Living Backwards

Zara tank (similar)
Zara trousers (similar)
Aldo sandals
Louis Vuitton handbag
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Madewell rings
Old Navy earrings (c/o Ivanhoe Cambridge)
Location: The Great-West Life Building – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve gotten something just… entirely wrong? That happened to me this weekend. What I wrote about making connections last Wednesday was still fresh in my mind – so many people in my personal life reacted to it so strongly that it became a real topic of conversation for the week – on Saturday morning, when I woke up to pouring rain.

Pouring rain on the Saturday of a long weekend is never ideal. But we’d made plans for a particular outdoor photoshoot that demanded sun, which meant the grey skies were particularly inconvenient. We cancelled our phootshoot immediately. Left with little in the way of anything to do for the morning, we began searching for a brunch spot. And ultimately found one, with such good specials that I texted Topher and his boyfriend, inviting them to join us. We all went out, in the pouring rain, for five dollar mimosas and breakfast potatoes and it was the perfect way to spend Saturday morning.

…but on the way home, I caught myself thinking, “It’s a shame we didn’t get those photos…”

And it struck me, in that moment, that that wasn’t really the point. There is always another time to take photos. But time spent with people you love is precious and often fleeting, which is not how I’ve been treating it.

I realised, quite abruptly, that part of the reason I haven’t readily met a lot of new people in the past two years is that I’ve been doing life backwards. Instead of prioritising life and taking photos of it as I go, I prioritise photos and let life happen around them.

Like I said, backwards. But I can see easily enough how it happened. In the early days, of blogging, we thought nothing of just running out into our back lane to snap some shots of what I was wearing before heading out to dinner. Sometimes we arrived early to where we were meeting friends and captured my outfit in the fifteen minutes before they got there. It was simple. And it was, more or less, what everyone with a blog did in 2010. We had a DSLR camera instead of just my iPhone, which actually meant we were a little ahead of the curve.

But then we moved to Paris. And while the city is grittier than it looks on Instagram, just stepping outside never fails to yield a perfectly photogenic background for photos. My expectations for what our photos could be heightened significantly in that year. And at the same time, the amount of work we had to do to coordinate a ten-minute shoot increased significantly. With Ian at school, we could only shoot on weekends. When he started his internship at a famous Michelin-starred restaurant that demanded twelve hours of physically punishing labour Monday to Friday, he would sleep through a good part of Saturday, leaving us just the afternoon and Sunday to capture blog photos for the following week.

At the time, my blog was my job – my visa didn’t allow me to engage in any other professional activity in France. So we adjusted, prioritising photos above all else on weekends.

But then we came back to Canada. And somehow, we never let go of that routine, despite the fact that I eventually returned to my office job. Despite the fact that at this point in my life, I deliberately refuse any projects that might make maintaining this space feel like work. Photos come before coffee dates and museum visits and… everything, really. And that attitude, at this point in my life, is entirely backwards. It doesn’t make sense anymore. It did in 2013, but that was six years ago, andI’ve been going about my life in that backwards blog-to-live routine ever since without giving it much critical thought.

I don’t know what this means for how I move forwards, exactly. But I know that I want to put my life first, and let photos of it follow.

Topher, Kyle – get ready, there are many more brunch dates in our future.

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