do i really believe in myself
I am writing to you from a place of fear.
I feel like that is the most honest way to begin this.
Everything in me is ringing, tense, clenching. Like a guitar strung too tight. I am holding my breath. I am grinding my teeth.
I should probably add that externally, nothing is wrong. Nothing about my environment is jarring or different. I am sitting at home in my family apartment in brooklyn, working from the kitchen table we’ve had for years. All the decor is the same. The smells of the chinese food restaurant downstairs. The church bells chiming from around the block. The sunset light falling through the fire escape onto the chest of plates and cups.
I am safe.
A couple days ago I made the conscious decision to start taking photography more seriously. To go ‘full send mode’ into creating, whatever that looks like. I think for a long time I’ve been flirting with the idea of my own success. Passively believing everything will happen, all the dreams I have will come true, but not taking the extra step to start making them a reality. To commit, to put weight into the dreams would also mean opening myself up to fear. To rejection. To failure.
I’ve never allowed myself to believe that all the things I want wont happen for me. When I imagine my future, I never imagine the things I want not coming true.
But upon deciding, consciously, that I was going to start properly networking, setting up shoots, going to gigs, making connections, and getting out of my comfort zone for the love of the art I fell into a panic –– what if it doesn’t happen? what if it’s out of my reach? what if i fail?
To know me is to know I am constantly overthinking, worrying, comparing, spiraling. I realized that if I am to be successful in the ways I crave to be, I cannot get stuck in these patterns of spiraling. A rejection cannot mean immediately thinking that my work is worthless, that I should quit, that all my dreams are stupid. Disagreeing with someone on a creative vision does not mean that I am necessarily wrong or should give up. But that’s the place my brain goes. There is no in between, no sitting calmly with the discomfort then getting up and moving on. It’s all or nothing. It’s the front seat of the roller coaster. Every. Damn. Time.
And it made me ask myself this week— do I really believe in myself? I know that I want to. I know what it feels like to love something I’ve created. To feel in every cell that I am aligned in what I am meant to be doing. The joy of getting a roll back and the photos being exactly, or better, then how I wanted them to look. The buzzing in my skin of being in community and creating with people I respect and admire. Some of my favorite moments are just sitting in a coffee shop with Isabelle, both of us dreaming out loud. Everything feeling possible and alive.
If I am to succeed I have to believe in myself. And something about this decision to take photography more seriously (even though at this point I have no idea what that means or looks like) scares the crap out of me. I think maybe I’m scared to fully believe. The imposter syndrome is real and it rules me. But it can’t.
I guess I’m also writing to you from a place of questioning. From a place of curiosity. From the eye of the storm. I don’t have the answers. I’m going to feel the fear and try and do it anyway. And hopefully, once I prove to myself that I got this, I won’t be acting from a place of fear but one of joy, excitement, possibility.
Because if I know one thing it’s that operating this way is exhausting. And I’m tired of being tired.
