I went on a trip that occupies a special place in my mythology of my life.
Bouyed by the funds from my first big boy job , I took a two month ocean crossing trip and meandered through the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany towards Lagos.
Before graduating, I was so excited to leave the straitjacket of academia behind. I thought freedom would come once my schedule wasn’t dictated by semesters and submissions anymore. I would finally be able to set the agenda for my life. I’d be the captain of my own ship.
But It didn’t take long for me to realize I’d traded one type of straitjacket for another.
My youth worker paycheck felt as heavy as the lottery in my account. But most of my time and energy went towards making that money.
Some days were hard, but I liked my job a lot. I got to do work that felt meaningful and impactful to my community. I spent a lot of time doing fun things — making art, playing basketball, planning field trips — But even the best version of it didn’t excite me as much as the worst version of what I really wanted to do, tell stories for a living.
It felt like I had every option and no options at the same time. Post-secondary gives you direction. Goals to work towards and a structure to do it in.
With that was behind me, questions that used to feel like clouds on the horizon, “What am I doing with my life? Am I squandering my potential? Will I regret wasting my youth?” became pouring rain.
And there I was, soaked.
I’d buried my teens and birthed my 20’s in this small city on the Canadian prairies. Now, I felt like I’d outgrown it.
It felt like life was happening everywhere I wasn’t. You can only dream as far as you can see, I needed to see more.
So I saved up aggressively. I made plans to bunk with friends and family where I could and found the cheapest accomodation possible where I couldn’t.
I would return to places I’d lived and people I loved after many years apart. A trip where I could mess around far away from the responsibilities and roteness that my life had become.
But looking at the pictures from that time, what actually sticks out is how fucking sad I was.
There’s a melancholy that’s followed me my whole life. I know I can’t outrun my mind, but that’s never stopped me from trying.
Like, I had a blast.
I met new people and new places. I reconnected with old ones and gleefully explored all the ways we’d changed and all the ways we stayed the same.
I lived adventures that have become my favourite stories to tell. Like when I had a bit too much to drink at Mainland Block Party in Lagos, walked to the nearest hotel and paid for a room with my credit card. That Raddison Blu bill shocked the rest of the Jameson out of my system the following morning.
Or when Simeon picked me up from the airport and we got a flat tire in a random village between London and Portsmouth with no phone service, and it turned into an hours long comedy of errors.
But still, I was tired and sad.
The feeling I crossed an ocean to escape sat in my carry-on like a lead weight. Tucked neatly between my passports and a power bank.
In London, I lived a dream and watched Nigeria play England at Wembley.
I was miserable the whole time.
That day I woke up feeling like shit. Waiting for the moment the joy I was meant to experience would kick in. Maybe when I get to the stadium, maybe the anthem, maybe when we score
But it never came. I just felt…grey.
With the benefit of time, an ADHD diagnosis and ongoing therapy I now have the framework to understand that experience and the language to explain it.
At the time all I had was confusion.
Creatively, I was screaming into a void.
I wanted to create work worthy of the photographers I admired, and a part of me felt like I was doing that.
But I felt like I had nothing to show for it. No publications, exhibitions, awards, money, barely even likes.
I felt like the work I was making was better than or at least on par with people around me who were getting those things. And that upset me. It upset me a lot.
It’s this city, I concluded. If I was somewhere else, people would actually appreciate my talent. If I was in London, or Amsterdam, or Lagos, I’d get the recognition I deserve.
This trip was a chance to test my hypothesis. I thought I’d go cool places, meet cool people, do cool things. And have my coolness validated in a way Lethbridge didn’t.
But as I went cool places, met cool people, and did cool things, I realized that most of them were just like me. Making the most of where they were and using the tools they had at their disposal to do cool shit.
Hosting art exhibitions in community halls. Starting clothing brands with minimal capital and maximum creativity. Facing a lifetime’s worth of rejection in a day for a chance at an opportunity.
It wasn’t that the world they wanted existed. It’s that they were doing their best to create it.
I learned my life was interesting too. The places, people, and experiences I took for granted were what other people looked at longingly through their screens.
It’s important to dream. It’s important to want more. But don’t allow desire restrict you to inaction.
Do what you can where you are with what you have.
I probably took up to a hundered thousand photos on this trip.
It helped me figure out I’m more interested in documenting life as it happens than curating the circumstances of the image. The followng year, I quit my job and went back to school to for a diploma in Visual Journalism.
The thing is in the doing.
Now, I work as a journalist. I tell stories for a living. I find myself in a similar rut. Looking at where I am, where I want to be, and what feels like the massive chasm between them.
Writing this is a reminder to myself that I have the power to do and it’s only by doing that the gap closes.
It’s also a reminder that even when it feels uncertain, I’ve jumped into the void and lived.
Oseremen Irete 