I have been going through a rough time in the past few weeks. My mind has been doing a wonderful job of attacking me and making me feel like I can't do anything worthwhile anymore. It's caused me to quit my job and I am looking for another one that I feel I can do better but my depression, anxiety and fear have me paralyzed. I am not getting out and looking for jobs or even putting in applications like I should be doing. There are plenty of jobs out there but my mind tells me it doesn't like them or I can't do them. Then it shows me examples from recent and past experiences to prove it is right. I try to fight it but it is really hard. But, this isn't the revelation that I had tonight.
My mind seems to be most productive as I am settling in to go to bed. It is quiet and distractions are few. So, I am trying to fall asleep and I am thinking about how I recently lost interest in photography. I don't know why that thought popped into my head, but it did. A little background about me, I became interested in photography at around age 10. A few years later, in summer camp, I learned to develop B&W film and prints. I was hooked. I was amazed at watching the image appear on the paper in the developing trays.
I continued learning through jr high and high school and then through college. I have an Associate of Arts Degree in Photography. I developed a talent and eye for composition. Everyone seemed to like my pictures. Except for school assignments, I chose the subjects that I liked to photograph. I was drawn to scenery, landscape and architecture. I have an analytical mind and it seemed easy for me to arrange the shapes, colors, patterns and textures into nice images. The ones that I liked, I made enlargements of and hung on my wall. I was happy. Until, my parents started to push me into making photography my career. I was happy making images for myself to enjoy. In a career, you have to make images others will pay you for. To make a long story short, I was never really able to make a career out of photography.
Here is the revelation I had tonight. From a young age, I started to suppress my emotions. My father had an explosive, verbal temper. I vowed to never be like him, so I suppressed my anger and unknowingly my other emotions too. What I realized tonight is that my photography is also lacking emotion. When people look at it, it looks nice but there is no emotion response. They don't want to take it home and put it on their wall. And if you are an artist trying to live from proceeds from the art you created, if no one buys it, there is no income. My revelation is that my art, to the public, is nothing special.
When I realized that, it really hit me hard because I always thought my art was special. In the mindset I am in right now, it is another serious blow to my esteem to lose something that has been part of you life for so long. I am really struggling with self esteem, self worth, confidence, purpose and belief. I really feel lost. I don't know who I am anymore or have a direction to go in.