Sunday, May 22, 2011

Recovery

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It has been a while. And while I haven’t been alone, by definition of the word alone, I have been in a form of solitary. Not sharing, not being a part of things as I had been in the past. To be honest, it has been good for me, but I have missed it. I have spent considerable time holding myself accountable. I have been putting myself through “Bad Things” day in and day out for nearly a month now. Yeah, I have been particularly rough on myself, but that is who I am.

During this time I also observed the world around me. I observed the people around me. But my most important observation was of myself.

In observing the world around me I saw dark days. I saw the apparent collapse of my network of creative contacts as many of them pulled away. Rightfully so I am sure. I was a scary person for a while. I wasn’t able to hold myself up, so how could I support them. I saw very little beauty in the world around me. I felt very little emotion towards my world. I was cold in my frigid isolated world.

In observing the people around me I saw people that were repulsed by me. I saw people who had very little compassion for me. I saw people who viewed me like a spoiled little brat. I saw people who looked past my were compassionate, supportive and concerned.

I looked in the mirror yesterday morning and I saw a middle aged has-been-wanna-be. Yup, that’s right. I am a has-been and a wanna-be at the same time. And yes I am middle aged. See I am a has been, because the prime of life is behind me.  By all standards I have accomplished a majority of what I will accomplish in my life. I am also a wanna-be in that I want to accomplish more but am not sure if I have the ability to do that.

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I also saw a man who has a passion, drive and determination to accomplish whatever I set my mind to, which is what made the recent downfall so much harder. I don’t fail often, so when I do it is hard and I am very hard on myself. I know failure is supposed to make you stronger and wiser, but I never learned that lesson in life.

During my time away I found out who my real friends were. My real friends stood by me. My real friends, while they might not have understood, showed compassion. My real friends, while possibly perplexed at my response to the change, listened and took action to get me doing what I needed to be doing, even if that meant I needed to be left alone. My real friends challenged me by keeping me active. My real friends did more for me than they will ever know.

So what has changed? Not a lot, but some important things did. I am still deeply saddened by my failure, but I have developed a few tools and activities for coping. I am working on a blueprint for my future and how I achieve my goals. I can’t count on people valuing art, let alone my art. So, I am not going to count on my art selling, regardless if it is through portraits, weddings, fine art prints or some other tangible art.

Times must and always do change. If you don’t change with the times, then you become an antique which is pretty to look at but useless for practical purposes.

I have evaluated my business savvy. My personal marketing skills are a vacuous dismal disgrace. I don’t know how to fix that because my “suck” is at varying levels. My main problem is I can’t say no. This is why I have new desk job. I wanted to say no. I could have said no. In the end I couldn’t say no. Much in the same way I couldn’t say no to all of the free work people wanted me to do. My confidence was not where it should’ve been. My follow through was lacking. I was under the belief that if Kubota, Arias or Bianci could do, I could do it. I believed that they don’t have any more talent than I do.  I believed that I was equally creative as them. What I didn’t do was look at the difference in our market demographics and geographic locations. Salem isn’t Atlanta. Nor is it Los Angeles. Nor is it Bend. That was a failure in understanding the market. I lost a paying gig with a “friend” to a much lower bidder because my initial prices were 3 and 4 fold greater than the other photographer. I became bitter at that point and that was in December. I felt betrayed. I felt kicked in the face. My attitude was fuck you, I will prove you wrong. I didn’t lower my prices and I became more bitter as time wore on. I messed up.

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I made myself dependant on others for my personal success, and this lead me to be lazy because I could just blame the others when things didn’t work out. Did I blame “the others” when things didn’t work? Nope, because I knew all along that I was my own undoing. I owned it. My failure was my own. They were simply an attempt at having a patsy, because they had absolutely nothing to do with my failure. They were and still remain true friends.

So what does the future hold for me and my attempt at providing for my family with photography? I don’t know, but I do know that photography won’t be the only avenue I pursue. I will be writing, painting, drawing, playing music, photographing and even might try my hand at acting. I doubt I will share much more of my written work since that seems to create more issues in my life than I can handle at this point, but I will start sharing my other works.

The future also spells out that I am going to be much better at saying no to working for free. This does not mean I will not help out my true friends or organizations in need. My true friends deserve so much more than I can give them and organizations that contribute to the well being of the community deserver all the help they can get, so they have my services available to them any time I can, but everyone else, get ready to hear “no” a lot, especially when it comes down to working for free. I deserve to be valued and those that don’t value me don’t deserve to reap the rewards of my talents for absolutely no cost.

This may sound selfish, but it really isn’t. It means that I will continue helping others in need. I plan on volunteering my services to several organizations that not only need it, but deserve it.

The future also means that I surround myself with co-supportive people. This means that I support them as much as they support me and I am not talking financially. If the support isn’t mutual, then the relationship is not healthy for me.

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“Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self.” ~ Lao Tzu

The future also means not fearing and not being just hopeful. I will not fear being successful. I will not fear being praised. I will not fear my confidence. I will not fear the unknown. By facing my fears I will take their power away. When the unknown becomes the known, there is nothing to fear. When you don’t fear praise, praise can lift you up. When you don’t fear confidence, then moving forward becomes easier. When you don’t fear success, it will find you because you won’t be hiding from it.

Hope without action will result in failure. My actions will always be focuses on success: success of someone be it another or myself. As long as a party is benefiting and their benefit benefits others then action is worthy.

Always without desire we must be found for if desire is always within us its outer fringe is all we shall see.”  ~ Lao Tzu

There are few things I actually desire, but when I do desire something, I get tunnel vision. Yup… I see nothing except for what is right in front of me, my virtual goal line. That means I miss critical road bumps, and even other opportunities that might have been critical to my success in another arena. I need to remove this limitation from my life.

I am a student by nature. I love learning new things, but in my learning I have taken much of the mystery out of the world, and therefore I have taken much of my appreciation of the wonder of the world from me. I need to regain the awe I once had about the world around me. I miss that.

In addition to being a student by nature, I am a teacher as well. My ways of teaching are different than many I have experienced myself. I teach through passive methods. I teach by giving what is needed and letting the student discover the most important things. I find that through this type of discovery a person feels a connection with the new found knowledge. So when teaching a software or camera technique I teach the mechanics (how and why it works) and then I send them down their path to discover what it can do for them. The results of this are usually amazing.

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My dog killed a squirrel yesterday. It took her two months of stalking and hunting in the backyard to do it, but her patience and persistence paid off. She never got mad. She never resigned to herself to failure after failure. She persisted day after day, until her day. I had assumed that our dog was simply playing a game. I assumed that if she ever caught a squirrel she wouldn’t know what to do with it. I thought I knew my dog. But it turns out that she knew herself better. She knew what she was doing and knew what to do when the time came. It was her instinct.

People do the same thing. I can teach the mechanics of drawing, photography, music or painting, but it won’t be until they can take those mechanical aspects and blend them with their own instincts to come up with something unique. That can’t be taught. If teaching it is attempted then the student is only taught how to work like the teacher does and the awe of the moment is lost.

In much of the same way I can’t be told what to do, otherwise I won’t have my “aha” moment of discovery. I can be given some basic mechanics, but then I have to be released to work with it. It definitely makes the process a longer, but it is the way it has to be with me.

There is a lot I have to work on still, but I can only do one thing at a time. I am not anywhere near close to being fixed, but I am working on it. I am going to have good day and bad days. If you don’t want to know the truth, don’t ask me about my day job, because although I may have found a way to deal with it, I am not happy with it and I won’t lie or beat around the bush.

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So I will begin blogging again, but my posts are going to more about art and less about me. So I return you to our regularly scheduled program.