Am I too old for this?
Creatives are getting younger
At the end of May, YouTuber Kane Parsons’ directorial debut Backrooms broke box office records, earning $81.4 million in just three days, the largest ever opening for an original horror film. Parsons is 20 years old, the youngest director in history with a number one movie.
We’re used to our music icons, our actors or our sports stars bursting onto the scene as teenagers or early twenty- somethings, but for our creators to be creating - and achieving success - before they’ve celebrated their 21st birthdays, where does that leave the narrative, ‘You’re never too old’? Perhaps the best ideas come to us before we’re too jaded to make anything of them?
Changing it up
I gave up a 20 year career in teaching in 2023, at the age of 45. I started taking pictures seriously the same year. I’d been unhappy balancing life with teaching for a while and when G and I met, and eventually moved in together, new doors felt as if they were opening. G and I decided to work together, building the Dare Community and workshops alongside G’s commercial work. We’d grown from a family of 4 to one of 8, and being at home felt like where we needed to be.
I’ve never been someone to shy away from change, indeed I’ve always actively sought it. And of course there have been some BIG changes in my life, and in the lives of my children, so I was confident in the decision to leave teaching and try something entirely new.
Am I really creative?
Teaching is a creative role, planning lessons and coming up with new ways to reach students, to share with them English Literature and Language in ways that were accessible, was a constantly evolving process, but a creative role in a business I’d never worked in was something new. I’ve discovered things about myself in the last 2 and a half years that I’d previously overlooked. I knew that a life built around routine was where I was most comfortable, but I didn’t know how much I relied on that routine and the anxiety and self doubt that would come from working outside of it.
Creativity outside of the classroom doesn’t work to the same deadlines, being at home - and seemingly constantly available to your children when they are - needs managing, and the beds to be made upstairs are just there, up the stairs.
Talking to myself
And then there’s that same self doubt, coinciding with middle age. The thoughts of ‘I can’t do this’, ‘I’m not good at it’, ‘Who am I kidding?’ I knew who I was when I was a teacher, other people knew who I was. Could I really call myself a creative? A content creator? A photographer? Surely I was too old to starting out as any of those things?
Making it
And then you remember that you’re not starting out, just starting over. That you’ve started over before and found yourself again and again. Excelled even. You’ve changed and evolved and never looked back. You’ve created a life that you want to live. That real creativity isn’t measured in time, or even success, but in the act itself. You’ve made something that only you could have made, because you’re the one making it. And age really has nothing to do with it.
words and pictures by Katie Lashmar