The poser who's posing

The scene is this: it's December 1999. I'd just turned 21. I'm working out (check out my biceps!) and keeping my body healthy by good means rather than bad. Life's getting tricky. I've just completed a Bachelor of Arts degree and want to enter the workforce, but am coming up against a wall of knock-backs because the workforce isn't interested in someone with just a Bachelor's degree. So in the meantime I'm working at a petrol station ('gas station' for the US folk) and smiling at fat businessmen as they throw their black AmEx's over the counter, like I'm a nothing. This photo was taken just after I got home from a long shift. Our house was throwing a big pre-Christmas party, before we all split up to our respective families. I'd chucked back three champagnes (in the days when I could) and gone upstairs to do a quick wee. Running back, not to miss the shenanigans happening downstairs, little did I know that one of our guests had commandeered my camera and just as I was rounding the last bend in the stairs, "SNAP!" I like my cheeky expression. I can be quite cheeky and flirty at times, when I'm not sleep deprived and I'm in some sort of 'happy place'. It looks like I'm striking a pose, and I am, kind of, but it's a spontaneous one. I look at it as an example of how, when life may be confusing, there are moments of optimism and happiness when we just stop dwelling on what's beyond our power to change. Like at that moment. So this photo, to me, shows how a balance can be struck between our hopes and our reality. And how not to give up. Because the following year, 2000, was the best damn one I've had. Hanging on, hanging in there, paid off.