Tomorrow, I turn 37. Now that I have traversed the divide between mid and am slowly sliding into what I begrudgingly must admit is my late thirties, I can’t help but feel like I’m a teenager all over again. My chin blossoms with acne at inopportune times. I struggle to make friends, feeling like no one really understands me in this current season of my life. My soul pulls me toward a maverick mindset–-I ache for nonconformity–but the circumstances of life raising a child in suburbia tell me I should probably fall in line, for her sake if for nothing else. I have braces and all the glamorous things that go along with that like random drooling in public and a unique brand of halitosis that feels relatively unavoidable.
I do not feel like myself. I do not feel like someone else. I feel stuck in a very uncomfortable middle.
In May of this year, I celebrated my ten year anniversary of being a full time freelance photographer. This was something I’d really looked forward to. Entrepreneurs don’t get holiday parties or teambuilding events or annual awards, we only have these milestones to look forward to—markers of both success and the passage of time. To me, 10 years really meant something. It felt like I did something. I beat the odds.
And with just weeks to go until that magical day in May, the bottom fell out. A mixture of a bad Q1, some unexpected expenses, and the unprecedented nature of both of the above instigated a financial assault on my business. Almost overnight I went from everything being fine, to being unable to pay myself, to being unable to pay others, to wondering how long I could float just above the surface before I’d have to let go and drown completely.
But the strangest part was the phone kept ringing. At a staggering pace, actually. I was still taking tons of sales calls, cranking out estimates, holding dates on calendars. But inevitably one by one, the dates would get pulled, the client would choose someone else or pull the plug on the project completely, or strike the budget to a place where I would actually lose money by taking the job.
We already built content for the anniversary, it was still technically happening, so I publicly celebrated this milestone I had waited so long and worked so hard to achieve, while inward it felt like a farce. Sure, I had made it to 10 years, but it sure wasn’t looking like I would make it to 11.
What ensued in the months to follow was best described as rough. Faced with an uncertain future, it was my time to answer the question, “What do you do when the dream dies?” I know it sounds dramatic, but it did feel like a death. My life since I was 18 has for better or worse revolved around this job, this identity. Could I be whole without it? Could I be okay without it?
The unraveling revealed to me how much of what I do is driven by my ego. This job makes me feel like I matter in the world. It makes me feel important. Sometimes it makes me feel cool even though I am most certainly not.
But if I’m honest, most days this job doesn’t feel like it matters. It’s hard to make a case that you’re spending your time making a difference in the world when most of what you do is aiding in the encouragement of people buying things they don’t need, eating things they shouldn’t eat, and distracting themselves in a sea of endless stimuli.
I grieved. I felt confused. The phone was still ringing. There were glimmers of hope on the horizon. But did what did I even want anymore? More importantly, what did I need? I asked God for signs and answers, I pleaded for a clear path. At times I even requested that my life be completely blown apart so that I could understand what was required of me.
Ultimately, I never got any of those things. The phone kept ringing, at times at an explosive pace. Clients came back around. We figured it out. I breathed what should have felt like sighs of relief, but mostly felt like briefs pauses waiting for the next shoe to drop.
It’s been an uncomfortable year. I’ve had to let go of a lot of things. A lot of ideas about what I thought certain relationships should look like. A lot of notions about who I really am and where I find meaning. It’s been humbling for sure, and makes me feel even more like that awkward adolescent finding my place in the world.
I was recently reminded that a normal reaction to doing something new is to be compulsively and acutely revolted by any and every thing to do with it, and somehow that helped. When we traverse new territory, we expect to feel that pit-in-your-stomach uncertainty, what we might be less willing to expect is that it feels so scary it feels wrong. The key is not to run. To give it time to marinate to see what’s really afoot.
Middle school years exist for a reason. There has to be a bridge between childhood and the beginnings of adult life. It’s not fun, but it’s necessary to go through the uncomfortable middle in order to be ready to accept what’s next.
So I’m here, doing my best to keep asking what is required of me, and trying (oh so trying) to accept whatever answer or non-answer comes next.
