Highs and Lows... and Expectations, Part 2 - The Lows

So... My husband and photography partner, Travis, and I had a blast at the 2023 Indycar race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL (as I shared in https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/729122040431351468/8161189219424744427).

We just knew that the upcoming Indycar race that we were going to get to shoot would be a million times better.

You see, my husband is a huge Indycar fan. He fell in love with racing at the track closest to his childhood home in Ohio. 

After picking up photography, it was a big dream of his to shoot an Indycar race - and an even bigger dream to do so as a credentialed media photographer at his home course. 

This summer it happened. We got the opportunity to shoot for the same driver as we did earlier in the season. We were not only going to get to be credentialed media, get VIP passes so we could hang out with him and his team, AND do it at my husband's home track.

We planned to leave for Ohio on a Thursday. That week was completely insane.

- I had been looking for a new car-to-me car for about a month - and I found a couple of great prospects the weekend before. Because there were two that were really great deals, I didn't want to wait until I got back in town to buy, so car testing and car buying had to be included in the schedule.

- I've had back problems lately, pretty extensive ones, and they had flared up incredibly over the prior week. 

- I had several work assignments come up at the last minute - and I was um, slightly overwhelmed (think in sarcasm mode here) to make sure everything was done before leaving.

- I finally had gotten around to consolidating our family's phone plans - and there were issues I had to take care of.

- To drive the new car, I had to switch everything over from my car to the new one (and I have a lot of stuff in my car that needed to be sorted through in order to find new homes for it all).

- My husband had a flare-up of his Still's Disease as well as having a really rough time at work the couple of days before we needed to leave.

- Etc. Etc. Etc.

By Wednesday afternoon, my anxiety was through the roof. At that point, I was actually trying to decide if it was worth it for me to go.

If you've read through my blog much at all, you know that I have pretty major anxiety issues. The unknown is hard on almost anyone... but it can paralyze me. 

There were an incredible amount of unknowns with this trip. I won't get into them all, but some were very anxiety-producing. Add to that, I couldn't find out the info I needed to know to reduce the fear.

In addition, the weather was supposed to be horrible. Because this shoot was more for my husband than for me, I knew I wouldn't shoot if the weather was bad - in this case, it simply wasn't worth it.

I didn't want to attend the Mid-Ohio race and sit in the photographer's room the whole weekend.

However, I finally did decide to go. I made a list of pros and cons and saw that even though there were a great number of cons, an adventure with my husband overrode them all. Even if it was a horrible trip, he was more important.

Though many of my worst fears didn't happen, it wasn't an easy trip by any means. We're glad we went but it was a big disappointment compared to what we had thought it would be.

That is... until we got an unexpected email right after we decided to cut the trip short. (See part 3 for the conclusion).