I’ve become addicted to inspiration.
I listen to podcasts, read books, and magazines, look at art, read poetry, write, and dream. Curate. There is a soundtrack on repeat that makes me feel like I am alternatively floating and walking on the moon.
Maybe it’s because the time that illudes me throughout the year is laying in abundance at the table before me in the Winter months, allowing me to feed my soul after a busy season.
I find myself a drift in a sea of ideas and dreams and goals. Like there is some white room I’m meant to step into to find freedom, peace, and allow my creative dreams to come true.
Too many illustrations?
Well this is where I am.
When I was little I wanted to be a singer.
Not because I knew how to sing, but because I wanted to move people. To make people feel the way I felt when I heard music.
Then I thought I wanted to be an actress for the same reasons. But I knew I wasn’t “supposed” to be those things.
I’ve always been overly sentimental. I took my point and shoot Vivitar to sleepovers in middle school because I knew one day we’d want to look back at these times. And My father gave me a fancy film camera for highschool graduation and I fell in love.
But I am a rule follower, peace maker, people pleaser. I knew I was “supposed to go to college and get a job and be a grown up” so i did. My “shoulds” took over.
But as I was about to complete my elementary education degree my “musts” came bubbling up to the surface. You know the gut feeling you can’t ignore. Things you just must do, not should do, simply because it’s who you are. . . “I can’t do this!” I said to my college guidance counselor. I need to connect with people, to move people. So I tried to converge my “shoulds” with my “musts”. I should be a professional and I must help & connect with others, so I’ll be a social worker.
I went to graduate school, and for years worked as a social worker and mental health counselor with familes and children.
It broke me wide open.
It changed everything about the way I viewed the world. You see, in my altruistic youth I believed in all people’s deep rooted goodness. But then I saw parents torture their own childen. I saw evil and pain, and poverty, and illness I had never imagined in this world. And while I was passionate about helping, it turned my world upside down and broke my sensitive spirit.
When I got pregnant with my first child, my husband and I looked at each other and we knew. I couldn’t do it any more. It was (this sounds super dramatic) soul crushing. I needed to heal and find my artist’s heart again. Your “musts” find a way to push through.
So I became a stay-at-home mom. A mom obsessed with my camera and my child. It was magical. The least stress I’ve felt in my life and the most love. I read, listened to music, cooked, and played with my daughter. It was grand. So we had two more babies. And my love for my camera and memorializing our lives grew as our family did. but something was missing.
I’d stopped creating. I was ignoring my “musts”.
At breakfast with two of my dearest friends (the ones you know who really get me and I can say anything to) I confessed my dreams to them. Creative dreams that had been born in poetry and music, films and pictures, and books by SARK. And I confessed my fears, “my shoulds”, and my rule follower inner critic.
They advised me to start a blog. Just write and take photos and let the dream breath, if it’s meant to be, it will grow. So I did. And my mom read my blog and maybe one other person, because when I wrote an essay asking for someone to help me jump. Someone reached out. I wanted to take photos for people, but my should said I needed a degree from somewhere fabulous like the Brooks Institiute to try and my inner critic said, “who do you think you are?!” But I pushed through and met a darling girl at the park. I took her photos and I was in love again. She told a friend who told a friend and a business was born. I learned verociously about Lightroom and Photoshop, F stops, ISO, Shutterspeed, and metering, actions and composition and slowly over the years, I learned. . .
that I suck.
Taste grows so much faster than ability. And if you are a creative you know that this is part of the process. and my process is a slow one. It goes something like this:
This is awesome
This is tricky
This is terrible
I am terrible
This might be okay
This is awesome
I’m yet to achieve the this second awesome stage. And my “I suck” stage was REALLY long. And it was just recently that I realized why. I had learned the rules of art and I was following them. In my obsession to be better at my craft, I got caught up in the “shoulds”. “Shoulds” about composition, engagement, exposure, posing, lighting, editing, there are “shoulds” for everything. I was looking towards other photographers and doing it their way. Convinced everyone knew something I didn’t.
This led me to comparison (a whole other blog post) which was killing my joy. I was right back where I started, living in should land.
So what do I do?
At the advice of that same amazing friend, I stopped looking at things that made me feel bad.
Simple, right? Even if it’s good (especially if its good photography) if it makes me compare and feel bad, stop looking. And at least for now, stop learning about photography. And learn more about myself.
“When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice” ~ Robert Frank
So I leaned away from social media, and into the things that filled me up. Music, podcasts, creative live episodes, and more Brene Brown than Brene Brown wants to hear about. I pulled out the books by SARK that had inspired my youth. Like I said, curating.
I stumbled upon Elle Luna.
My heart filled up and felt the warmth of understanding. Like when you’re at a concert and the band plays your favorite song and you close your eyes. You can feel your own soul. That feeling.
I cried at my computer watching youtube like an idiot. She is this amazing artist/writer/speaker who wrote the book a book called,
The Crossroads of Should and Must.
I began to change.
elleluna.com
Brenebrown.com
planetsark.com
creativelive.com
sleepingatlast.com
