Too Old For This

They say that you grow wiser as you grow older.

Is there a fixed ratio for this? How old do you have to be to be wise enough for your age? Can you stop growing older if you don’t want to grow any wiser?

I pour a cup of coffee while I think about this. Not decaf, because I don’t do decaf. In fact, I don’t think caffeine affects me the same way it affects other people. So, no decaf.

I am already in my forties. I don’t need to hide it. In fact, I’d like to think that I have already outgrown my youth. I would just like to think that, really. I don’t think I have outgrown it at all. It is, in fact, my birthday today and I have all these different thoughts banging around in my head. I feel like I am going to explode soon.

And I guess that’s why I’ve started yet another blog.

I’ve written and re-written a lot of stuff in my life. Some are good. A lot of them are bad. And there is a handful that is really, really terrible. And this is based only on my own opinion. In the hopes of collecting my thoughts, I created this new blog where I just sit down and sip a cup of whatever and write snippets of what is going on in my head.

It might be good. It might be bad. Heck, it might even be really, really terrible. It is difficult for a person like me to be satisfied with what I do. I don’t want a half-baked story. But I also don’t have the patience to write a darn novel. I hope that by writing in snippets, I am able to burrow through what my brain is actually trying to say.

“Me”

Introductions

I think it is appropriate, for any aspiring wannabe to give a glorious self introduction. What an introduction shall include, I believe, is a lot of posh-kosh and all those things that define how I want people to imagine me to be.

My name is Michael, and like most Michaels, people call me Mike (by default) – although my real nickname is Mackie. I also understand that there are probably a million Michaels in this world and I am but a speck in those numbers. If you care enough to know, I am that Michael which authors the posts on this blog (and a few others if you really must know). I am far from being young and far from being old, and you won’t label me as middle-aged yet either. I am simply ageless (in my definition, ageless is someone who has opted to forget about his age).

Like a majority of people, I also have a day job. You know, the kind that gets you by. You clock in, do some work, and you clock out. Typical. Boring. That’s how most people think of it. But beyond that, I do have a life. I have a beautiful wife whom I love very much and I have a son who is defining the rest of my future. I spend most of my time with my family, and nothing is going to change that. I will always put them in front of my priorities. But if for some reason that there is time left for myself, I engage in some “Mackie” time. Things that have grown on me. Things that I love doing. Some people call it a hobby, I call it being Me.

I enjoy photography as much as the next guy. And I have been through stages in my photographic journey since I had my hands on a Canon 1000D. I started my photography chapter with the Canon, and it was one of the most exciting moments of my life. Everything was new to me. I was learning things and found myself (more than once) talking to myself saying “I didn’t know I could do that”. As with anything new, I embraced it as much as I could, until I hit a plateau. I have since traded the 1000D for a Nikon D90, and am now using that as a primary camera. I use my Xperia Z3 as my runabout nowadays and my son has a Olympus Tough point-and-shoot camera for our wet and wild adventures. I guess you could say that we’re pretty much covered (in terms of having a camera everyday).

My plateau was hitting that wall that prevented me from enjoying photography. I was being dragged into technicalities and it was slowing me down. Sure, I was taking better pictures, but when I look at them, I don’t see their souls. It felt empty. I wasn’t in them (both literally and figuratively). I am hoping that writing about it from a fresh perspective will bring back that “thing” that made photography enjoyable for me. And I will bring along anybody who wants to come. So, tag along, won’t you?