Archive for December, 2007

New Year, New Dreams

Thursday, December 27th, 2007 by Alyice

I am finally getting off my butt and making something of my dreams to use art and photography together; to use it in such a way that it tells life stories and preserves memories. Yes, I am stepping out on faith this year and I am no longer going to hide behind the “What if I stink?” mentality. Its funny how being creative opens up a whole new world of insecurities.

I have a colleague and dear, dear friend who is a really good photographer and because of her dedication to the craft, I’ve seen her improve her skills each and every year. I’ve seen her go from average photographer to skilled photographer and one day, I am positive I will see her transform into one of those photographers that you just wish you could emulate. But behind her small successes, and praises from a few industry experts, she’s still an insecure photographer who hopes that every client will love her work, that she will capture their true inner beauty, and that she won’t disappoint.

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What makes her different from me? She put her fear aside and went head first! It’s funny really how it all came about. We were both freelance writers: two writers with two different audiences and two different venues for making a living at the craft. One day I told her that I wanted to do more than write, that I had always had a dream of becoming a photographer. She, too, shared the dream.

The more we discussed photography, the more we realized we should turn our desire into a fun hobby, a monthly outing where we simply drove around the state finding neat things and fun places to photograph. A year later, she was in business. A year later, I was still dreaming.

A move out of state ended our monthly photo opps, but her business continued to grow. Another year passed and she quit writing altogether—to focus on photography full time. I, however, still had not stepped out on faith. Last year, I changed the theme of this blog and promised myself to “step out on faith”. But alas, life got in the way: deaths in the family, job lay offs, health issues, you name it, and I did nothing with photography and I did nothing with art. I had simply allowed the dream to escape me.

Then a life altering moment hit me. The right side of my face had become paralyzed and the local doctor feared it was a stroke. An emergency room visit and one CAT scan later, it was determined that I had Bell’s Palsy: a temporary paralysis of my face due to my number 7 nerve deciding to go on vacation.

“What if it were a stroke?” I asked myself. “What if you could never do the things you always dreamed of doing because you constantly put them off because life gets too busy, because you have another business to run, because you are too afraid to put yourself out there for the world to judge?”

I had no answer.

I’ve owned my own business, in one form or another, since 1991. I understand that in order to start a business you have to make sacrifices. I understand that you must crawl before you can leap. I understand that there is a learning curve. I understand that nothing is perfect the first time out. I understand that in order to succeed you must put yourself out there to be criticized, to be judged, and hopefully, to be praised. I’ve experienced this with my writing business. I understand how it works. Yet, I simply found a way to give up before I had even begun.

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Perhaps part of me secretly believed that if I didn’t start this new venture in my life, I’d live forever—that by procrastinating I would have plenty of time to start this next chapter of my life.

But the reality is that it can all be taken away in a heartbeat. Just ask my mother! She died nearly two years ago, having never been able to fulfill her lifelong dreams. When she died, I told myself I would not let that happen to me. I would pursue the dreams that had eluded me all these years.

This Christmas, I broke down and cried. I had a good cry. I didn’t know why I was crying really, but I released the bottled up emotions. Today I realized that some of the tears were for the mother I lost and the second Christmas without her—the first was really a blur. And some of the tears were for me.

Today I realized that I stopped believing in myself as a writer, as a photographer, as an artist, and even as a mother. I stopped moving forward. I was stuck and I allowed myself to stay stuck. And even though I wasn’t going backwards, I wasn’t moving forward. I had stopped dreaming about what could be and what I wanted to do with my creative skills.

Today, it hit me, I am not a quitter. That’s the one thing I could honestly say my mother was VERY proud of when it came to me. I wasn’t a quitter. Life did not hold me back. No matter what happened in my life, no matter how hard it got, no matter what life threw at me, I was not a quitter.

And so today, I decided to move forward, even if it’s just baby steps. So watch out world, this girl is moving forward!