️