A Spark, A Flicker, A Flame

“You shouldn’t be working on the weekends.” My bosses keep telling me this. And I keep half-listening to them. It’s hard to explain, it’s not that I’m a workaholic, or that I’m stressed out or feel obligated to be on call all the time. I can’t help it because I’m happy.

I’m really truly happy for the first time in a very long time. And I wasn’t sure this day would ever come.

Work has always been inextricably linked to self-worth in my life. Maybe that’s because I was an artist. Or maybe it’s because at my core I believe we all exist to contribute to the whole. Growing up I never thought about having children or getting married. But I did dream of work.

Of course, those were different dreams.

And that was a different time.

Over the past two years I’ve slowly let photography back into my life. At first through work and later, much later, I found myself picking up my camera again. For a long time I flinched when someone called me an amazing photographer. I still find it quite hard to talk about at times, but I’m getting better. Slowly but surely something inside of me is healing.

The decision to stop pursuing a career in photography was agony. I could see it happening in slow motion. My heart seized and at night I would shake with giant sobs. I could not reconcile the desperation I felt to cling to the path I felt was the sole thing I could contribute to the world with the reality that the industry had changed. Papers were closing, Instagram was flourishing, and camera phones were seen as a suitable replacement for trained professionals. Suddenly the ground beneath my feet was gone. Years of schooling, thousands of dollars, working myself to exhaustion… for nothing.

My camera had become an extension of my body. But it was also a reminder of my failure. My portfolio languished and as time went on I picked apart the flaws in all of my shots. I could see no way out of the hole I was in. At the time I remember feeling like my spark was missing.

At my lowest I reached out to a friend in the film industry hoping to change paths. He told me that their office was hiring a photo expert, but that they only wanted 10s to work in the office. It was “too depressing” to look at ugly chicks all day. Later on (when I last went to him for advice) he told me that he was too busy test driving BMWs to take my call.

Writing helped, marginally. It had always felt like a home inside myself, and so I took it up again in earnest. I wrote a book. And rewrote the book.

My friend’s movie got a ton of press, and I watched from afar as his career rose.

But still my feet couldn’t find purchase.

I cried the day I took a job working in interior design. And I cried when I left that job after a long run of sexual harassment. I flung myself back into the only thing I knew and took a job I swore I never would again, working in a photo lab. Every day was like confronting my open wound. I surprised myself with my knowledge. Falling back into familiar rhythms, settling myself into photoshop and print production.

My first job at 17 was working in a photo lab. To find myself back there at 37, in the same town I had been trying to leave my whole life, was like hitting a reset button.

But it wasn’t the same. I found myself frustrated and dreaming of opening my own lab. How much would it take to buy a studio? Could I be a teacher? The language of it rolled off my tongue so easily. Words and processes I had buried bubbled up to my lips with ease.

Finally one day when I picked up my camera it didn’t hurt anymore. I felt the tiniest flickering inside.

The following week I got a call.

Come meet some people you’ve never heard of, who do a thing you didn’t know existed, to do a job you have no training for, in a city you’ve never been to.

A proposition that quite frankly was insane. Why would I leave a career I had two decades experience in, during a pandemic, to do something I wasn’t even sure I could actually do. Only a fool would do that.

But there, where I least expected to find it, in a room by the river, I found my spark.

People may argue that work life balance is important, and I don’t disagree. But there is a difference between feeling you have to do something and finding joy in getting to do it. When you have dwelled so long in a life without that purpose it feels like being able to breathe again.

My work is not glamorous. I will never shoot for Rolling Stone or walk a red carpet. It’s not even something particularly difficult to do. But for some reason it’s brought my spark back to me. I’m not sure that I understand that reason yet, but I am ever so grateful.