The Year in Between

  It's weird how the little things can make a difference.  I have been having a CRAZY long week, very busy and very tiring and very stressful.  It's left me in a blah mood recently.  But today in the mail, I got the calendar I worked up of random shots from '09 (in lieu of an SMG calendar...  RIP, awesome photo project).

  After showing it around (because I am a narcissist), I hung it on the wall and got back to the billionty things I had to do.  But every few minutes, I would find myself glancing at the New Year's Masquerade collage I picked for January.  And those familiar faces, done up all pretty and aesthetically arranged, made me happy.  No less stressed or tired, but it literally brightened my day every time I looked up.

  This is point one.

  A few days ago, my talented friend Angie started her own blog.  I highly recommend you check it out, but in the meantime I want to quote a part of it-

A "belief window" is basically an invisible "window" hanging in front of a person's face and through which he or she perceives the world. Each person's window contains written statements of their own beliefs, and those statements are created by that person's own experiences. For example, if I had been bitten by a dog when I was small, the words "dogs are dangerous" would be written in my window, and I would view all dogs through it. Whether or not the statement is true doesn't matter...

When I read that, I had an actual flash of inspiration.  I should mention that I always have a photo or three floating around in my head; but this idea was different.  I felt compelled to photograph Angie through that 'window', and instantly knew just how I wanted it to look.  Not only that, I instantly knew why I wanted to create that picture.  It wouldn't be the first time I've photographed something intentionally emotional, honest, maybe even painful.  The last such project was hard on me, and although I still get a pang of nerves every time someone sees them, I'm proud of the non-traditionally beautiful results.  It was cathartic. 

  And that's point two.

  Thus ends my official hiatus of my un-official obsession.  Not only am I planning a way to get to Houston and photograph Angie and her window, I'm working on a personality-specific version for some of myself as well.  Other ideas continue to pile up in my head of course, but I want to do this one project first.  I think a little open expression is probably just what I've been craving.  But after that, who knows?  I'll need another whole years' worth of perfect shots, once 2011 rolls around...  If only to liven up my desk when I have two mondays in a row.

P.S. Special thanks to my wonderfully eccentric friend who took the quirky New Year's shots used above.  Love ya, Raighe!

Slightly unscheduled

  I remember when I was a kid, I could make things happen just by wishing.  This isn't some weird half-memory of something that happened once when I was little, this is an actual fact.  When I really wished for something at the very bottom of my heart, it would come to me.  I remember eight inches of snow falling in one night, closing all the schools, when I had an unfinished book report due the next day.  I remember envisioning choosing the 'queen' card when my eighth grade english class was doing a mock royal court for our Shakespeare unit; and then I walked into class and it happened just the way I'd wanted.  (I probably should have imagined a bit longer on that one; it turned into a humiliation, but that's another story.)  I remember dreaming a perfect day, and then waking up to it, piece after piece just as I'd expected.  I thought I was a super-hero.
  I still daydream.  All the time, if I'm being completely honest.  But I haven't had a dream, a thought, even an inkling, effervesce into existence in years.  I don't like to think about why, but every once in a while something outside brings it all to the surface and I have to acknowledge the thought: I don't long for anything anymore.  All my dreams, all my wants, all my hopes are half-way. 

  Sometimes I feel like I want a really normal life.  Soccer mom/trophy wife with a white picket fence, two kids, a dog and all that.  But I can't wish for it.  The idea of a life defined by permanence and dependance on someone else stirs up the knee-jerk desire to rebel that I lived on as a teenager.  I rail against even the idea, in my own daydreams.  No matter how much I would like to be loved and love simply, I can't really give my whole self up to it.
  On the far other end of the spectrum, sometimes I want to sell my house and everything in it, quit my steady 9-to-5-with-benefits, and move to somewhere I've never been.  I don't know what I'd do there.  It wouldn't really matter.  (I'd like to say I would be a philanthropist, saving the world one child at a time like a rather inspring acquaintance of mine, but that isn't honestly me.  I think I would be more selfish, and create, and maybe if I was lucky my creation would matter to someone.)  But I can't wish for that either.  I've tried this route.  Though I wouldn't trade my time living in China for anything in the world, I don't think I could do it again.  It was wonderful, but torturous and trying.  I remember it proudly, rather than fondly.  And so I can't visualize the pieces falling in to place to try that route again.

  So instead, I zig zag through my own existence, reaching for one goal and then another without any certainty I'll want them once attained.  Time speeds by.  And sometimes I just can't remember what the point of life is.  And so, every so often, I have to boil it all down to bones and figure it out all over again.
  (And I have to make a sidenote here.  I don't mean to offend, but the answers I grew up with for this eternal human question simply don't work for me.  I don't see my life as a test.  And because no two people are the same, no two lives are the same, and therefore no two end-goals should really be the same.  Simply to 'be good and have a family' is not the answer for everyone.  Besides, I am good, and I will someday have a family.  It's still not enough of an answer for me.)

  So I remind myself: Experiences matter.  The days that you remember because they were wonderful, when you were sublimely content and everything ahead was clear for a bit.  The days you remember because they were awful, because life ground you into the dirt and expected you to give, and you didn't.  The stories you can tell once you're through.
  Passion matters.  Anything that makes you happy or angry or inspired enough to scream it from the rooftops.  Anything that makes you want to strive harder.  Everything that makes you love.
  Interaction matters.  All the little things that pass from one person to another; a glance, a touch, a confidence.  On a more basic level, the contact of two bodies. 
  Things that do not matter:
  money (except where it can be used to surround yourself with the people who bring you happiness, or create the situations which will force growth and make memories)
  the judgement or expectations of others
  fear (except when it drives you to overcome)
 
It's funny, but after I re-order these things in my head, I feel calm.  It doesn't make my future any easier to discern.  I won't wish for any certain thing with the single-mindedness I had as a kid.  I know I will still scramble after a million different goals, trying to cram a dozen endings into my one simple life.  And I know that there will be inevitable regret at the end, that I didn't have time for it all.  But I suppose that is my ultimate goal: to live so that, when I die, my only regret is leaving so soon.