I just can't

I'm sitting at my desk on a Saturday night. My lovely wife is asleep in bed only feet from me. 2 of 3 children are asleep in the rooms down the hall. Last.fm is playing "Thursday Radio" which for some God-forsaken reason includes The Blood Brothers. All is quiet, and all is well.

Or is it?

I'm awake, and I'm thinking about how much I want the future to come sooner than it's ready to. I want my photography to be huge... HUGE... I want the honor and prestige it can bring, and I want it now. It's like I want to fast-forward through the waiting to get to the good stuff. It doesn't help that I'm looking through all the photos on facebook that have "Zack Arias" tagged in them.

The man is a legend. He is everything that a man with a good heart aspires to be. I envy him. Not in the WTF way, but really, the life that he has is amazing. I truly wish that I had that life too, but I'm damned sure that he has struggles that he didn't even mention during his Chase Jarvis Live Interview this past summer. I didn't know about many of his struggles until his wife, Meghan, began to tell the Zack and Meghan Love Saga on her blog (my title, not hers).

I just started to think about how all of these details of life can slip through the cracks within seconds of them being made. Then I realized: What business do I have trying to capture moments with my camera if I keep letting go of all the moments around me? I just wanted to slap myself across the face as hard as I could.

In the Onelight DVD at the beginning, Zack is talking about the idea of "fixing it later in Photoshop" is a sign that you're being lazy and mediocre and if you catch yourself doing that you need to slap yourself as hard as you can. I realized that wanting to fast-forward through all of this waiting that I'm being lazy and I'm being mediocre. I need to slap myself. Although Zack was talking about photography, I applied the lesson to myself.

I began to think about how when Brooklynn, my youngest daughter, was born... All I wanted was for her to get just a little bigger so I could talk to her; have a conversation with her. Now she's 5 and she can talk my ear off. She's getting big. Too big. I want her to slow down and stop growing so she can stay 5 forever, but she can't. No matter how hard I try and wish and plead... I can't make her stop growing. In the same way, I can't make time speed up to pass all of the worry...

I know that in my heart I want this adventure of mine to take off and grow, but in order to do that, I'm going to have to let it be what it's going to be. I can shape it, but ultimately all I can do is try to guide it. But I also know in my heart I'm incredibly sad. This is what I should have been doing 15 years ago and I'm just now getting started, but without all of this time passing exactly the way it has I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be sitting as my desk on a Saturday night. My lovely wife wouldn't be sleeping only feet from me. My 2 of 3 children wouldn't be asleep in the rooms just down the hall. Last.fm might be playing Hopesfall on "Thursday Radio" but it just wouldn't be the same.