June 4, 2014

Duality


I feel like most days I am living a dual life, and I must admit that the energy and force of will that it takes to switch back and forth between the two is becoming more than I can handle.
On one hand, I am the person most of my readers on this blog and on the internet know. I’m the artist, the photographer who is constantly going out on adventures, meeting new people, creating images, working diligently developing film and editing photographs. I’m the deep and emotional yet care free person who can convince a woman to fly thousands of miles and take pictures with me for a week. I’m the image maker with thousands of followers and an infinite number of friends.
Then on the other hand there is the regular me, the boring me. There is the guy who goes to an office job every single day and works on zoning permits and spreadsheets. There is the guy who is actually entertained by the stock market and gets the exact same haircut every two months because it takes too much effort to change it. There is the guy who goes home, pulls bills out of the mailbox, and eats frozen dinners alone because he can’t cook to save his life. There is the guy who drinks just a little too much, is socially awkward, has bad taste in music, and often falls asleep with pants on because he is too lazy to do anything else at the end of the day.
A lot less people want to know the regular boring me.
It seems that everyone in my life knows one side or the other, but never both. That fact alone I could handle. What gets to me most is that I can’t help but have the sense that nobody out there wants to know both sides. Those who meet me as the care free artist, the crazy photographer – they become painfully disappointed when they find out I have a boring regular life too. Then there are those who meet me as the office drone, the straight laced corporate worker – they become scared and run as fast as they can when they find out I have a life as a photographer. I am always being pulled completely one way or the other and never embraced as the whole person that I am. In my brain I am the complete package, but to everyone else I am either one or the other. Looking back through my life, I feel like each and every person I have known has kept one side or the other at a distance, never fully accepting all of me. They just see the side they want to and I inevitably disappoint them when I try to be my entire self.    
I’d be curious to hear if there are other creative types out there who have this problem, and if so, how did you overcome it?   

Camera: Fuji GA645zi
Film: Fomapan 100
Location: Portland, OR

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