The film from Ireland came back this week. I shot three rolls, but only two made it through. Too many X-ray passes at Dublin airport didn’t help, plus the 53-year-old camera has a light leak of its own. Out of it all, I’ve got about twenty usable frames. A few I really love, including this one—a roadside stop in Galway with goats on one side of the hill and Kylemore Lough on the other. I’ll be sprinkling in more shots of castles, donkeys, beehive huts, and locals as I go. There’s something about the perfect imperfections of film. The old camera is off for a tune-up now, and I know I’ll be putting it to use a lot more.

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Seven years ago I visited Iceland for the first time. Back then I heard so many “uhm, why?” type of questions. As I sit here on the last night of my sixth visit, I know ten people who are either here or have been in the previous week. It’s not the secret it once was, and that is great, it deserves to be seen. But that does not stop me from finding the other “secret” spots in the country. That is what this trip was for. I spent days in an area called the Highlands. It is so different from other parts. I will have a longer post on the whole thing as I share more photos from this week. But in short, I saw stuff that was tough to explain, drove roads that were tough to drive, hiked areas that were tough to hike, and did not regret a moment, and hope I am tougher now than before. On the way out of the Highlands, we found these two rams. Just sitting by the dirt road hanging out. I grabbed the camera and headed at them. Rams are not afraid like sheep who run away quicky. So they stood to greet me – they remind me of my dogs to be honest, shaped like Argus with horns. I slowly walked closer and they were fine, posed, I got my photos. I took three more steps closer, and the front one on the left told me that I needed to stop with four quick foot stomps of his foot, reminding me that even after this week, I was not as tough as I thought. Once more, I shot and said ‘thank you’ as I always do to sheep and let them be.

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Written 9/30/23-

I was Seventeen years old, and my English Teacher, Senior year, Mrs. O, woke me up – I slept a lot in her class, she was the first period, and I worked late at a supermarket. – told me randomly, “When you have a birthday with a Zero, it would make sense to write yourself a Eulogy.” I have no idea what we should have been discussing, but I am sure it made no sense to have said that. She would just say stuff especially when I was sleeping. Maybe at the time she was having a Zero birthday herself. Seventeen-year-old me would have guessed she 60 or 70. Today’s me is sure she might have been 40. Maybe 50 tops?  It always stuck with me. I like to break things up, so ten year periods are nice and clean.

With the dailypic blog being 14 years old tomorrow, I have actually done it here, I wrote it for my 40^th and added some content to the 30 and 20s if I had. Tomorrow, I hit 50. Another Zero. As I write this, I am crammed in a van sitting just miles from the Arctic Circle in the Westfjords of Iceland. It is the most remote part of the country, seeing things 39-year-old Tim would be jealous of. Add to that this is my sixth trip here and second in weeks. Now to be honest 39-year-old Tim wanted to go to Iceland, 15 year old Tim wanted to go. He saw a photo of a plane that crashed on a black sand beach and became fascinated. So it is not a stretch. But the world was bigger and unattainable to him. I am getting ahead of myself. The eulogy, though I like the idea of a performance review. The self-evaluation of my last ten years where I am now.

Other than the van where am I? Happy. If happy is a place, I found it. I like to say my 20s I was determined and confused. My 30s, I was angry and frustrated. My 40s were a path to happier times. It took a lot of work though, and I needed those other stages to build off. Remember 80s music? I love 80s music, but those 80, 81, 82 years that music is a mess. Some great stuff in there, but lots of 70s crap hanging on. Bad country, disco, 70s vanilla pop, mixed in with the start of new wave, punk, and hair rock. That was the start of my 40s, the new music was coming, but Conway Twitty sneaks in here and there next to the Police. No offense to Conway Twitty’s fan, but I assume his Mom has passed by now and she is not reading this.

The job was a big issue in my 40s, I despised it, not the one many of you know me for, the one which fed my kids and paid the mortgage. I spent the first eight years of the decade working for the same company. A place I never belonged. Ever. Not one day. And I realized that 5 minutes into day one. I did not belong in corporate altogether, but this was a sub-compartment of that hell. And like all relationships, it was hard to admit it was me, not them. Square peg trying to fit in sand. I discovered panic attacks, I also actually found therapy. I am not ashamed to say both are powerful. Me and the shrinks would work through things, and I would get to the point with the therapist saying, “Have you considered leaving your job? It’s not good for you.” I would always answer “can you write me a prescription that will pay my bills if I leave,” we would laugh, I would then find a new therapist, go through it all again and soon the same thing would be said “so the job”. I repeated that process with three doctors.

During these times at work, I always found solace in family, friends, photography, and travel. I had my business going when I hit 40, but as I hit 50, it is now what I dreamed it would be. It took most of the decade to do that. Build, change, learn, add, subtract, grow, all while holding a full-time job that I never really talked about. And I can admit, without that job supporting me and at the same time annoying me – it was, in the end, a huge help in getting to where I needed to be, a full time photographer as 2021.

In the last ten years, I found that moving around the world is also healthy. Not only for my photography but mentally too. Yes, I have gotten on a track of visiting Iceland too much, but this place feels like home to me. I have comfort when I am here I don’t have other places, it is hard to explain, just works for me. I also visited Cuba, which was life-changing – also hard to explain. In both cases, very different places from not only each other but from where I live. It makes things I thought to be huge and weighted, to be small and light. The center of the universe is not my street, town, state, or country, no matter what I was taught. That huge world is small. What i think or do is a speck of sand in the scheme, and being comfortable with it is nice. From it comes a patience and acceptance I never had. Anger is not as strong if you measure it against a larger good, well mine is at least, you do you.

Add into that decade, I successfully raised two kids (with much help from my wife) to be adults. Both in their 20s now, full-fledged grown up humans, people I can see myself in, that I proudly hand my future over to. I also skew younger as I get older. It is from my kids. I love seeing today and tomorrow through their eyes and hearing how they interpret the past. Also, in what I do, school photos, youth sports, graduations, and senior photos, etc., I get to talk to and know more kids/young adults than many, and I feel better for the world knowing they are taking it over. It makes aging easier when you know the young, and I do not really feel old. I think that this is the sweet spot of the age spectrum, I can see forward and back, there is comfort. And the weight I used to give the past is gone. I was obsessed with history, my 40s taught me to let that go. I was always taught those who don’t know it are doomed to repeat it. I don’t buy that anymore. Ironically using history it self I might make the point that does not work.

Getting back to the fact I am sitting in a van close to the Arctic Circle. As I write, my wife, the accomplice in all this, who I have been married to since I was 24, now over half my life is hers, sleeps in the same van. Tired from a great day of exploring, so many sheep. Ready for three more days of this trip and hopefully another 50 years with me. She has made the last decade work, handling all my ups and downs. Living with me and how I think is not easy, I have driven many crazy, yet there she is, asleep in a van at my request. Putting up with the fact I will have to wake her to proof this long mess, as she does most nights before I “overshare” in a space where I think I am talking to the future and no one else. I look forward to my 50s, so much that I cheated myself of four hours of my 40s –  this year due to a time jump traveling to celebrate in a different time zone. Being in Iceland I will steal a phrase, my favorite phrase from Icelandic, ‘Þetta reddast’ (pronounced “THETTA red-ahst”), I have seen a few translations, and my favorite is “shit just works out.” It really means: it’s all going to work out in the end. Or don’t worry, it’s going to be okay. Maybe the eulogy at 50 would be a short one. A simple one: “Tim was doing okay, he seemed happier, it took him a while to get there, but the trip made it worth it. Þetta Reddast.”

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A long time ago in a manger far, far away…. when you come across an empty manger set up in Bernat’s antique shop and you pick it up knowing you have some figures that could use it this season. A fitting setting for Baby Yoda Grogu.

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There are sheep everywhere, we were told by a farmer that they all actually belong to someone. In the spring they are let go to roam the land, eat grass and do whatever it is sheep do.  They are all tagged and remain the property of the farm that released them. Come fall, all the farmers round up all the sheep and put them in a Hlidarrett Sheephold, there a farmer from each farm goes through all the sheep and put theirs in the holding pen. He was very excited about this event, he said it is a lot of fun… then mentioned it might take longer than it should due to the drinking. There is an old sheephold next to the hotel, so I grabbed some shots tonight as the sky started to cloud up. The drone view really shows the farmers “pens”, from the ground it looks like a bunch of random stone walls, but there is structure to it.

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