At 6’7″, I have a complicated relationship with space.
Airplane seats don’t have enough of it. Cars occasionally don’t have enough of it. Hotel beds definitely don’t have enough of it. I have spent a surprising amount of my life trying to fold myself into spaces apparently designed for significantly smaller humans. So maybe it’s a little ironic that I’m only now learning how to take up more space in my own life.
I think I spent a lot of years treating life like a suitcase. There was only so much room, so if something new went in, something else had to come out. Family. Work. Photography. Friends. Responsibilities. Me.
And somehow me was frequently the easiest thing to leave sitting on the bed.
I’m beginning to understand that my life has room for things I once would have assumed couldn’t exist at the same time. I can miss someone and be happy. I can carry the life I had without living entirely in it. I can love my boys fiercely and still have a life that belongs to me. I can build something new with my girl without asking either of us to erase what came before.
Apparently the heart isn’t a studio apartment. There’s room for more shit than I thought.
In photography, I’ve spent years deciding what belongs inside the frame.
Sometimes I want a 200mm lens. Tight. Intimate. Everything unnecessary disappears. Other times I want to go wide. Suddenly the environment matters. The sky matters. The barn matters. The mountains matter. The subject hasn’t become less important. I’ve just allowed more of the world around them into the photograph.
Maybe that’s what expansive feels like to me right now. I’m not trying to become less focused on the people and things that matter. I’m just widening the frame.
This realization may unfortunately cost me several hundred dollars in camera equipment.
One of the things I’m appreciating about the relationship we’re building is that neither of us has to become smaller to make room for the other.
She has things that are hers. I have things that are mine. And we’re creating things that are ours. Somehow those aren’t competing categories.
Maybe an expansive life isn’t necessarily one filled with extraordinary experiences. Maybe it’s just one where I keep leaving room for something I haven’t experienced yet.
There are times in life when the world gets very small. Sometimes that’s necessary. You deal with what’s directly in front of you because that’s all the bandwidth you fucking have. But I don’t think I’m supposed to live there forever.
Lately my world feels like it’s getting wider again.
For years I’ve understood that choosing a wider lens doesn’t mean the subject matters less. It just means there’s more room in the frame. Maybe I’m finally learning to do that with my life.
My boys are still in it. Mel is still in it. My girl is in it. Photography. Friends. Work. Radios. Road trips. My doggos. Stupid computer projects. Places I haven’t been yet. Things I haven’t even figured out that I want.
And somewhere in there, increasingly, there’s room for me too.
I don’t need to crop one part of my life out to make another part fit. Maybe I just need a wider frame.
Which is a beautiful realization.
And a really fucking expensive excuse to buy another lens.