Comfort in Chaos

I’m a photographer. It felt fraudulent to speak this sentence aloud for years. This isn’t an admission. It’s how I felt. I was still learning the craft. I knew enough to get some good images. But I had yet to put in the time. To practice. To feel comfortable enough to step outside of the ‘rules’ and get creative with my photography. Not until years later would I feel like I had earned that sentence: ‘I’m a photographer.’ And it is earned let me tell you. At least it was for me.

I was gifted a Sony a57 DSLR by my tall, loving, forgetful, golf-fanatic father when my first baby was born. I snapped pictures here and there. Some were OK. Most were shit (blurry, out of focus, accidents and the like). But then I found myself in a job where I could use this contraption as an excuse to travel around during the work day to photograph beautiful, expensive homes that used my company’s interior and/or exterior wood siding and paneling products. Hell yes-count me in! I think everyone starts out shooting in auto mode until one gets brave enough to try a setting that gives you more control. I’m a curious person so I wanted to know why so many of my pictures weren’t worth the digital SD card space they were written on. I took some classes from my local camera store, watched some tutorials from my friend lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) and otherwise learned by trial and error.

I fell in love. Photography was it for me. Where had you been all my life? Well, let’s take a huge leap back in time and confess to studying video production in college. Video - Photography. One’s a moving picture, while the other is a static image. Let’s agree that they’re within the same creative ‘family’ as it were. Videography?? My god, I hadn’t done anything related to video production outside of shitty, handheld minicams or iPhone videos that once offloaded to an external hard drive were never heard of or seen again. But here I was, exploring another facet of the ‘picture.’

My passion became a desire to make it official. “Let’s start a photography business and see where life takes us from there,” I said to myself. And thus was born Life Through The Lens MN. I’ll cut to the quick to say I’ve spent basically zero time marketing this new endeavor outside of my network of friends and family on Facebook. And as one can guess, when you don’t have time to invest in marketing yourself, your business falls as flat as a crepe on a griddle. Well, I had/have a full-time gig that actually pays me a salary. Oh and did I mention three children under the age of 6 at the time?? So life is busy blah blah. The reality is, I didn’t make it a priority.

So I fell back into the everyday work/life balance battle telling myself this was the best route with the least risk. When I interviewed for my next role with a construction company, I said I was a photographer and would love to incorporate my skillset into the role. Bada bing, I was in. After a handful of project site visits and two years and eight months of taking pictures of work activities on site, interviewing team members, writing articles for our monthly newsletters, designing graphics for digital collateral and managing the internal website, I was making good money and completely miserable.

2020 happened. COVID happened. And I fell hard into a funk I’d never felt before. What the hell was I doing with my life? What did I have to show for myself? A lovely home and a wonderful family. Yes, super grateful for these people and for a comfortable lifestyle. But where was this feeling of failure coming from? Why did I feel so alone? What could I possible do to fill this void when I couldn’t pinpoint what caused the void to begin with?

I kept asking myself, “Megan, what do you want to be when you grow up? If you could be or do anything, what would it be?” I wish I could tell you I’ve found the answer. As I get older, I expected the ‘wiser’ part to factor in too. And I guess we all learn as we go and certainly become wiser about a lot of things. But what happened to the passion for photography? Where is the documentarian from those college days of learning what would ultimately become the foundation for my degree and career path? Am I defined as just a working mother now? Perhaps for some, this definition is enough, but I can tell you that for me, it simply wasn’t.

I tend to look for escape routes when I feel trapped. Like escaping my physical location to anywhere else, even for just a short time. Then there are the more unhealthy escapes like slipping into a glass of beer or wine or cocktail every night of the week and throwing all moderation to the wind. Seriously, even a vacation can’t get me to pull my shit together? What in the actual…??

I’m going to jump a bit off-course for a minute and mention the handful of fabulous friends I’m lucky to call mine (you know who you are, hi friends!). On a visit several states and a two-hour plane ride to visit a girlfriend from high school, it hit me! Her husband, she and I had talked over the last few days about life and kids and money. We reminisced about old times. When conversation steered towards work, they listened to my misgivings and struggles. They gave me advice and reciprocated commiseration. On my last night, both our daughters lay on the floor of the guest room where I slept throughout the visit. But I couldn’t sleep.

I lay thinking about conversations from hours and days before. My thoughts became scattered, bouncing from one thing to the next like the dribbling of a basketball against the ground. Sleep would not come. I’ve heard that if you can’t sleep because of an overactive mind, write the shit down. When you get it on paper, you get it out of your head. Enter ‘notes’ on my trusty iPhone.

I’ll save you the full list (and it became lengthy as the minutes and hours of night crept past me). But the resulting random running of my thoughts culminated into one glowing realization: I like to tell stories. I have told stories through my photography and the narratives I’ve written alongside them. I’ve researched, produced, storyboarded, written scripts, interviewed and edited video clips in search of sharing a story others want or need to hear and see. I journeyed through visual storytelling my entire career. And now I was ready for the next challenge. I was going to put my heart and soul into creative writing. I was going to start a blog and write about my travels, books I’ve read, parenthood and marriage, family and friends-and all through a lens that considers the positives and negatives, the good and the bad.

I’m not the only one still struggling in figuring out who I am and what I want to do with my life. And so my own personal stories, along with the chaos, comfort, camaraderie, challenges and everything in-between from those I surround myself with along this journey of life will make up the intriguing, though-provoking, humorous, honest and hopeful entries within the shelves of this site, my Midnight Library.

March 16, 2018

Mama's had some health issues that have come to light recently. Now that they're being addressed and tended to, I feel a bit more like my "old" self again. I knew I used to be happier. I knew I used to have more fun. The scales are tipping more towards a balance I feel I've been missing for over a year now, probably longer in truth. So when I found you putting the last remaining remnants of foam soap on your hands and face, it made me smile and grab my camera, rather than feel irritated about making a mess. And then the most wondrous thing happened. Because I opened up rather than shut down, you let me in and asked me to join you. And join you I happily did.