Today I turn 27.
Not 21, not 25, or 30, just somewhere in the middle. I decided to write this blog post, to write about what I've accomplished up until this point in my young life. I started to feel as if I was making a list of names and titles, and decided that today, that doesn't matter. For me, birthdays have always been a milestone for me to determine the hurdles and feats I've managed to overcome, and count the things I've done in my career. At first, this gave me the drive to reach goal after goal, constantly setting myself up for the next extensive plan I'd come up with for myself. But what I started to find was, this motivation started becoming a bad habit, because age is just a number.
A mentor of mine a few years ago, saw my potential. She said, "by the rate you're going you're going to have accomplished everything you wanted to do by 27". I took it as a compliment, which was what she intended, and it's been in the back of my mind ever since. Here I am at age 27, self-taught photographer, living in NYC, traveling almost every month, and became a wife. Do I feel I've accomplish everything? The answer is, I've managed to check off everything from an imaginary list I made for myself 7 years ago when I discovered I wanted to be a photographer. A month or two ago, I read an amazing article on GQ from Sarah Paulson:
"If my career had turned out like the fantasy I had of what it was going to be, it would never have made me happy. But I couldn't have known that until it didn't happen. I found a success that is so much bigger and deeper and better, and it's because it happened later. If any of what I'm having happen now—the successes—would have happened to me when I was younger, I would have been ruined. Because when you're young, and things come super easily to you, and you have success right out of the gate, you're liable to think that's how it actually works. You start to think you don't need to be fully prepared or committed to have these things meet you."
For me, being 27 today means another year discovering another layer of who I am, and what makes me happy. To sum it all up, these photos represent the person I've unveiled to myself. I know whoever reads this and sees these won't ever get the true meaning. But, that my friends, is the art of a photographer.
Location:
Joshua Tree, CA
Styling | Christina Emilie