The Painful Virtue of Patience

The web site has grown massive and I think we are trying to over achieve for its launch. Keep adding new components and every time we do it seems to be several days of banging our heads against the wall just trying to activate the unit and get it functioning. Then once it gets activated, it becomes so easy work with. This is a very simple process and I love the way it flows once you have established the mode of operation. This week has been about creating shopping carts and ultimately being able to sell images on line. But, you know me I can’t do it the simple way and do it half way. Sometimes I think this is the bane of my existence. I try to do too much and never realize my limitations. I have always learned to dream big, that anything and everything is possible, you just need to figure it out. Julian, my site consultant techie keeps reminding me to take a breath and step away, that it is possible, but you just have to work through it with patience. I have patience to a certain extent, but when I get to a roadblock and it’s beyond what I can do and shuts down for several days while I wait for a response, patience goes out the window. I guess I am a doer and need things to be in constant motion, forward motion. I am not quite sure why? And I am not quite sure where I get this drive for over achievement. Nobody else in my family seems to be afflicted with it. I think part of it is my age, because it seems the older I get the harder I push. I am savoring the experience and am having a great time working on and creating it, but think I could have made it simpler out of the gate and perhaps let it grow gradually. I realize now perhaps I should take example from the garden. We sow the seeds and put the plants in bare root as starters and we know that they will with time grow and mature. This is the pleasure of gardening, is that we know the process and that things will follow a path to an end result, the final design of the blooming garden. Gardens do also do not happen overnight and often take years to plan, cultivate and become the things of gracious beauty. It takes a perennial three years to reach its maturation, growing stronger with each cycle until finally fully establishes its roots and spurts to incredible life and vitality on that third year, that is provided we continue to nurture it along the way. I have always heard that it takes 10 years to become a photographer. It certainly has for me. There is such subtlety to everything about the process and most of that was learned just as I am now, from trial and error and making so many mistakes and botching so many images. But then again I started before the era of modern digital imagery when mistakes were costly. We now live in a time where everything is solvable by the click of some button and or the movement of a slider in some piece of software. It’s almost fool proof now. But photography is a passion you never get to the end of learning or growing. I think that’s why it chose me, because I am not a person to give up easy and love the process of growth no matter how painful it may become in the moment.

VIEW FULL IMAGE: Matthew #119