Parallels
A modern day photographic marathon story.
This post didn’t quite start out the way I had intended it to. It had started out as a directionless message about being stuck and in an endless cycle of nothing to write. But as I wrote, I began to see some things that I hadn’t connected together until now.
Over the last year, I hadn’t found much of a reason to write. Not because I’ve been lazy, but that I’ve not been as creative as I would like to be. In truth, I’ve been preoccupied with so many other things in life that writing here has become a bit of a chore. It’s rather unfortunate that think that a place that I love expressing my photography in has become a burden to the rest of my life. Or is it the other way around?
It doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything. Writing and posting have become second fiddle to other things. For the past couple of years I’ve slowly been trying to improve myself mentally and physically. Re-teaching myself resilience and the ability to do things as I continue to age. Believe it or not, I’m not as young as I used to be. I know. Shocker!
In recent years, I’ve found myself trying to improve my physical health. That meant a lot of exercise and (trying) to watch what I eat. I had goal to live to 100. But not just to live to that age, I wanted to have the freedom of movement. I didn’t want to be stuck in some chair as some decrepit old man watching the world go by.
It’s been a slow journey, but I’m enjoying the progress. Like many new things, we all tend to enjoy the early parts of the journey. It’s new, and the improvements are quickly evident, it feels good. In the beginning, you experiment, you try different things and eventually settle in to something that you enjoy and find comfortable. However, those comfortable paces become easy and you slow down. You plateau and the next thing you know, you are sleepwalking (so to speak).
In my previous years, I’d completed a number of marathons and half marathons, but back then my obsession was simply to run them. Simply to get better, faster. There was no long term health initiative. When I had started, the journey to eventually running a marathon felt like leaps and bounds. After a few years of doing races, I grew tired of them and I stopped. Not just marathons, but running altogether. I retreated. Because I didn’t know what I was running for. I didn’t have an end goal.
That was it, I didn’t have an end goal in my photography. Photography to me was simply the act of doing. Yes there was some creative intent, but I had lacked the same thing that I had missed in my running. An end goal. Photography wasn’t just about the creative expressions or the desire to tell a story. It needed some long term purpose. And I needed to be sure that whatever I was doing, I would have to keep an eye on my photographic diet. Not watching or reading things that would add to my photographic weight, but being purposeful about what I consumed. That meant shutting down those YT videos that really have no meaning to me.
My physical training has meaning. Running, hiking, strength training, etc… it all has to do with the same goal. To make myself into a stronger and fitter person in the long run. Because I want something greater than what I am today. Someone that can live to 100 and still be able to walk and do things on their own two feet. The challenge of just doing with the intent of a lifetime goal.
So what are my photographic goals? What are they in the short and long term? I have an idea, but I think it needs more thought. And it isn’t something for everyone, it’s simply something for me. It will be a personal marathon. Something to strive for and to achieve. Only I will know if I’ve reached that finish line. And that’s OK because it’s just a one person race.
“There will be days when I don’t know if I can run a marathon, but there will be a lifetime knowing that I have.”
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photography is (first and most important) for you! the rest will follow. wish you all the best!
The Incline is such a beast! Congrats on finishing it. That false summit, IYKYK.