Hey Film Fam, welcome back!
I hope you’ve had a wonderful few weeks since we saw each other last. I’ve been flat out with a combined 40+ hours of Film Developing and Scanning over this last week alone and am really feeling it!
Usually my newsletters are quite long and full of photos, but this one will be a little different and shorter while I’m busy finishing up some work, start delivering photos, and really sink into the reality that my 29th birthday is lurking just around the corner - Oops that reminds me I had better order my cake now while there’s time…
So, how about we get into it?
Overcoming the cringe and doing it anyway.
Something that majorly holds me back is my fear of what other people may think of me. I’m often plagued with embarrassment, overthink every interaction, and feel like an outsider 95% of the time I’m trying to put myself out there.
While my social anxiety is nowhere near as bad as it was, it still creeps up on me when I least expect it. Still, I feel like so much of my life the last few years especially has been wanting to both be seen, but I don’t want anyone to actually know I exist… wild right?
I’ve started doing Instagram Lives - which have been terrifying yet also fun - and it’s forced me to get out of my own way and shake off the initial awkwardness once people ask me questions a few minutes in. Once I get talking I’m okay, but its the initial moments and the feeling I get hit with afterward that often puts me on edge. I hate feeling like I’m talking to the void and oh my god what do I do if nobody shows up???
This week alone I went ahead and did not just one, but two Live videos while scanning some 35mm Film, and I’ll share them in this newsletter as they’re amazing free resources jam packed full of information if you have the time to watch them!
The first one I talk about more film scanning specifics, including my settings, what I look for in a good scan, and talk through 3 test rolls, explaining what I’m doing and why as I go along.
The second one is more laid back, just me working away at scanning my film while interacting with people who joined the live. More of a ‘POV’ kind of view so you can actually see the scanning process and the film, rather than just me talking to a camera.
It was actually a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to doing more of these! It’s a really easy way to interact with my little community right now as well, and I’m sure as it slowly grows bigger I’ll be able to bring more interesting topics to the table and cover lots more aspects of shooting 35mm Film.
Outside of that I’ve kind of just been really reflecting on the last year of my life as it dawns on me that my birthday is coming up really really soon. I both love and hate my birthday, there’s so many uncomfortable trauma memories woven into it and I try to avoid celebrating. One thing I can’t avoid however is that lurking feeling that time is slipping away once again.
Okay, but why isn’t ‘it’ enough?
I’m really taking stock of the goals I’ve had, what I’ve managed to achieve so far, and what I want my final year of my twenties to look like. It’s all sort of sprung up on me and I’ve definitely had a few teary moments, and had to fight back against some confusion by asking myself some tough questions. One of the biggest ones being - “Why isn’t ‘it’ [goals, specific cirumstances, life path, etc] enough? Why isn’t what I have right now enough? Why can’t I be happy and actually present in this very moment? And why do I feel like I am not enough no matter what I do?”
Surprisingly I’ve found myself questioning if some of the ‘big three goals’ I’ve been obsessively struggling to achieve are even something I want anymore. My goals in general are still very much tied into what a traumatized 18 year old me thought I was supposed to want as a functional adult, as well as what a young, hopeful, but impossibly lost and lonely 23 year old me desperately yearned for in an attempt to be seen as healed or normal.
I can’t remember the last time I even asked myself if my big life goals are even relevant to the life I want to achieve. Probably because I’ve been perpetually stuck in burnout, feeling uninspired and terrified that I’m just “wasting time”, and on the other hand of that I’m always spiraling because I “don’t have my shit sorted” - but really, who does?
I feel like because so much of my life has been stuck in survival mode from trauma I always have to be pushing to the next big thing to ‘prove’ I’m constantly improving and am no longer the sad helpless victim. This causes me to time and time again end up missing out on the things I have right now that once upon a time I could only dream about and wanted so badly. It’s like I just can’t see anything, or feel it really, and I’ve just got tunnel vision for this almost impossibly perfect future I feel like I need to somehow get to.
I think I want to enter my 29th year (in just a weeks time!) differently and being more mindful of how I want to spend my final year of being in my 20’s. This means being willing to spend the next 12 months re-discovering who I am and how I want to interact with the world moving forward - no matter how messy or intense that may get.
Reassessing my life goals.
Some things I’ve already started to do to transition into a better space include starting to cultivate a healthy relationship with my body and mind. Please, don’t roll your eyes just yet - I struggle not to do it myself whenever I hear someone talk about ‘self love’ and all that sappy stuff.
I struggle with not being an asshole to myself which is something I’ve talked about in previous newsletters. To try to combat this I’ve been practicing self portraits over the last 6 months and I’ve learned how important it is to me to document my life and the changes I’m going through in such a wonderful and intimate way. It’s slowly becoming less of a feeling of ‘ugh not this dumb self care shit again’ and actually becomes something I can appreciate and enjoy.
I think shifting into a mindset of wanting to document my life so that way future generations (potentially they’re film photographers too?) have something tangible of me to reflect on. I know that sounds really wanky and egotistical but there’s a good reason for this.
I don’t have anything like this of my Nonna, and my own Mum hates photos so there’s rarely anything of her. I barely know either of them, their goals and dreams or who they were or wanted to be, etc - and when they pass there’s no records of their life and experiences anywhere that will be a primary source of reference.
Nobody in the family journals either they all seem to not want anyone to know them outside of the present moment. I’m the first published and performing poet, and dare I say have become the ‘family historian’ as I begin to dive into memoir writing practices too - so when I looked at it through this lens of documenting who I am, making a record of my life experiences, and thinking about what kind of ancestor I want to be… things kind of felt less cringey and more like an important project to work on.
Sure I could get someone else to take the photos for me, but only I can take photos the way that I take photos (truthfully!), and I like the challenge of getting out of my own way, embracing my curiosity and being playful with it. It’s helped me see myself with much kinder eyes as well, and that feeling only gets better the more self portraits I do.
Another thing I’ve been trying to do is to find a way to be genuinely present and appreciate everything I have, and recognize in one way or another I’m living my dream life. I have to constantly remind myself I have my dream car, one I waited 10 years for, but I’ve been so caught up in ‘moving towards bigger goals’ that I haven’t even taken time out to enjoy the damn thing!
I promised myself I’d do more camping and road trips, but so far I’ve only done one big road trip with my Dad this year and I am itching to sink back into more mountain adventures. But first I need to really slow the fuck down and get my head out of future planning my bloody mid 30’s ideal life as intensely as I have been and just have a big think about where I want to go and what I want to see right now.
I’ve started to write down a list of all the places I want to go, like Lost City, some of the other 4WD tracks in Lithgow, check out the waterfall at Kanagra Walls, stop in at the pub in Tarana, maybe stay the night in a motel there. Even go all the way back out to Yerranderie to go camping like I did a few years ago. I want to travel up north to see my best friend and we can go traversing the Stockton Sand Dunes, me in my big beastie and her in a tiny Jimny, take photos together on the sand and have an absolute blast.
I want to drive all the way to Melbourne and see my poetry friends and spend time taking photos of the city they love, photos of them sipping coffee in their local cafe, writing in their journals, just really soak in the beauty of their daily life. I want to drive to Adelaide to visit family and friends and catch up on old times. I still plan to drive to Alice Springs even though that trip alone will cost at least 3k and probably take 2+ weeks in my slow old girl. And one day I want to drive to the tip of Australia and pray nothing on my car blows up along the way!
I have so much I kept putting off because I said I ‘didn’t have time’ or I convinced myself I was too busy working towards other goals to remember to have fun and to work at the second part of one big dream of mine. So I need to seriously plan some road trips and start seeing all the places I promised myself I’d go see years ago.
It’s time to start small and local, and branch out over time. Some places are only accessible in certain seasons so that’s something to factor in as well. The best part about it is that I know I’ll be able to snap some kickass photos along the way, so really it’s a win-win scenario.
There’s a lot of work ahead and some of it simply involves sitting down and asking myself “What the fuck do I actually want to do?” which is going to spark a lot of tears, but hopefully provide more clarification for the next year ahead before I move into the next chapter - or rather decade - of my life.
And if all goes well, maybe I’ll even figure out how to eliminate this feeling like I’m not ‘doing the right thing’ or that I’ve somehow gotten lost along the way. It would be nice to get out of this weird limbo waiting pattern I keep finding myself stuck in!
Coming soon!
I didn’t mean to leave you with a potential existential crisis if you’re in a similar scenario, I had hoped maybe in getting a glimpse of where I’m at you’d feel less alone in your own journey. Please, let me know what’s going on in your own internal world, I’d love to be able to cheer you on as you move forward too.
I obviously am working super hard at some kickass car photoshoots I’ve done, both the Unmarked car event, and a Portrait + Car shoot I did with my good friend Mel. I’ve been really leaning hard into a specific creative aesthetic and I cannot wait to show you the new direction I’ve gone towards.
I’m so bloody passionate and excited about film photography again and it makes me so happy to be in this space once more. I cannot wait to share some goodies with you soon. For now, you’ll have to be satisfied with an unedited test shot from a roll back in May!
P.S - Remember that Minolta SRT 100 I mentioned last newsletter? It took 3+ days and tearing it apart completely multiple times to fix it, but she works!
I’ll be sure to share some test shots from it soon and plan to dedicate a Newsletter to that process and I hope by then I’ve had a chance to do a self portrait shoot with it as well.
See you again next fortnight!
I’ll have lots more goodies to share soon, and by the time I come back it’ll be exactly 7 days into having turned 29 - I’m sure a lot will happen over the next fortnight!
Thanks so much for being here and catching up on my little corner of the internet. Have an amazing rest of your day, I’ll see you in a few weeks time.
Until the next roll, take care!
xoxo, Josie