it’s in the process

I've recently learned something about myself over the last few years, it's a lesson that my enneagram 3 self has been hard-pressed to learn. Now before we go any further I just want all of you to know I'm not big into personality tests, but I did just recently learn that I was an enneagram 3 for whatever that's worth, and I learned something about myself that I think I always intrinsically knew about myself. And that is I only judge myself on the outcome, personally, I only care about results, I want to know how big was it how successful was it and what do we gain from doing something. which side note IS A TERRIBLE WAY TO JUDGE YOURSELF…im always looking ahead, i only really care about winning. i see it as a waste if there is not something to gain at the finish line… but i learned something about myself, that many times the lesson that you learn along the way are more valuable than the trophy you get in the end. and oh boy was that a long process for me to learn, OOHHHHHH the stories i could tell you. the stores of being a terrible boss, a dismissive husband and a selfish friend. oh the process of me getting to where i am now… that’s a funny word PROCESS… i wish i had understood that a lot earlier in life. i wish i focused less on who i was and more on who i was in the process of becoming. i wish i focused less on the score and more on my team. i wish i had focused less on whether the shot went in or not and more on my form i used to shoot the ball. i wished i focused less on appearance and more on my heart. i wish i had focused less on my goals and more on my habits…

the film camera is a beautiful and frustrating thing, my dad had a film camera just like the one i have now, and when i think back on those days growing up, i used to only think about the printed photos that hung on the walls that my dad took. now, now i think of the days, and the trips and adventures that took as a family, and the moments of when he pulled out his camera and snapped a photo. i wished i had paid more attention to those moments because those were the true moments of art. those are the moments that my dad perfected an artist. i can hardly remember the photos anymore, and even when i come across some of than now, they are never as good as i remember. huh. isn’t it funny that the thing we can spend our whole life chasing after and aspiring for can be so unfulfilling? well i guess it's not really all that funny, but i digress. now, where was i? oh yeah the camera. For my 27th birthday, i purchased the same camera that my dad growing up and figured that i would create in the same way he did. that i shoot “some fiya banger” as the kids say. the first roll was trash, but hey that was to be expected. second roll i put the film roll in wrong. but the third roll, okay the third roll i was finna get it, i had it all planned out, i was focused i visualized every shot before i took it. i remember everything my daddy taught me about shooting film and i was going to nail it for this roll. i was going to have so much fun, and experiment and attempt to tell te perfect story though film. the subject was a brand new beautiful stain glass church that i got on staff for. i was going to take this beautiful catalog of photos of the church that would highlight some cool aspects of the church, and i just knew it was going to be perfect and everyone was going to love all the pictures i was going to take. i could see it, everyone was going to lose their minds over these “saucy” pictures and the pastor would live them so much was going to give me this massive raise for my creative eye, my photos would be shared all over the interweb and people would literally throw money at my feet to take photos of them. i could visualize it, every shot i snapped felt perfect, i would brag and make ooooooo sound every time i snapped a picture because i knew i had nailed it…until i got the rollback. i was crushed, the result was not what i had expected, i had failed. and be honest i felt like a failure. because i had failed to live up to this image i had told myself i needed to be at. i had defined my success on what i felt the result needed to be at. so to say i was disappointed would be an understatement, i took those pictures and stashed them away for almost 6months because to keep it real i was ashamed to post them

then on a random day in the middle of May during the Corona Virus epidemic i was looking through some photos because i was bored and i came across the photos and decided “what the hell” (i mean heck, mom) i should post them, hadn’t posted in a few weeks anyway so why not. and i posted all of them, not just the ones i liked and to my surprise, the ones i didn’t like were the ones that people most resonated with. the ones where the exposure was off, or i was having a camera problem or my composition just wasn’t there, those were the ones people were asking me could they repost not the few really good ones that i actually liked!?!?! WHAT THE HELL!!! (i mean heck, mom). i had people asking me “what did i do to make the picture look like that” ? Ahem, uhhhh suck? that's what i did Sally. But as i started to look back at those pictures something amazing happened, i started to remember what i did and what i was doing as i was taking those pictures and most likely led to the imperfections that everyone was resonated with (which i feel like i could do a whole nother blog on) i started to remember the processes that were going through my head as i ever so confidently pressed down on the shutter button. huh, there is that word again, the process .ill never look at this roll of film the same again not because of the pictures that did or did not come out the way i wanted but because of the process of what i did to get here, at this very exact moment. to look at something that i once hated and now i love. what a lesson, what a process. and really those words are synonymous…well kinda. i guess you can say the lesson is in the process