I'm on my way to the future, she said & I said, But you're just sitting there listening & she smiled & said, It's harder than you'd think with all the noise everyone else is making.

            - Story People

52.2 

My sister and I spent a lot of time snooping through our mother’s things when we were kids. After rummaging through her dresser drawers, we would stagger down the hallways in high heels and smeared lipstick, chasing after adulthood with steadfast urgency.

In a lot of ways, that’s what adolescence is – a careless race toward adulthood in the pursuit of freedom. The trouble is, often times you finally get there only to inevitably wonder what the hell you were thinking. Being an adult isn’t nearly as thrilling as pillaging your mom’s possessions. And while it’s nice to finally be allowed to wear heels or drink straight from the milk carton or leave laundry piled on the floor or stay up until the early hours of the morning without answering to anybody else, the responsibilities that come along with it don’t always seem worth it.

After a few years that accumulate a string of mistakes that we’ve hopefully learned our lessons from, we at long last assume the hang of it only for it to be stripped away and replaced by even heavier ideas. One day a bit further in, you suddenly feel the need to get married and have kids and pay a mortgage – things you always thought you’d eventually do, and yet, envisioning them somehow felt like watching someone else’s life. But somewhere along the way, the shoes you were only pretending to fill became your own, and you’re left wondering how you’ll ever manage wearing them in real life.

Just like that, it’s gone – the easiness of life, the blind hopefulness for tomorrow – and every moment leading up to this moment now seems smaller than it should have been.

Taken on: January 16, 2010

Tags:

Self-portrait

52 weeks

Winter

Light

Sun

Wind

B&W

DoF

50mm f/1.8 « less

Sets appears in: • Round two 52 • Explored more » • Story People • Blanched « less

Groups appears in: • Black and White • B&W more » • Portrait (real persons only) • Of Me • Portrait★Faces • Self-Portraits! • SELF-PORTRAIT • 52 Weeks • Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II • [ s e l f - p o r t r a i t s ] « less

Stats: 10,302 views / 70 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder