Out of Focus

hen, the shutter jammed.

After the wide-eyed wonder of childhood and the high-contrast performance of my ambition, the world suddenly just… stopped. The audience went home. The lights went out. And I was left alone in the dark room.

This was the era of the Void.

In photography, when a subject is out of focus, the sharp edges disappear. You can’t tell where the object ends and the background begins. That is exactly what happened to time. Tuesday bled into Friday. Morning dissolved into night. My ambition—that bright, sharp point I had been chasing—became nothing but a blurry smear in the distance.

I felt like I was floating in static. I wasn't happy, but I wasn't exactly sad either. I was just… buffering. I was a ghost haunting my own room, staring at the ceiling, waiting for a signal that never came.

I tried to twist the lens. I tried to find something sharp to hold onto—a goal, a desire, a connection—but my hands were too numb to make the adjustment. Without the titles, without the busyness, without the 'Filter' to hide behind, I looked in the mirror and couldn't recognize the face staring back. I was the subject of the photo, but I was completely undefined.