They drop your name.. but no one knows your face.

Today I woke up. Not until 4:30 p.m. But like I said, I woke up.

I sat up in my bed, looked out the window to see if the sun was shining yet and then I checked my phone to see what time it was..Before realizing how much of the day I wasted, I noticed that I had a couple missed calls and a couple of text messages waiting for me. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and listened to my voicemails. My friend Dustin had an extra ticket to a Ben Folds show. He thought of me.

I stumbled to the shower and washed off the remains of last night's bartending shift. I accidentally put conditioner in my hair before shampooing it. You should see how healthy it looks.

After my shower I wrapped a towel around my waist, sat down on my bed, said a few things to myself to get my voice warmed up as if I had been awake for hours, and then called my friend in hopes that he still had the ticket to the Ben Folds show. He did. But not just a ticket. He also had a photographer pass. I put my contacts in for the first time in days.

A couple of trains later I arrived at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I've never felt so good to be at the back of such a long line in my life. I made my way to the front eventually and got in another line for will call tickets. Finally I got to the window.

"Hi, my name is Adam Ramsey...my friend Dustin was supposed to be here tonight but he couldn't make it so he called and put the ticket in my name instead....yes..his name is Dustin...it should be under either Epic or Ben Folds...it could also be under American Songwriters Magazine...yes...Cohen..."

She found the pass..I held it in my hand for a minute and just thought to myself, "wow...is this for real...?" I made my way to the next entrance but rather than making my way through a crowd, the security guards made a call on their radio and a personal escort took me through the back halls of the Hammerstein Ballroom into a small gated area off to the side of the stage about 25 feet away from Ben Folds' grand piano. It goes without saying, but while I was waiting for my personal escort the security guards were interested in talking with me..they asked me who I was a photographer for and if I was actually a Ben Folds fan..I told them I was a huge fan and that I worked for American Songwriters Magazine. And so it is, I'm an overnight photographer. Tonight I felt like the world was mine. I felt important for the first time..in a really long time. I had my entire photography career planned in a span of about 20 minutes.

So there I was. Finally on the other side of the rope, or in this case, metal bars and a team of security guards. Ben Folds took the stage and my camera was ready.

At this point it's 3 parts exciting, 1 part sad, and 4 parts ironic . I bought batteries before the show for my camera and for some reason they no longer worked after I took about 10 pictures. I have to say I was a little disappointed to have such an amazing spot for taking pictures and I even had the pass...but I had no camera at this point. All around me were professional photographers with their professional cameras and their professional resumes...

But it didn't stop me from taking pictures.

I turned my camera off, stood on one of the stands they had available to photographers and proceeded to pretend as if nothing was wrong. I held my Canon PowerShot A540 proudly and for all they knew, I was a photographer for Rolling Stone fucking magazine. And it felt great.

And I feel great...even though I didn't wake up until 4:30 p.m...


But like I said...

I woke up.


And at this point in my life... I think that's more important than anything else.