Development

This may be controversial, but I believe all Panamanians are liars.

Ask them. They'll say they are not liars, proving my point.

***

I don't know, man...

It's been a strange couple of decades for me. I just haven't had much stability. Moving from school (primary) to school (secondary), from college (sixth form) to college (Mansfield), living in a wide variety of different buildings, being a wide variety of different heights.

I can't tell you how many pairs of shoes I've owned since the 80s, but it must be over a dozen.

I should bring an end to this erratic lifestyle. I'm nearly thirty. It's time to settle down. I'll settle down at thirty.

No more frivolous age changes. No more increasing my age by a year on an annual basis. No more following the latest trends and fashions for incremental ageing. I need to make a choice and stick with it. Thirty will be where I lay my hat and build my house on a non-sand foundation. I'll stick my flag in the earth and move forward never more.

Unless I get bored. Which might happen. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But only once. Unless I get bored.

I don't know, man...

It's like the man says: "It's like the man says".

It would be different if I had a calling. Not better, but different.

Imagine if I'd always been obsessed with becoming a darkroom.

That would give me a goal to work towards. I'd spend time excavating my torso, installing one of those red light bulbs, considering ways to contain developing fluid without poisoning myself. That kind of project would make me excited to get up in the morning.

Would I develop photographs in myself, or would that duty fall on others? Would the prominence of digital photography make equipment more expensive and harder to come by? Would a life spent as a darkroom mean that I would have to stay relatively still, reducing the time I had for actual photography?

I wouldn't have been so aimless in my education and employment. I'd know exactly which courses to take (photography, human structural engineering, marketing). I could have done an internship at a photography studio, or gain experience in some other similar project (such as a woman who has decided to transform one of her legs into a greenhouse).

I'd know who I was. I'd know where I needed to be, and what steps should be taken to get there.

[Side note: I just spoke to Lucy about the possibility of becoming a darkroom. Her response: "It would be difficult. It is quite dark in the human body, but there isn't much room." Always the comedian, she is.]

You see these Olympic athletes, and they've known what they wanted to do since they were five years old, and have worked towards achieving that goal ever since. Direction. Discipline. Courage in the face of adversity.

There is no human darkroom Olympics, as far as I'm away, but the comparison is still apt.

But of course, there are drawbacks to having that kind of focus. You can lose sight of other options. You may be trapped within a narrow channel of purpose. What if you want to change your mind? What if you're two weeks away from the Olympic long jump finals and you realise you would rather jump shorter distances?

And, by the same token, my darkroom ambition could be similarly restrictive. I might decide half way through the process that I no longer want to be a darkroom. Someone could have almost finished wiring up the electrics in my rib cage, and I might decide that I'd rather be a professional skateboarder.

That would throw a spanner in the works.

Maybe I'm better of being vague and ephemeral. I can change my mind at any point. That freedom may leave me feeling aimless, but at least I have options.

I won't take any of those options, but I still have them. Not taking options is an option that's open to me.

And it doesn't mean I can never be a darkroom. Perhaps one day I will be. When I'm retired, I'll have all the time in the world for that kind of stuff.

I'll be respected when I'm old (after forty years of being thirty).

"Look," my grandchildren will say. "That's my granddad. The awesomest skateboarding darkroom who ever snikeblommed".

(The word "snikeblommed" is future slang, the meaning of which won't be known until Easter 2019.)

I don't know, man...

and there's nothing wrong with that.