Not All Who Wander Are Lost

"Not all who wander are lost."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

That quote really resonates with me right now, because I'm wandering. At first I thought that I was lost, but now I've realized that I'm not. I'm just wandering. Where will my wandering take me? Now that's the question.

I'm trying to decide what I want to do with my life, essentially what I want to be when I grow up (and yes, I realize that 24 is technically grown-up, but I don't feel like a grown-up). I keep oscillating between different fields, everything from publishing to photojournalism to non-profits to museum studies. I know, I know, I have a wide variety of interests. That's kind of my problem, I have a little bit of knowledge of a lot of things. I'm interested in a lot of different things, but I don't really know enough about each one to decide if it's really what I want to do.

Right now, however, I've almost-pretty-sure-but-not-quite-decided that I want to pursue photojournalism. The (almost) deciding factor is that it's something that I feel VERY strongly about. That alone is enough to nearly convince me enroll at the Brooks Institute in CA, which I'm about ready to do.

Is passion really enough, though? I definitely have the passion, the burning desire to make a difference, to take a photograph that makes someone cry, or laugh, or petition their government to make a difference. I want to win a Pulitzer (okay, so I'm a little bit ambitious) and affect people. I want people to know that I lived, that I made a difference, that I helped someone. I want to help someone. There are lots of ways to help people, I know, but I love photography and to me it seems like the best way to effect change. I think the media as an entity is vital, and lately it's been slacking in its purpose. The media is meant to inform and question, that is, inform the people and question the government. What is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq right now...the average American doesn't have a CLUE, and while a lot of that is due to the military's stringent censorship rules, part of it is also because the media just doesn't cover it. I want to go to places like that and show your average overweight, consumer-happy American just what the real cost of war is. What it does to the Iraqi and Afghani people whose lives have been, and continue to be, torn apart. Print journalism is another avenue I explored, but words (while important) just don't have the visceral, immediate impact that a picture can have. Hearing that people are being maimed by IED's or shot by insurgents or soldiers doesn't mean as much or affect viewers as much, as seeing a shattered, broken body lying in the street or a blood-splattered screaming child does. I want to move people, to affect them, to make them care as much as I do, enough to want to do something to help, to stop it!