The guy behind the camera looked bored.  He played with his cell phone while his camera sat on a tripod, pointed at a spot across the street.  The same spot upon which about a dozen other photographers and cameramen were focused.  For about the hundredth time in my life here, I had stumbled across a film set.  (As opposed to stalking a celebrity.  See yesterday’s entry.)

But nothing appeared to be happening there at Saint Ambroeus on West 4th and Perry.  So I turned to the bored guy and asked what they were filming.  While trying to appear bored, uninterested, and non-stalkerish myself.  “An MTV show,” he replied.  I asked which one.  He told me with a smile that he wasn’t supposed to say.  “The City?” I asked, both smug and ashamed that I was so quick to figure it out.  He just kept smiling.  “Are they inside the restaurant?”  He told me not yet.

So I walked around the corner to Magnolia Bakery (my original intended destination) and maneuvered around the tourists taking pictures of each other eating cupcakes, buying my own for a whopping $2.50.  I thought to myself that it had been awhile since I’d made this trip, considering the last time I was here the cupcakes cost $1.75.  Oh, the things I do in the name of blogging about them later. Which motivated me to venture back to the film set, camera of my own in hand, and snap a picture just as Whitney Port and Nondescript Friend sat at their outdoor corner table–the one where I had boozy brunch with the GQ Fashion Director this time last year.  But without cameras documenting and microphones secured to our bodies.  No, this time around I stood there watching someone else’s brunch.  In a non-stalker way.  I watched as a white-haired man strolled past the table, hilariously oblivious to the action, and a production assistant ran after him, yelling, “SIR!” with clipboard and release form in hand.  Wishing I was close enough to hear that awkward conversation, I turned and left the scene behind me.

But I kept thinking about it, this recent widespread documentation of non-actors’ lives on camera.  We want to peek into a “normal” life like a fly on the wall, assuming that just because the person has eight kids or a job in fashion means that they are somehow more worthy of our time than, say, our own lives.  We label it “reality” while these previous non-celebs hook themselves up to microphones and shoot that scene again with different lighting.

And then I thought about my own tendency to perform, even though a camera hasn’t documented me since WSFA local news interviewed me after I won the 1989 Alabama State Spelling Bee.  But I say and do things all the time with the awareness of the possibility that others are watching.  Like wondering what you’re thinking as I write these words.  Both of you.  Like dressing to impress, glossing over pain, hiding mistakes.  All too often I have lived my life like a camera WAS following me around, and I really wanted to get good ratings.  In this age of blogs and Twitter and Facebook and endless ways to let people know what you’re up to, it will always be a challenge for someone like me to not make it all about performing for others.  “Someone like me” meaning a person who has a deeply ingrained tendency to seek others’ approval.  So deeply ingrained that lately, as I’ve been seeking it less and just living (thank you, grace) I wonder if everyone else is aware of my seeking their approval less.  Wow.  Meta-approval-seeking.  And yet the truth remains that only one person has his eye on me all the time, and his approval has already been secured.  And not by anything I’ve done.  The praise of the praiseworthy, as Tim Keller would say.

Because it is EXHAUSTING to constantly try to prove to others that “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all okay!”  Recently I actually stopped and watched the action on the Gossip Girl set as they filmed.  (I seriously do not stalk movie sets, just celebrities.  I’m not crazy.  I’m okay.  You’re okay.  WE’RE ALL OKAY HERE, OKAY?)  I use the word “action” loosely, because within an hour they had maybe filmed five minutes’ worth of material.  It was boring, and tedious!  Prep, shoot, adjust light, fix hair, reshoot.  It reminded me of how much effort I used to put into making my life look presentable.  What Sue Monk Kidd calls “the small, tedious work of maintaining and protecting.”  And it made me thankful that though I’ll always struggle with some things, at least now when I trip on the sidewalk, as I did while walking home, I can (usually) laugh first rather than quickly look around to see if there are witnesses.  Or cameras.