Doing more of what you love

doing more of what you love

Photography, nowadays, is thriving as a hobby. I look around and every other Tom and Dick seems to have a DSLR, caressing it as it’s their life’s dream to caress it. Some of those wannabes, though, turn out as good photographers. In fact, they’d become so good that people start paying for them to come take pictures at their wedding. Or pre-wedding, or pre-engagement, or maybe even the pre-proposal—preposterous though it sounds.

It’s a good thing to earn by doing what you love, yuo might think. I thought so, too, until I looked into the eyes of a professional photographer at a wedding yesterday.

We weren’t the early birds, meaning the new couple and the old photographers had already gotten through at least a hundred people posing on stage with shiny white teeth, pouting lips, flashy jewellery, and studded dresses. The bride and groom though tired, received us with happy faces, but the photographer and his accompanying videographer weren’t tired—they looked bored, instead.

Drooping eyes, stifling yawns, dawdling walks, forced patience—they symbolised everything that points to someone who’s been doing what they’ve been doing for so long that it speaks to their soul no more. Then I wondered: At what point does doing what you love become such a vexing routine that you no longer love it?

Perhaps the photographer had reached it, the tipping point. Perhaps the idea of capturing blooming faces, grooming parents, ruling aunts, and unruly children didn’t thrill his heart anymore. It looked to me like he wished to be anywhere but there. And I felt sorry for him.

He would’ve had a phase in life, young and excited to achieve what he has now. He would’ve spent eager hours in the darkroom looking for something that would light up his life. He would’ve tossed and turned in bed wondering if his applications would get through, if he’d get the job as a photo journalist or even an assistant; he would’ve thought it a great opportunity to get coffee for a popular photographer, just the idea of being in close proximity with them keeping him up till the crack of dawn. He would’ve dreamt awake, slept in dreams, and waited with bated breath. He would’ve once given anything to have what he has now.

Except now, years later maybe, he has not a sliver of joy in his eyes. Perhaps he didn’t sleep the previous night, perhaps he spent it in the darkroom in his studio developing photos from the previous wedding, perhaps he was trying to figure out how to make space in his calendar for all the people booking his service. Perhaps the blooming faces and ruling aunts got on his nerves now. Just perhaps he would now give anything to give up all of it.

That’s what his eyes told me during the couple of minutes we were on stage, holding our not-so-natural smiles for the photographer to capture the moment and the videographer the moments. By the time we left the stage, the photographer turned his attention to the next group, our faces, our smiles, and our moments once a source of pride, now just a fleeting flash in his memory, from an event he cared naught for.

Young copywriter

young copywriter

She had always been a nobody—getting coffee for managers, delivering posters from office to office, trotting after leaders, taking notes as they dictated and sipped the coffee she had brought.

Everything had paid off, she realised, caressing her desk. Copywriter — at last, a real job with real purpose.

She read volumes of how-to and best practices. But when she had to write on her own, she stumbled. It was one thing to read through inspirational ad copies and gawk at others’ eureka moments, but a tougher task to write herself.

“Why don’t you get some coffee?” A colleague suggested.

Morning’s here

My alarm goes off as it always does, and I wake up to my well-crafted routine: yet another week of working all day and reading through the night.

I’m awake tireless as the fresh morning oxygen spreads through the room, seeping through me, soaking me from within, waking the rest of the deep-sleeping cells in my brain.

Though it’s only five AM when I look through my mosquito-proofed window, I see that the navy sky has already lost most of its depth, while lighter hues of blue appear in batches like patches on rough skin. Day breaks early, the long-lingering aftermath of a dry and scorching summer; a May that followed months of rainless skies.

Somewhere far away, a lone young cuckoo calls, jerking the others in the family awake. They all call to each other greeting the rising day, as I turn away—it’s time for my workout.

A few burps, some burpees and lunges later, I put a pot on the stove and cast my window’s curtains aside. Turquoise has replaced the navy and white streaks meld with the blue as the morning prepares to wake the sleeping sun. Grabbing my tea, I sit facing my window, looking through the checkered mosquito-net, looking beyond at the now cloud-filled sky.

I look closer, harder, squinting my eye at the unblemished white blanket that hangs over my roof, trying to catch a glimpse, a peek, at the waning crescent of a moon while she waits in stillness for the gliding clouds to gobble her remains. As she goes by, a gentle breeze wafts through the bars of my window, bringing with it, scent of warming wet sand and photosynthesising begonias from the neighbour’s balcony. It tricles my ears, whispering morning hope as I close my eye lids to embrace it. It kisses my eyelashes, teasing me to fall back, to grab a pillow pressing my face against its cool surface.

Breathing in deep, I open my eyes. For to fall back asleep would be to waste away the glory of day rise I had experienced. I drown my tea and reach for my towel. Turning away from the window where the sun steps out from under his covers, I head for a shower, a rhythm in my head.

Ah, June, how I adore thee.