Let's Make a List

If I am going to make this photography business work, I need to remember what I'm good at. Let's make a list.

• I am pretty good at composing a photo.
• I enjoy seeing my images printed.
• I enjoy taking the photographs - looking for beautiful things AND discovering how I can make regular things look beautiful or compelling.
• I enjoy feedback I get for my photos that turn out well.
• I enjoy making people feel good by showing them my photos (or something like that).
• I could use extra money, but also could wait until I could count on that income on a regular basis.
• I have much of the equipment I would need to get started.
• I love learning new things (and have plenty to learn, starting with technical aspects of the equipment I already have).
• I know how to access the information I need to move forward.
• I have been recognized where I work for my photography skills, even though I'm not a "photographer" there.
• My employer has used at least one of my photos (taken at work, on company time) in promotional materials - ie, I have the beginnings of a portfolio.

Seems solid. What's holding me back?

• I hold fast to an illogical argument that, because I am not already a professional photographer, I can never be a professional photographer.
• Um...

Everything else I can think of falls into that category. 

What if my students thought that way? Let's think about this for a moment. They would be no-where. They would be doomed to live the lives of non-high school graduates who really want to be high school graduates. They would have to click "less than high school diploma" their whole lives. A couple weeks ago, I saw dozens of students proudly march across that stage - mothers with little babies; men who had been in prison; individuals who were, quite literally, homeless; all of them - every one of them - people who had already "failed" at education at least once. Education was hard for them - not their strength - yet there they were, smiling as they got their diplomas. All done. Successful. Thirty percent planning - already - to go to college. To keep going to school! Who knows if they actually got the hang of it after a while, or if they just decided they had to keep going and were going to do it no matter what. 

I want to be strong like them. I want to do something that is hard. (I would prefer it not be so hard, but it is and I want to do it, so I want to do something hard.) My two Master's degrees look, to outsiders, amazing. Very few people have one advanced degree, let alone two. Yes, they were somewhat a logistical miracle to accomplish, especially the first one, when I did the first year pregnant and parenting a toddler and the second year with a toddler and a newborn. And I wasn't able to get funding so as to not have student loan payments until I die. But it wasn't HARD. And I loved it. I love school. I love it to the point where, these days, I realize that the second Master's was done to escape my rotten marriage. It sucked up all my attention, which was what I needed at the time, I guess. 

Now it's time to do something hard.