the dailypic 5114 yr15 001 Þetta Reddast

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.”

tr/trp