30 11 / 2011
So, today I went to Jeremy Cowart’s LifeFinder Tour in downtown Dallas. I experienced so many different feelings there, it was… I dunno… odd. I don’t even know how exactly to describe it. You know that scene in Alice in Wonderland where she grows really big really fast and is squished inside a house? So, I guess to a certain degree, I feel like Alice. And the growth is in my awareness, and the house is my (what feels like) inescapable mediocrity. I have these odd moments of clarity here and there where I feel like I’m starting to figure something out, and then a few months later, I have the mirror of that same feeling, where I figure out that I really am not even close to figuring anything out and as a matter of fact, I actually have things less figured out than I did before. I am simultaneously inspired and motivated to get up and just start running with this whole photography thing, and also drenched in this really hopeless feeling of knowing that for the most part I’m just not that good, or that creative, I’m not doing a lot of thinking, I just pick up my camera and shoot when I have time. There’s growth in learning certain technical aspects of shooting, but no real creative growth, no new ideas, nothing profound or noticable. And it is so frustrating.
In the next week I have a paper to revise, another paper to re-write totally, and a group project to complete. I’m going to miss my son’s very first parade with his choir group for a class I just don’t enjoy, I still haven’t had time to put up the Christmas Tree, something Jack really wanted to do this week, and the further into school I get, the less I’m convinced that it’s where I want to be. Sitting and listening to Jeremy speak about his experiences makes me want to drop out of school (to be clear, he never said to drop out of school, he has an art degree), quit my job, and immerse myself in photography and Photoshop. If I were independently wealthy, I think I’d already be doing that, but as it is getting by is somewhat difficult. And so I just feel stuck and discouraged. The last few months I’ve not had very much time, and the photography has been pushed aside to make room for school, and it is so stifling.
So, where does this leave me? I really don’t know. I want to throw up my hands and say I quit and not go back to that stupid class and spend time with my son and I hate that I’m even in the position where I have to make a choice.
I should probably add somewhere in all of this negativity that the LifeFinder Tour was really cool, I was my usually clumsy self in a large room full of really cool people who like to do the same thing that I do. It was really neat. Really neat. And Really Intimidating. And also really neat.
