I finished the rough draft of my secret project today a little earlier than I expected, and I haven’t gone to a movie in a long while so I decided to go and see Julie & Julia. It was cute and funny like people had told me it would be, but what really stuck out was the theme on blogs and the funny way that she was so excited and energized by the people who commented and the other hundreds who didn’t comment but watched on her life through her writings and posts. When her husband mentioned how narcissistic it was, it got me to thinking.
Why do we blog? I think it is really just a rat race idea. The main people who come here are photographers… looking for inspiration? Maybe to borrow a pose or location? Or is it because a person really could be this interested in your otherwise, mostly boring life? I have thought about quitting my blog before, but then my ego decided that I wasn’t allowed to. I’ve always blogged so much because I was afraid that people would just absolutely forget me if I quit blogging, and they would move onto the next photographer who blogged their life away… and forget me. Does anyone else out there feel like it is a rat race and you are doing all of this just to keep your head above the water in the game of photography? Don’t get me wrong, it is incredible marketing and a great way to revisit the events in your own life, but surely there is more than this.
I’m in a strange mood and wanted to actually write on my blog instead of just post more photos of a session or trip. I’ve been going through a lot of thought recently on what I really want in life. Photography is an amazing way to make a living doing something fun and new everyday, but when you get too busy and stretched a little too thin then it just isn’t the same. I think most people will get there after doing the same thing for 6 years, or maybe it’s just me. Wow, 6 years. I have been photographing a wedding almost every weekend for the last 6 YEARS. That is hard to fathom. No wonder I’ve been daydreaming about life on an Oklahoma farm with a pond and a rope swing. I can almost feel the warm light at the end of the tunnel. It’s funny because I was telling my sister how I wanted the rest of my life to play out and it happened to be using a backyard studio teaching 6 different lessons a day to whoever would come: horseback riding, photography, how to play the hammer dulcimer(something I’ve always wanted to learn since hearing Enter The Worship Circle), cooking, art class and Spanish lessons. I want to do a myriad of other things in my life besides run in the rat race of photography.
Do you know when you go off to college to “find yourself”, I think I’m finally settling into who I will be for the rest of my adult life. I skipped that normal experience for late teens and early 20s by jumping right into the work world and marriage at 17 and 19, and so now that I’ve been in a routine without much change in the last year or so I’ve had a lot of time to think about those things you do when in college, what you want to do when you grow up and who you want to be. I’m such a dreamer. I can’t imagine not having dreams or ambitions in life and running hard towards them. I want to be a missionary, a world traveler, I want to take clinics and learn everything about my latest fad that I’m interested in. It would be neat to be a photographer, cowgirl, house flipper, professional cook, bilingual, christian.
Now I’m totally rambling.
I just cooked a gourmet 4 course meal with some friends and am so full that it’s probably pushing even weirder thoughts into this blog post of mine.
