Still old and working through imposter syndrome
My birthday still don't mean shit.
Imposter syndrome is weird. You’d think it would go away with age, but it’s rearing its fugly head because it feels like there’s more at stake, chiefly a reputation, ego, and self-esteem. I think when you’re younger, you can shrug that shit away because you’re not an established person. There was still room to disappear, move, and reemerge as a totally different person. In your 40s? Not so much.
As I alluded to in my last post, I have a photo that’s being featured in the Bumbershoot Vanishing Seattle exhibit this weekend. In the spirit of places lost to time, Amazon, and condos, it was a picture of 2nd Time Around Records, which was part of a larger photo set of Seattle-area record stores I was reviewing for (the now defunct) Beat Attic.com.
I dropped off my photo the other day and saw some incredibly amazing work. Suffice to say that I was immediately humbled and found myself swimming in self-doubt. While I’ve been taking pictures for a long time, I feel like I’ve only been relatively serious about it in the last year and taking an even more focused interest in the last nine months. Do I deserve this honor? I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to take this incredible opportunity and not fuck it up. So yeah, I’ll be around, kissing hands and shaking babies.
If you’ve found me through the exhibit and you liked what you saw, hey, check out my zine WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!?. Available at Third Place Books Ravenna and Seward Park and my bigcartel store.
Last week, I turned 40-something ish. I hate MY birthday specifically. My mom’s birthday is a week after mine so for most of my life, we’ve had joint celebration in which the focus was her, so I’ve just learned to not really give a shit about my own birthday. A little over a decade ago, I was dating someone and she encouraged me to really own my birthday and have some fun with it, which I tried. It was fun for that month and I’ve tried to recreate that feeling, but to very little success. This year, I reached out to some folks, all of whom had full calendars, so I rolled solo to various record stores. The day before, however, I did go out to Central Washington to shoot a motel for an upcoming issue of WAIDWML, so here are some Polaroids from that trip:
