what is the so called "mid-life crisis?
I never really understood what people meant when they joked about how someone was going through a "mid-life crisis". It seemed like an incredibly vague concept, mainly because I had trouble determining what even mid-life was. That was many years ago, perhaps in high school, or middle school. I think back then I imagined this crisis as being something that happened to everyone sometime in their 50s, or maybe 60s. Some far off distant future and therefore something I didn't have to worry about yet, or maybe something that I never would have to worry about.
Though as the years passed, I began to wonder, am I in it? Is this crisis not really a crisis at all, but just an over-dramatization of aging, growing? I put so much faith in who I was shaping myself to be in my 20s, I began to think that those were the defining years of my life. I still carry around binders full of negatives of film I shot from those years, always thinking of them as a gold mine of material I made faster than I could realistically process into art. I think I always imagined I was setting myself up back then, by taking photos every day, to have a pretty solid life in my 30s and beyond.
Life is not like that, though. I became enamored with photography as a medium to translate my thoughts, and record my day to day life, not because I wanted to make something of myself back then, or because I want to make something of myself now, or 20 years from now. I chose photography because I valued those moments, and I value my current moments, and want to remember each and every one, if only to just look back and think about how I didn't really know all that I thought I did, or to notice that I wasn't really moving forward back then, but moving in a different direction. Not a wrong turn, or anything like that, but just following a small path verging off of the main road, dimly lit by moon light and humming with an energy that remains hidden in the thickets on either side.
Looking at one of those photos I took 10 years ago, or more, I see exactly who I was, and exactly who the subject was when it was taken. I also see how time has changed me, and can see how I'm continuing to grow and become more sure of my skills and vision. It brings a lot of reservation into my head too, though. I think more about what I don't want to do, and less about doing what I need to do. Its easier to get so caught up in thinking about what you don't want to do, or be, anymore, that you kind of freeze, like how I know I don't want to be a barista anymore, after doing that for 10 years, but I still need a way to bring in a little bit more income. I'm afraid of going backwards, and getting stuck in the past in a career I had made a conscious effort to leave, but the future is still so uncertain that it feels like walking into thin air.
Somehow though, I sincerely feel like despite all the mistakes I've made, and the daily struggle of just trying to see into the next week, that by the time I'm 44, 10 years from now, I'll be a completely different person and looking back at this small blip of time on my radar, all the photos I've taken and journal entries I've written, and feel immensely proud of where I ended up.
I'm in a weird place right now where I don't really know what I'm doing, and I'm struggling in a lot of ways, but somehow, I know that I'm doing everything I should be doing, and holding myself in the way I should be.