Embracing and Dealing with Results Lower Than Expectations
I got my scans back yesterday. Out of 106 photos I deleted over 60 of them. Overall, I wasn’t happy with them. I was upset for a minute before realizing this is just apart of the process. It had been a long while since I flexed my photography muscles and I some how expected to come back to how before I took a break. I remember the process I started for myself a few years ago. Being uncomfortable. There’s growth and opportunity there. So I gotta just keep at it.
The break from photography happened for a lot of reasons. I had gotten so bummed out about some of the work my contemporaries were producing, I had internalized my FOMO and punished myself by just not going out to take my own photos. Fear of missing out came from burying myself deep into software engineering school. Because of that, I really couldn’t enjoy doing any creative things I wanted to do. That was the first excuse. The second, was developed out of bitterness. Stress and imposter syndrome was always active.
The third reason for my break came from finally succumbing to my imposter syndrome. I had been playing around alot of instant photography and none of it was what I had hoped or wanted. This was a deep reason for me because I knew this wasn’t the end but it felt like it. The fourth reason was finally just embracing my failures and that I should try more to focus on things that I needed to be doing. I wanted to be doing photography among many other things, but it wasn’t what I needed.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this failure seat, especially for this amount of time. I keep asking, “When am I gonna catch my lucky break?” I dont have a software developing job. I’m not making alot of new music. I haven’t created anything that’s good. I’m not taking photos the way I’d like to. They come out looking okay but there’s always something in them I miss.
I’m not mad or upset. I just expected more out of myself. I just need to keep moving forward and not be so concerned with the end result. Trust in and have fun with the process, because that’s where the real art is anyway.
