How do you feel when you look at old photos?
To be honest, until this blog came about, I’ve always preferred to look into the future as opposed to the past. I know that’s part my innate personality, and part insecurity.
I look at old photos, and I feel awkward most of the time. I feel like I used to look like a fool, like ‘that’s someone who didn’t know what they were doing.’ I find myself criticizing my hair, my glasses, the clothes I wore, or the pose I struck. I remember trying to be cool. I remember being awkward.
But, as I sit here and write that, I don’t see much of that awkwardness and self-criticism in my day-to-day. Sure, it crops up, but for the most part, I live my present pretty confidently. I make decisions, I take risks, I reach for that which is beyond me and stretch myself in the process. I don’t sit around and pick myself apart.
So, what is it about old photos that brings that out in me? Surely, I was much the same back then: just trying to figure it out and do the best that I could?
Or, maybe it really is that I’ve matured since those days. I cringe most at when I see myself trying to be something that I wasn’t. Perhaps it’s that I have a much stronger sense now of who I am as a person and my place in life.
This blog, for example, is quintessentially me. Who else sits down and vomits out their thoughts on a nightly basis, who is so consumed with self-doubt around their work that they must go over it daily, or feels compelled to write about 100 movies in the span of a year? That is me. At least, a huge part of me. And…I love that part about me.
I love where I am.
I love where I’m going.
And I love where I’ve been. It brought me here, after all, didn’t it?
I’ll work on loving the captured moments of that past Ira.
It’s hard when one has photos like this floating out there, though, let me tell you. Kids, this is a very early version of a fracking selfie, taken by yours truly, mugging a bathroom-mirror version of blue-steel. Christ…
It makes me cringe.