Reflecting

At the end of every year, I begin to feel nostalgic for all the things that flew past me. I’m getting older, and less things matter to me than they used to. I’ll be 39 this coming year and I have started to think about things so differently. I long for my younger, more carefree days. But, I begin thinking about my future and how I will live my older and declining years to come. I am not sure when my brain made the switch from carefree to caring. But, it has.

As a senior portrait photographer, I see so many differences in this generation of kids vs. my own. So many more opportunities are available now than when I was younger. I also think I may have been more serious about school or my continued education based on what I know now. You just can’t tell a kid anything, am I right?

I’ve experienced life when you had to wait by the telephone in your kitchen for someone to call you and tell you they wanted to play. We played outside for hours because we didn’t have video games or reasons to be indoors. Then, we got cable and there was the thrill of having movies when you wanted to watch them. Eventually we got a gaming system (Intellivision to be exact) and my dad, who was in the IT field brought home a modem…the kind you put the phone receiver into it so it would hear the dialing and pings and zips. But still, we weren’t obsessed with it. We didn’t have social media to tell our every thoughts and feelings. Where I lived, fast food wasn’t an option. We had to wait until the next day at school to find out about a new love, drama between friends, or what was going on that weekend.

Now, I watch how instant it all is. It’s great. It’s also bad. I see people making assumptions about the latest post on Facebook possibly being about them. I see hatred spewed on Twitter (I am not innocent of this). I just see a lot of behavior that gives off the vibe that people feel entitled and owed something. What have we become? The revenge and vindictive behaviors are such a turn off. You know what? Life is good. It’s not perfect…it’s good. When did that stop being okay for people? My sister was murdered…the worst kind of torture that any one person could ever go through. I am not taking out revenge or spewing hatred all over the place about this. And, yet, because someone was “saying something about so-in-so on Facebook” we take to the airwaves of social media and start tearing people apart and hurting their feelings. When in an instant, you never called them, or asked them what their story truly was. Maybe we all need to be reminded of my own tragedy to realize that life is good, and we have to move on from the painful things. We need to be more thankful in our lives for the simple pleasures and gifts.

Getting deep about a subject isn’t something I tend to enjoy doing. I don’t entrust a lot of details about my own personal life with others much anymore. It’s just another fault I have as I get older. 2011 taught me a lot about people that are closest to me, friendships, and online acquaintances. What we do with what we’ve seen and experienced in our lives is our choice. It speaks volumes to many.

So, as we come to a close on the year, remember, life is good. It may not be perfect. It might not be how you think it should. But we’re here and alive. Ask yourself, will this matter a year from now? Here’s to 2012. I welcome all it’s great news, sad news, challenges, victories and so much more. Let’s do this!

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