23

As I sit here on a plane headed to Charleston, South Carolina I cannot help but reflect on every aspect of my life that I thought would be so different or other aspects that I expected to be exactly how they are. 23 is an odd year, I can't sing Taylor Swifts ‘Feelin’ 22’ anymore and it actually be relevant to my life, I still get carded as if I just turned 21 or that I am trying to get away with a fake i.d. (dang baby face...), I am getting to the point where I want to have my life figured out but everyone keeps telling me I am young enough to not have everything put together quite yet.

What I have gone through with my photography career is a whirlwind of ups and downs. There are peaks of steady business and then real lows where I won’t hear anything from clients, new or old. It tugs at my heart when I am not getting business, because I often question if my career path that I choose for myself was the right one. But..let’s just look back to when I created my business and the meaning of the title itself. Life’s Symmetry was created on a couch during finals week my senior year fall semester. I was sick of studying and editing and shooting 24/7 so I went downstairs to talk to my sister about my photography and I created a blog that would eventually lead to a website. We went through lots of words and synonyms for those words trying to create something other than ‘Katerina Marie’s Photography’ because I wanted my photography to be different and stand out, something unique that would have to be explained. Life, meaning I enjoy shooting all aspects of life from landscape, fashion, family portraits, engagements, weddings and literally everything in-between. Putting a limit to my creativity seemed like I was undermining what I could do with my life and career. Limiting myself just did not seem like anything I ever wanted to do, especially as a senior in college seeing my whole life in front of myself. Symmetry takes a little more of a deeper meaning as to the aspect of what I see when shooting, I see lines that don’t exist but that are either painted with light or created with different textures and backdrops. Symmetry is how I see the world, a little different than most other people.

My love life. Which, is a whole novel of another story but to summarize it up...I thought I would be engaged if not married at this point in my life. A year ago, I was the happiest girl with an amazing man who loves Christ and loved me. We fell apart with distance and just growing to be two separate adults with very separate lives, and that is not how a relationship works. I have learned not only to be selfish when it comes to my photography career and taking time for it every week, but taking time for myself as a single young adult. I am learning more about myself than ever before, learning that I enjoy the attention, but do not enjoy the commitment. I am a little scarred from the break up you could say.

The friends aspect of my life. Being in college, you get the opportunity to be away from your family but create this whole other family full of friends that you can choose when you want to be social or not, it is completely up to you and your outlook on your social life and college career. As soon as I graduated, I moved back to Texas literally within less than 24 hours. I was so happy to be home finally, but a couple months in, I was restless and missing the Sigma Kappa house, missing being able to just call or text a bunch of people and know that one of them were free. Adult life is not that way, everyone is busy and has such opposite schedules. I am learning the balance and learning to not take things so personally.

I believe that 23 is going to be good to me. The last time I was in Oklahoma my sister and I went out to dinner and just talked about where I see myself now, where I want to be, what I want to do...the whole picture and what path I could take within this next year to work towards the betterment of my life. Basically, 23 is going to be the year of being selfish. Forcing myself to be single and enjoy my time of growth being alone and growing closer to God, within mission trips, traveling, and work. With work, I will be shooting more weddings, I have become a vendor to a wedding website as a photographer, able to reach out to clientele that I would not be able to reach without the website itself. For mission trips, I am going to Uganda, which is a whole other blogpost in itself. And traveling, I plan to just go wherever my heart desires, with no questions...I plan to visit friends living all over the country to places I haven’t been and to be intentional with my relationships making sure I know most aspects of what is going on in my friends and families lives.

...Now here are some photos from my time in Charleston, four days after I wrote this blogpost. Charleston was beautiful, being with my college bestie Alyssa again was perfect, and the food was to die for. I hope you enjoy the photos and can be here to laugh with me through whatever life choices I make within the next year that either go with or against what I wrote about. Here’s to 23.

#Charleston #FollyBeach #AngelOak #Lookback #23