While I was going through my photo catalog this morning to pick out some favorite older photos to use in today’s post I listened to the first episode of the Podcast 1619. This beautifully produced series tells the legacy of Black Americans and the history of their contributions to American history. I encourage you to listen to it. You can find more information about it at nytimes.com/1619podcast.
“Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all,”
On a far different note, later today I plan to watch a free watercolor session with Angela Fehr called Heart-led Landscapes.
Listening to the 1619 podcast is part of my journey of learning more about Black history because Black Lives matter and Black history matters.
Watching the watercolor video with my watercolor and paints at hand is a way to feed my spirit and choose joy.
Today I am focusing on
Walking the Talk
It’s not enough to talk about choosing joy and how Black Lives Matter. Each day I make choices about where my time and attention goes. By choosing small actions that focus on the things that matter to me each day, I am building my capability to live a congruent life. Small steps, day by day.
In my photographic life I’m taking a short timeout to work on the logistical details that support my work—backup strategies. (Ug!) I’ve now been making photographs for over 10 years and I have three different catalogs of photos that span those years. My latest catalog of photos is so large that it’s almost filled a 2 TB disk drive. So I need to figure out how to ensure that I have good backups of everything and still have room to create a new catalog for my photographs going forward.
Since I didn’t want to buy more disk drives I’m moving things around and decreasing the number of backups I keep of my older catalogs. I’ve been putting this process off because it takes a lot of time. And it also takes slow careful attention and planning. I don’t want to wipe out something and lose years of work. Each time I drag a folder to the trash I pause and make sure that I’m following my plan. And each time I empty the trash folder I do the same.
Everything sucks some of the time
These tasks are what I call my creative shit sandwich (see Elizabeth Gilbert quote below). I do them because I love photography enough to also do the stuff that’s needed to support my work.
“What’s your favorite flavor of shit sandwich?” What Manson means is that every single pursuit—no matter how wonderful and exciting and glamorous it may initially seem—comes with its own brand of shit sandwich, its own lousy side effects. As Manson writes with profound wisdom: “Everything sucks, some of the time.” You just have to decide what sort of suckage you’re willing to deal with. So the question is not so much “What are you passionate about?” The question is “What are you passionate enough about that you can endure the most disagreeable aspects of the work?” Manson explains it this way: “If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands, of times, then you’re done before you start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the eighty-hour workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you.” Because if you love and want something enough—whatever it is—then you don’t really mind eating the shit sandwich that comes with it.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Well, it seems like I’ve rambled on in this post about wildly disparate subjects. Life is like that. It’s a wild potpourri of what we love, think, feel, and want to do. May you find joy walking the talk.
May you walk in beauty.
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