Impulse

I’ve decided to start devel­op­ing my pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness. I imag­ined what my com­mer­cial would be like — what ser­vices I’d offer, etc. I thought not only about art, adver­tis­ing, & stock pho­tog­ra­phy, but video, flash, etc; pos­si­bly hir­ing graphic artists, web gurus, and video crews on a per project basis, etc. I know how to do this stuff. I know enough peo­ple to be able to quickly pull together team to work with me on it. I could do all of this.
Then I noticed that imag­i­nary me was work­ing his butt off doing a bunch of projects that the real me, here and now, isn’t inter­ested in.

It’s inter­est­ing how eas­ily and quickly I slipped from things I want to things I could and end­ing with some­thing I don’t want. I didn’t even notice the change.
It also reminds me of some­thing men­tioned in the movie The Corporation: when peo­ple are put into a busi­ness role, they adapt their actions to their role, despite any con­trary inten­tions or desires they had. In the movie, they described CEOs of oil com­pa­nies who gen­uinely wanted to make the world greener, but even­tu­ally had to con­form to their role as care­tak­ers of Shareholder Value. It’s so easy to become the role of Business Owner and for­get why you started. When I put my busi­ness hat on, I imme­di­ately thought of all those things I could do to make my busi­ness a diverse, sus­tain­able busi­ness.
But, I don’t want to do most of those things.
For that mat­ter, it’s easy to fol­low tried & true paths. It’s safe; it’s known, and there’s prob­a­bly an X for Dummies book on it. It’s harder to find one untried thing and stick with it despite dis­trac­tions until you’re really good at it.
Staying true to myself is tricky busi­ness indeed.

‘

“The only thing you must do is what you feel in your heart is true.” — Blues Traveller, from “Bagheera” off the CD Travellers and Thieves.