A Vulnerable Moment
I’m not 100% on what I want this to be. I bring my camera everywhere, pointing the lens at things that genuinely peak my interest, aesthetically or illustrative of a moment. I’m still new at this. I have no idea what I’m aiming for and so I just continue to point and shoot, hoping to finally find a way forward, a purpose to what I am doing. I love taking photos, capturing the moment and seeing the result of my vision reflected back at me. But I also have this thing about me where I can’t just do something for fun. I have to think of what more I could be doing. This kind of sounds like it informs my feelings of not being enough, doesn’t it? I can’t just take photos for me. I have to take photos and get the validation of praise, likes, a sale… It’s interesting how much trauma can rob a person of lifes joy.
Maybe I can use photography to heal my trauma. I can take photos for the love it, the process, the art, the creativity that it allows me to exercise. I can share my photos without holding my breath, hoping to get the recognition of that important person. Actually, the recognition is already there was the most important person in my world, myself. Man that felt incredibly cringe to write. And to read back. But it’s also something I need to be true. It’s something I need to believe. And I’ll continue to say it to myself until the cringe, the grimace, the shame, the embarrassment, ultimately disappears and I am left with that pride and love and appreciation for myself.
And another thing…as I sit here and write this it feels like such an uncomfortable exercise, because again, I don’t know what I want this thing to be. I love to write. I’ve been a writer my whole life. But I’ve moved away from it, allowing myself to go into autopilot; work, eat, sleep, drink, scroll, tv, exercise, etc. The stressors of being an independant human being who wants to watch their weight and also find time to “relax” which is actually another stressor in and of itself because “relaxing” is sitting on the couch doom-scrolling until it hurts.
People like to advertise how that social media cleanse they did changed their lives (which they advertise on the social media platform their very much present on). But as I’m a nobody on social media I think that really has some weight to it. I wonder if I just stopped looking for inspiration from others that the inspiration would come in more organic forms? Theres a creative part of me that is so stifled by other peoples creativity that it has no space to come free. Who knew that appreciating art could make your own art suffer?
At this point I know no one is probably reading this but to that imaginary reader, what do you think of that? Do you think we can have too much influence that it actually stifles our unique ideas and our personal flavor of creativity? Do you suffer from this overstimulation of GREAT ART that it makes you want to put your camera down since you aren’t worth a cent of what those people can do (which is NOT TRUE, btw)?
Anyway, the tone here is a bit self deprecating but I assure you there is a positive smiling person behind these words and I can already feel the inspiration flowing. I put the phone down. I put my fingers to the keys. I’ll do the work. And I hope you will too :)