the post about getting older

I have a lot to write, but I don’t know where to start.

That’s always the problem, figuring out what to say and how to say it. What’s too much/not enough/too personal/not personal enough/too funny/not funny enough. I haven’t blogged for a little while because the last few months have been filled with just such overwhelming  journeys, change, joy and maybe some hijinks thrown in for good measure… But the start always eludes me.

I guess I’ll start with today and work my way back a little bit. Today I turned 30 and the experience has been quite different from what movies & TV have led me to believe. The characters always seem so neurotic about getting older, but the last couple of months have done nothing but prepare me for the awesomeness of it. There have been travels to the worlds of yonder (the US & Canada for the wonderful Canada Photo Convention and finally meeting a lot of photographer friends who I’ve only known online), winning of awards (both of my albums submitted won Accolades of Excellence at WPPI), the getting to meet so many amazing couples.

I have to say though, there’s been a lot of happy tears shed at meeting so many friends at Canada Photo Convention and there are many, MANY phone photos of me hugging people whilst crying. It really just is an overwhelmingly awesome feeling to finally get to meet people you’ve been talking to for years. I really can’t express how much that experience and that trip meant to me. Although, I am hoping that the crying photos don’t start mysteriously appearing online. I am not one of those fortunate people who is a pretty crier, I cry and it’s that puffy eyes/snot coming out of nose kind of cry. Pretty criers of the world, I envy you.

With WPPI, I MAY have forgotten when the awards deadline was actually happening and MAY have frantically been sitting there yelling at my computer to “UPLOAD FASTER.” To have both albums that I entered win awards really was the icing on the cake of a wonderful year that was. I’ve always felt like nothing is as important as the story of the day and the way that you tell it, so to have that sort of love reaffirmed by a community of photographers is such a wonderful experience (there may have been tears involved here too, and also a lot of happy dancing).

I feel like there’s so much more to write, but not enough words to describe everything, so with that I bid you farewell as I go and celebrate an ending and a beginning. A new decade and hopefully a lot more happy snotty tears.

Bringing It All Back Home

One minute. That’s exactly how long it takes for everything in your world to change.

One day and you can be in a completely different world.

About a month ago now I left Sydney to fly halfway around the world to what was once my hometown, Belgrade, Serbia. It was unplanned, very last minute and something that needed to happen for family reasons.

I hadn’t been back in 8 years, but it felt like at least 20.

I have thought a lot whether to write about why I was there or not, and honestly I don’t think I can talk about the experience of being there without at least mentioning it. My maternal grandparents both have Alzheimer’s and dementia, and I understood intellectually that they wouldn’t recognise me, but to see the people who have been such an monumental part of my life not know who I was really hit me in a way that I didn’t expect.

It made me appreciate what I have and the people who are in my life right at this very moment a heck of a lot more, because you really don’t know what tomorrow brings and they deserve to know how loved they are and how much I appreciate them all.

I tried to take some time off and photograph both Belgrade and my grandparents place, I have so many fond memories of sitting in their lounge room watching old movies with my grandma, building forts out of their couch cushions with my brother and playing cowboys and indians, or playing hide and seek and thinking I could hide behind their sheer curtains.

It’s amazing how quickly things can change.  One day, and I felt like I was taken back to being that kid.

GHOST TOWN {WPPI}