Next summer

I wrote this summer last year, and at the time it was such a wild dream. To do anything other than my office job seemed impossibly out of reach. But eventually curiosity won out over fear. Reaching, and seeing what would happen. And it happened.
All of these dreams, and more and more and more. More incredible and life changing and humbling than I ever dreamed.

Here is your reminder, that even when the things your soul demands you to do are more challenging and terrifying than you thought they could be, to never give up reaching. Let your curiosity be bigger than your fear.

Feel it all.

SCEPTICAL / HOPEFUL

I dreamt about Mum and Dad last night, we were on a beach holiday or something and the air was cool. Not summer. They were both softer, quietly confident. Dad died in his sleep and Mum was heartbroken because she loved him. I was rocked because he'd been the best Dad in the world.
I woke up and realised I'm not just sad for all that isn't, I'm sad for all that won't be. And try as you might to stitch some semblance of 'family' back together, we'll never share grief like that. Those dark beautiful moments will never be. I've thought about how our weddings will be different. Graduations and babies and celebrations. It never crossed my mind that we lose out on the sad moments too.

What happens when love isn't love anymore? Are you supposed to go on? Pretending? What happens when one person wants out and one person wants in, and you both made a promise that you were all in. For all of time.

What happens though, if you're not the person you were when you promised that? What if they're a different person from the one you promised to? We are physically different. Emotionally. Spiritually. There are loop holes.
But a promise doesn't make you love someone. The decision to love comes long before the promise.

I am so wary of all the potential for two people to hurt each other. And yet so convinced that it's in the relationships that our souls blossom. Giving your life to someone as they give you theirs, that's beautiful. Even at the start it's beautiful. And in my quest to live the heck out of life I want this thing too. I want to figure out how to be with someone and really be. All I am and all they are together. Like my dream job in Africa, find out that my dream boy is real effing reality. Bloody hard and soul stretching. Sacrifice and not all you thought it would be, but so much more and still not enough. But here you are and you are here so live the crap out of it.

The point was never to fill yourself up so you add up to enough. It's to pour it out, pour it out, pour it out. And you'll never do enough of that either. Give and take, give and take. Find the balance in the imbalance. Rest in that beautiful horrible surety that nothing will ever be enough. And that is enough.

Beautiful

This is what it's like: the sweet clean smell of the operating theatre, where I'm dressed in pants 5 sizes too big for me and this wild hair is tucked under a colourful hat and I'm not sweating for the first time all day because this is the only place with air conditioning. I forgot to put my mask on and a nurse tells me off.
This is where you look pain in the face.
I'm confronted by the fact that we are cut apart so easily. I didn't want to know we weren't invincible but we are. Skin and bones. With souls. Someone tell me how that works?
Emmanuel got burnt because boiling water fell on him. Now he can't bend his elbow and the skin on his arm looks marbled. He is old enough to know what's going on and he looks around with big wild eyes, and struggles with the anaesthetist who is wearing a hat that says 'relax!' but I think about how it's in English and he won't know what that means.
Seeing the inside of someone's arm is surreal. I don't know what half of it means but I can see bones and tissue and muscle and fat. Not much fat on Emmanuel's little arms.
I take a photo and the scrub nurse laughs and says "I don't think his Mum will want to be seeing that!"
When did this become beautiful to me? This pain and ugliness - for something good. Skilled hands that know better than Emmanuel's every instinct that this is good. That the discomfort of the present comes right before restoration.
And it's beautiful.

Wild Friday

It's always good to revert to a bit of scribbling, on a copy of a copy of an old photo that was already scribbled on. This used to be my favourite photo, it still is. The oldest and the youngest, standing between the kitchen and the family room. I was fifteen and she was a baby. I was about to grow up; so was she. Mum's new house doesn't have a family room, the kitchen cupboards aren't ugly green. There's her highchair, I'm wearing that hoodie I loved. The way we were won't change (love) the way we were won't stay the same (here). 

From the middle

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. - Ira Glass

Feel it all

I quit my job a week ago, because it's time to chase this dream. 

What a relief. What an absolute relief.

Five jobs, two and a half years, three cities, two countries. 

Here's what I've learnt:

From living in another country

People matter. So much. 

From mopping floors

Humility. To see that I am not too good for this kind of work at all, that having a degree didn't make me above hard work. And determination. That while I was mopping those floors I was going to think bloody hard about where I was headed and how to get myself there.

From working in a shopping mall

The value of silence. And patience, endless patience with those who require it.

From a job title that is related to my degree

The status this gives you, and how meaningless it is. That the dream job out of university wasn't the dream. And it didn't have to be either. 

From an office environment

How to collaborate. How to compromise. How to ask for a payrise. How to back myself. 

From a healthy pay packet

Money gave me freedom but it didn't make me free.

From redundancy

Nothing is certain. Not even your steady job. That if you need a kick in the pants you're going to get it ok. Jump off the bridge or be pushed. The water is exhilarating and you'll come up screaming but my word it is better than teetering at the edge forever and ever amen. 

From another retail job

That you will always be provided for. How to ride a bus. To have integrity. To keep being sure of something more than this. To voice your opinions. To act with grace despite feeling the opposite. To be assertive. To know your worth.

And here I am.

Twenty-two. I have a camera and a computer and a lot of feist and courage. All the backing in the world and finally, finally enough trust in myself to stand up and say.

I AM A PHOTOGRAPHER.

Hear me roar.

Hell yes I feel it all. The weight of this moment - and all of the moments that have added up to it - is not lost on me.

At last it all makes sense.

Bring it on.