In 2011 I launched a blog, and it was intimidating. I was committing to put words and thoughts out into the universe from my mind and heart. I was hoping to be helpful and to be liked. And I was trying something new that felt natural but also difficult. It came with many temptations and frustrations.
- I was tempted to gauge my success by the success of other writers, comparing traffic numbers, clicks, shares, vitality, and whatnot.
- I was discouraged by how much better other writers were than me qualitatively.
- I was tempted to forget how much writing was enjoyable and good for my soul and mind. Instead I was tempted to focus on responses to my writing.
Earlier this year I made another foray into a new (old) creative venture: photography. Photography is an old flame of mine, going back decades, that had smoldered and been smothered by the ease of Sony cybershots and iPhones. Years ago my parents gave me their old Pentax film camera and I loved it through high school and into college. But then, like most of us, I moved into the ease of the digital age and away from the creative labor of love. I still loved shooting, I still saw photos in the world around me even though I couldn’t quite capture them with my phone.
I mentioned this to my wife who promptly conspired to enable my whim by giving me a real camera for my birthday. It has been so fun getting back into photography. My friend Tony pointed out, “You just see the world a little bit different” as a photographer. Which is not so different from being a writer. In both cases, you engage the world around you with possibility and potential rather than passivity. As a writer, you listen for ideas, phrases, questions, or narratives. You consider how a person or place might be described. You tune into feelings and thoughts with more clarity. As a photographer you begin to notice contrasts, shapes, light, shadow, features, faces, and whole bunches of seemingly mundane things that might be capturable through a lens. In both endeavors you learn to find beauty and uniqueness and to capture something in a brief, concise, digestible format.
And yet . . .
It hasn’t been all creative nirvana and artistic utopia. I have discovered, once again, that when you step into a new creative venture the same temptations and struggles arise.
- I am tempted to gauge my success by the success of other photographers, comparing social media responses, shares, followers, and all that.
- I get discouraged by how much better other photographers are than me qualitatively, especially those who are years ahead of me. We can see the same thing, shoot the same thing, but we are not capturing the same thing. They’re just better.
- I am constantly tempted to forget that the reason I get excited about photography is the joy of doing it. Yes, there is a thrill in getting that shot, but the experience of wandering and seeing and trying things and experimenting is the actual constant.
- I am tempted to think in terms of “success,” instead of enjoyment and growth and learning. It’s so easy to think about “the shot” as a product, to fixate on perfection and distribution. In so doing I forget the more valuable things being produced: curiosity, adventurousness, relationships, creativity, restfulness, appreciation, and much more.
- I forget how to learn. I am 42 which means I’m not used to being a rookie at much, but here I am. And learning is humbling but also thrilling. It’s a thrill when something clicks, when an experiment works, when something that used to be laborious starts to become natural.
- I’m tempted to forget the value of a hobby. This isn’t a gig. It’s not a job. There is no goal other than enjoyment. And the value of that has tendrils that extend into my vocation, my family, my rest, my and friendships. A good hobby isn’t trite; it is restorative. It’s not a waste of time; it redeems the time.
I suspect these observations could apply to any number of ventures: wood working, baking sourdough (although that seems more like a religion than a hobby), painting, car restoration, and so forth. We can take a good hobby and turn it into a temptation in heartbeat. We can also eschew and resist these temptations for the sake of joy and growth. It all depends on what we’re trying to get out of our creative efforts—are we doing them for the sake of the doing, or are we doing them for the sake of external validation and some arbitrary version of “success”? I don’t think there’s really a moral to this post or a particular lesson. I don’t have a grand motivational push. But maybe, hopefully, it is encouraging and clarifying to someone considering doing a creative thing.
