What I learned from living my desperate life

Better safe than sorry.

Those are the words I’ve known. Those are the words I’ve lived. A calculated existence, staying the course, climbing the hill, waiting to become all the me I could be.

Don’t fight windmills.

Don’t chase the dream.

Be safe.

I had a steady stream of clients, an office in the middle of Manhattan, and a brand new Brooklyn home.

Everything was perfect.

And if you were to ask me what perfect felt like, the best answer I could give is it somewhat resembles staring down the barrel of a 45-caliber loaded gun.

It looks like long hours with mismatched clients, constant insecurity, and a deep well of doubt. It looks like a big mess of yourself, never coming together, always falling apart, hoping to be more, but too afraid to be less.

I was a pregnant pause living off a catheter with a constant drip of hope.

I was desperate. Afraid. Ashamed of my ridiculous facade that mattered to no one but me.

Fuck safe.

There are three types of photographers in the world.

The first is the novice, and the novice lives by memorizing the work of others and replicating those pictures. He operates by the principle of substitution. Essentially recreating something that’s already been done without adding anything to the mix. You could just as soon Photoshop heads and bodies into other pictures to achieve the same. Instead of looking for differences this photographer finds similarities. Instead of revealing uniqueness, the novice renders everything as common.

The second photographer lives by formula. This is the amateur. One step up the ladder, he has extracted the rules that make pictures work and organized them into a set of formulas. He no longer needs to force feed his subjects into tired tropes, but his work conforms to commonly accepted rules. The amateur thinks of the world in terms of right and wrong. He looks for good light. Good composition. Good expressions. And these are absolute. He proves his skill by making pictures that include as many forms of goodness as possible – the more, the merrier.

The final type of photographer is the professional. The professional knows there is no good and bad and knows what counts is not being good, but communicating powerfully. Most people call this voice. He will do whatever it takes to make that communication come through. For the professional, every moment, every occurrence, every expression is something new and valuable, so it must been seen with open eyes and explored as fully as possible. There are no rules, just what works, which also means that the professional lives in complete uncertainty. Everything must be figured out. The only safety net is a well-honed instinct and being deeply in touch with his beliefs. The professional knows the power of trying and getting things done, and works constantly to grow.

The true artist is a professional. The true business person is a professional. Those who find their value are professionals. The professional puts subject first, bringing insight, surprise, and joy into the world.

No one who was ever been hired just to get a job done will be paid the full value of what they are worth. There has to be more.

And very few of us are professionals for one simple reason.

Safety.

The more we learn the rules, the more we like them. They’re comfortable and familiar and easy, but in the end, if you can’t let go, they’ll stop you dead in your tracks and blind you to possibility. There are no rules. If it works, it works. The greats make the rules, and you can’t do that, if you’re not willing to walk out on a ledge and jump.

The truth is most people would rather look good than be good.

And this is a tragedy.

Because the moment we give up our vision in favor of the common and the accepted is the moment we lose touch with our dreams, hopes, and even our purpose. The things that make us the most human and the most powerful.

The way the professional differs from the amateur is the way he handles fear. Instead of turning away from it to find safer ground, the professional steers right into it and takes it down. The professional lives a life of trust, while the amateur lives a life of doubt. The professional sees opportunity, where the amateur sees danger.

And to add insult to injury the very security the amateur seeks is a lie.

The middle class is dying. You’re flying or crashing. There is no holding pattern. That’s a relic from a bygone era, when you could spend your lunchtime sipping martini’s and your weekends manicuring your lawn.

Living out loud isn’t just a luxury now. It’s the minimum you need for skin in the game.

This isn’t a world we can know any longer. Change is too fast for that.

You can only know how to listen to the surf, feel the swell, and ride the waves. If you crash, you crash and get right back up. It’s not ready, steady, go. It’s go, go, go, and deal with being ready and steady the whole way through. That is the skill of the here and now.

And that is exactly the skill of the professional: living in the present.

Success, is an activity of constant change. You have to learn how to live ahead of the curve and create things no one has seen before. That’s the rocket fuel.

Yes, knowing the rules will get you business. So will slick marketing. These things will get money in the door, but what it won’t get you is control. It won’t get you passionate followers who insist on spreading the word.

Insecurity is now the only path to security. More than ever, this is the time to experiment. To play with new ideas. To dive deep. It’s time to find your edges and discover your voice, because in this hyper-connected, over-saturated, technicolor world, being noticed is harder than ever.

I thought I wanted safety, but I was wrong. What I wanted was relief. Relief from the pressure. Relief from the fear. I wanted permission to be myself and to try not being myself.

That permission never came. There’s no one to give out the gold stars in real life. There is no one to tell you it’s OK. It just is. You go out and do things, and see what happens, and believe in yourself and your ideas enough to know that you can take whatever happens, whether it works the way you wanted or not, and use it to move yourself one step further into the journey. It’s taking the step that counts.

Great people make life work. Sometimes they fly. Sometimes they crash. But they know something most of us don’t.

Being sorry is better than safe.