The thief of Joy

For a long time, the only real joy I had came from taking photos. I would lose myself for hours in Lightroom and Photoshop, hyper fixated on every little detail. I watched countless YouTube videos, took online courses, and did free shoots with anyone willing to stand there awkwardly while I fumbled through my confidence and posing. I thought hundreds, maybe thousands of those shots were straight bangers. In the beginning I did not care about attention. I just wanted to share what I was creating. I would buy a new lens, crack it open in the car, and start shooting before I even got home. Stop sign, snap. Road barricade, snap. I carried my camera bag everywhere and shot everything. I gave zero fucks. I once took a photo of a used beer can in a bush, edited it, and posted it to Instagram like it was art, because to me it was. Over time, I started tightening up what I was willing to shoot. Light hunting became a thing. The right conditions had to line up before I would even turn my camera on. I convinced myself that if I wanted people to like my images, I had to play the Instagram game. Certain color schemes. Curated timeline. No photos outside my usual style, because that was not what my followers wanted. As if I was getting paid to stay on brand. I got lost in YouTube photographers, their styles and their bullshit advice, and I could not understand why my photos were not getting thousands of likes and tens of thousands of views. I watched all the “how to make it big as a photographer” content and decided to treat it like a business. I shot weddings for free. Boudoir for free. I did not care that I had over fifty grand in gear and lights, all the things YouTube told me I needed. None of it mattered if I was not good enough to charge. Then I did charge, delivered images people loved, and social media still did not see me. I let something I loved and obsessed over become something I hated. Wedding photography was a nightmare and the money was not worth the headache. Boudoir lit me up because I could help people see themselves differently and actually feel good in their own skin, but being a male photographer in that lane is chaos. Jealous men, hidden motives, assumptions, opinions, no matter how professional you are. That killed that passion too. I knew I was killing it, but the algorithm still did not give a shit. So I kept asking, what am I doing wrong. What I was doing wrong was simple. I was comparing myself to people who were more charismatic, more attractive, better spoken, less angry, and just seemed better than me in every way that mattered for that world. I was looking at photographers with twenty or thirty years in the game and acting confused about why, after five years of inconsistent effort, constant style changes, and long breaks, I was not where they were. The reality was I was not as good as I thought I was. I had not done as much work. I had not put in the time. I was the walking, talking, breathing Dunning Kruger effect. Comparison does not just steal joy, it strangles it. You start out doing something because it brings you joy, then slowly you hand it over to the scoreboard. Likes, views, comments, money, attention. You stop asking “Do I love this” and start asking “Am I winning.” The crazy part is you created the game and still managed to lose. You forget that people you are comparing yourself to paid dues you never saw. Years you did not grind. Reps you did not put in. Mentors you did not have. You judge your five years of inconsistent effort against their twenty years of ruthless commitment and call yourself a failure. That is not honesty, that is self betrayal. Own your perception and efforts and you own your result. If you label yourself “not good enough,” you will live down to it. Let your thing be messy, weird, off brand, and still yours.

One of my biggest takeaways from a ceremony was this, we are made in the image of the Creator. We are pulled from the same source. If you scoop water from the ocean and put it in a bottle, it is not the ocean anymore, but it was. Nothing you do can erase that. That water is of the ocean. All that depth, all that movement, all that history, now sitting in a little container. You are that water in a fleshy container. You carry the divine spark. You are supposed to create, sing, dance, build, write, speak life, not just exist. God handed out talents. Some draw, some speak, some think deeply, some dance, some grow gardens, some build families and communities. The talent is a gift, but the skill is a choice. Talent without work means nothing. The sharpest knife will dull if you neglect it, and so will your gift. This is where comparison kills. You were given a specific spark and a specific lane, and then you start grading it by how many people clap. You want the masses to love your art, your content, your podcast, your photos, your voice. The truth is, this shit is not meant for everyone. I will say it. Picasso does nothing for me. Van Gogh does nothing for me. To me, they suck. But who the fuck am I. Imagine if Starry Night was never painted because some random guy like me thought it was trash. That is pure ego. Suicidal Tendencies said it best, just because you do not like something does not mean it ain’t no good. You do not create for everyone. You create because you were designed to. You create for you, for your people, for the one person whose reality shifts because you decided to bring something beautiful into the world instead of hiding it. It is no secret people fucking hate us. I see the comments every day. I still run our socials. I see the ugly. It used to wreck me for weeks. Then I got honest. I do not like everyone either. If I am being real, I probably vibe with maybe twenty five percent of the people I meet. The rest are not my people. Their energy feels like dirty gym socks left in a locker with a rotten egg on top. Somebody out there loves that smell. Good for them. I do not need to roll in it, and I do not need to force myself into their space when there is a whole universe where I fit exactly as I am. That is the point. You are not for everyone, and that is not a flaw. That is design. My journal from that ceremony said, dance like no one is watching, not because some meme told you to, but because there are people who envy that you can. They envy the courage it takes to move your body freely, to look silly and not care, to actually feel joy in real time while their ego blocks them from feeling anything but judgment. Right after I wrote that, I heard someone say, “I never thought I’d say this, but I am so happy to be alive,” while I watched her and my goddess of a wife dancing around a fire. I remember feeling proud of my wife, not because of who she is online or what we do for work, but because I knew for four nights she wanted to move like that and kept holding herself back, and then finally said fuck it all and let go. Her joy gave other people permission. In that moment, everything the medicine showed me clicked. That was fifteen minutes that changed how I see the whole game. Stop comparing yourself to the rest of the universe. You were not made to be the next carbon copy of whoever is trending right now. God already made them. That job is taken. You are supposed to be you, fully, loudly, honestly. Feed your gift. Hone it. Share it even when the numbers do not clap. Someone out there is starving for exactly what you carry, and they will never get it if you keep trying to be a knockoff of someone else. Be unapologetically you, and actually love that person. 

Do Better. 2 Be Better.