My grandfather gave me his old Canon 35mm camera when I was a teenager. I used it a lot. I loved black and white film. I have artsy pictures of my friends hanging out in a truck bed, images from mission trips in Costa Rica and Mexico and Syria, quirky snapshots of people walking away from the camera towards an unknown future. Even though digital cameras were around, there was something magical about shooting on film, waiting to get the pictures before you saw them, to see what moments you had captured.

I hadn’t used that camera in years but I dug it out of my closet recently and bought a roll of film, which is now at those eye-popping “this is a hipster hobby” prices. I want to learn about the different settings on the camera for my 40 before 40 project because all I really know how to do is load and unload the film and focus.

The focusing is actually quite intuitive. When you look through the viewfinder, there are two concentric rings in the center- the outer ring is much thinner than the inner. The inner ring is divided horizontally by a line down the middle. If the image is out of focus, the picture inside the ring looks like it’s been sliced in half and slid sideways, like if you sliced a watermelon in half and let the two sides slide away from one another.

The best way to get the image in focus is to turn the focus ring, the circular part that sits outside the lens, past the point of focus until the image looks out of focus in the other direction and then you start to dial it in. In other words, you want the watermelon halves to wobble back and forth until you can make sure they’re aligned.

 In focus, out of focus, in focus, out of focus.

In focus.

The other day, I was trying to take a picture of something and I had the lighting just how I wanted it. I’d placed it on the edge of the couch and was looking down at it with the camera, trying to get it in focus. I knew I was close to being focused, but I didn’t have enough room to let the image go out of focus in the opposite direction to make sure. So, I got a step stool and tried again. This time, with enough space to move the image in and out of focus in each direction, I was able to hone in on the perfect image.

Going in and out of focus is a crucial part of the process of finding the focal point- when both halves of the center ring align.

What an apt metaphor for what aging feels like to me.

What is aging if not going in and out of focus to zero in on what fits? Nope, not that. Too far! Let’s backtrack a bit. Oops. Now go back the other direction. Closer, we’re getting closer.

In many ways, I’m still trying to figure out who I am and what I want from life, but I’m not making the wild swings that I was in my 20s. The process is getting more refined, the picture coming more into focus more often.

I actually love getting older for that exact reason.

So, happy 39^th birthday to me. I’m planning on finishing this decade out by doing a bunch of things that challenge me, that make me happy, that make me think.  I want to spend time purposefully going in and out of focus so I can come closer to finding the equilibrium point, the point of focus, the point where I say,

“Yes, that’s it.”