A New Year, a new Attitude

So over the Christmas period I briefly mentioned about New Years resolutions, and making changes for the coming year, and so it is time to take a deep breath and admit mine out loud. First a bit of an explanation, I have decided to take the foolish and mildly brave idea of deciding to spend this coming year documenting the rise and fall of Asmartartz Photography as I try and get it off the ground. Instead of trying to deal with the scary bits of learning to run a business, and learning and evolving my photography techniques behind closed doors, and only posting the successes and interesting photos, I have decided to document everything, warts and all. I am very nervous about this as no one really likes to be seen as anything other than confident and competant, but I think it is going to be a journey of discovery, and who knows it might help other people realise that they are not the only ones sat there feeling confused and slightly overwhelmed by the emormity of it, and if I am lucky other people might give me their feedback and their experiences, and I can learn new stuff along the way too, so here goes:

 I am scared, not all the time, but a large majority of the time since I decided to become self employed and make a living out of my photography, I have a undercurrent of worry and anxiety running under the surface. 

Lots of thoughts regularly crash through my head, and most of them revolve entirely round photography, how to become a successful photographer, how to get good at business, and start making some proper money. This has resulted in me now having a goldfish like short term memory for normal day to day things, much to my husbands annoyance. I am forgetting conversations, why I am at the shops, when and where we are meant to be going over to visit friends and family, the fact that I said i would make tea..... 45mins ago! that sort of thing, while underneath my mind is whirring away 10 to the dozen. 

After all is said and done, several things keep coming to the front; how am I going to make this work, what if I fail, or people tell me my photography is rubbish and I am wasting my time, what if I am forced to spend the rest of my life working in an office working 9-5? 

After all that, I have becoming annoyingly aware that I like a lot of other people are scared of failure; but this is stopping me from really letting go, and immersing myself, and exploring the unknown, and making me test myself and put myself out there. Learn from mistakes, and ideas and shout about my photography from the rooftops, so every one around knows that I am here! Like they kept saying on Stictly Come Dancing, you have to let go, you have to feel the music and let it fill you up and take you over, surrender to it.

So that is it, I am going to try and surrender to it, not keep playing it safe, not keep missing opportunities because I am scared of rejection (I am still scared but will do it anyway), and not keep standing on the bank, grimly clutching at the tree branch while i tentively test the ice on the pond to see how safe it is! OK this may not be the best analogy, as we did this recently and our feet went straight through the ice and we got cold and wet feet but you know what I mean!! 

1) Stop being scared of everything and start pushing myself

2) Become the photographer that I want to be, that i can feel proud of myself

3) Get some self belief, and self confidence - I can do this

4) Take responsibility for my health, and stop waiting around for some miracle to happen

5) Deal with my lack of will power, and stop finding excuses for not doing things

I realise that this is already quite a long post, so will not go on too much more, but it would be great if you wanted to follow my journey, and get in touch if you have your own experiences and ideas, then I will know that i am not the only person starting a business that has the odd panic attack at the enormity of what this could be.

It comes down to the this: I love photography, and have been slightly obsessed about it since I was 17 and first started doing it, and really I just cant imagine not having it in my life, it is who I am so I just got to go for it.

Thanks for listening