I’m exactly where I want to be.

But yesterday I got properly depressed. It happened while I was stuck doing a technicaly frustrating, insanely monotonous task—setting up my Print of the Month. This print.

I missed living in Thailand. I wondered if it’s time to move back to Sweden. Quit photography. Even to get a job at the school in Siglufjördur cleaning toilets.

I started thinking that photography has lost all impact. No one is wowed by photos anymore. Everything is just content now. Everything is disposable, made to be scrolled over in a seconda. That no matter how hard I work, what I do is on a steeeep downhill trajectory of losing all its worth because barely anyone sees it these days. There are millions of talented photographers out there. Everyone is a protographer. And they deserve this as mich as I do.

But the world is numb to photography.

How am I ever going to make a living from this? I’ll work myself to death for less and less pay, attention, recognition, joy. I haven’t had a real photo project since last year. No one sees what I make. No one hires me. And when they do it’s the exception rather than the norm. I’ve been fighting my way up for a decade now, thinking it would someday start taking off, at least a little. At least so it wpuldn’t be such a struggle. But everyone can take good pictures now.

I decided to stay sad until I fell asleep. It’s a feeling I don’t often get to have, or keep.

And when I woke up, I was happy. That’s usually what I am. Unless I wake up too early. Then I wake up less happy. And then get back to normal happy usually around noon. So now that I had a fresh feeling of depression in me I felt like writing it down. It’s still warm in my soul.

I realised I woke up happy for the life I have, for everything I’ve built with all the grit I’ve poured into this over the last 10 years. Everything I’ve created for myself. With help of my amazing fiancée Sanna. And others around me.

I’m still fighting an uphill battle, and it’s a very steep hill sometimes. Actually usually. And it has never really been even close to flat. But at least I have come way way further than ever before, and there are times when these 10 years of hard work has brought massive joys, people, memories, and life changing moments. It has turned my life into what it is today.

I love that. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

But I also thought about the thoughts I had gone through last night. Why I wanted to run away.

I missed Sweden because I romanticized that I was “freer” when I grew up there. That I could go places. Take the bus into town and meet friends. Have a stable income. More opportunities to be whatever. Then I realized that moving back would be a different reality. I’d feel trapped. And all those things I used to have there have changed.

I missed living in Thailand because back there I had no responsibilities and life was as simple as it could be. I was living underwater with fish. I didn’t have social media. I didn’t even have a phone. I didn’t have to constantly look for new work to stay afloat, or hustle and fight waves of imposter syndrome. All I had was great people, some ok people too, and fish.

But then I remembered that I got bored of that after a year. It was too easy and I moved away from there too.

The I realised the reason I thought all these thoughts was because I felt trapped here last night. Trapped in Siglufjörður. With prints that take more work setting up than they sell. With a website plan that I can't even pay for with the money I make from it. A baby who I can't travel with yet, and no money. And I can’t handle feeling stuck in one place. I've never been good at that.

But honestly, I need to practice accepting being stuck.

And if there’s anywhere I’d want to be stuck—it’s here. In Siglufjörður.

In Iceland.

Here, I already have everything I want to travel far, far away to find. I live in a place where I can climb mountains, shoot photos, film, ski, bike, paddle, make a difference, have friends, play music, build a future, build a career out of my hobbies, build my family, and be happy.

I’m exactly where I want to be.

But I miss the ability to just leave when it gets hard. So I need to get better at not wanting to flee when that happens.

Like when I need to upload a print and match the right frame sizes with the right SKU numbers. I truly hate that. From the bottom of my heart. So much that it makes me depressed. Even if just for an evening.

This is not what I intended to write. Or at least not to show it to anyone. But I kinda like it. And I ran out of brain power to write anything more.