I remember the first time I posted on social media. I uploaded five pictures. I didn’t know how it worked. I went to Flickr with no expectations except that, if I was very lucky, I would make some friends and develop a new hobby.

I remember the first time someone believed in my photography that wasn’t my mom or dad. I worked with her, Michelle my dear friend, and she came behind my desk one day, looked at the new picture I was editing, and told me that I should take a chance on galleries.

I remember the first time I wrote to a gallery. It was eight months after I started taking pictures. I wrote to every gallery email I could find. I messed it up royally. I burned bridges. I didn’t know any better. I told myself I was young, but that had no role in it. I was just learning.

I remember when I decided to quit my job to pursue photography. I went into my office crying, not because I didn’t want to leave, but because I was terrified at what my boss would say. And to be honest, it was as bad as I expected. I cried every day for two weeks until I finally left, and then I learned what it was like to breathe.

I remember when I had my first exhibition, just a few days after I quit my job. I sold nothing, but felt like I was on top of the world. My parents flew in to see it, my first friend from the internet Christine did the same, and I felt like a real artist.

I remember when I had to get a temporary housekeeping job because I couldn’t make enough money creating my art. I felt embarrassed, like I was less of an artist because of it.

I remember when I taught my first workshop. I was so scared that I thought I was going to throw up the whole morning. But beyond that, I was excited at the prospect of opening up the imagination. I remember talking excitedly and nervously to a man standing outside of my shooting location. At the end of our talk, he said “Your positivity is infectious, never lose that.” I will never forget him.

There are certain experiences that define who we are. We call them memories once they have passed, and those memories dictate how we see the world, and how we see ourselves. There are two things that dominate my mind when I think about all of the memories I have of “firsts” that I’ve experienced. Whether it was taking my first picture or hosting my first workshop, there was fear, and then there was bliss.

These two things are linked so wholly that I don’t know if I have ever had one without the other. Fear is a catalyst for change. It is what we feel when we are doing something new. It is what we feel when we are uncertain. It is what we feel when we doubt. But beyond that, it is our greatest demon. It is what we battle, time and time again, to find our happiest selves. It is what we constantly confront, push past, and conquer. And the conquering of fear is what connects all of my memories. It is what makes them so spectacular.

I heard from someone the other day who said that the aspire to get to a place where they don’t fear moving forward anymore, like me. I wanted to take that person by the shoulders, shake them, and then hug them. “That’s not me!” I wanted to shout. That’s not me at all. I feel fear. I feel doubt. I am scared to move forward.

But I remind myself, even if sometimes my reminders are delayed, that the purest forms of happiness stem from overcoming fear. I remind myself that failures are lessons. That success is only how you see your circumstance. That I am powerful enough to try anything, overcome my losses, and change my life if I want to.

I move forward right now, during this time in my life. I am hosting a “Promoting Passion” convention in October this year for all of us “misfit” creatives who feel fear, chase hope, and who want to do something a little bit differently. I am terrified that it will fail. I am scared that everything will go wrong. But I remind myself in this endeavor that if it does, I will learn. That if it doesn’t, I will find my bliss. If it doesn’t, I will find friends. If it doesn’t…

Conquer your fear today.
Encourage someone else to do the same.
Promote your passion.

The problem is not that we have hopes and dreams, it is that we measure those hopes and dreams against how someone else has defined success. And the funny thing is, that definition will always change. We will agree with some people and disagree with others. We will form our own opinions and those opinions will change. We constantly chase those new definitions, and we constantly change them.

What if we stopped thinking about success at all? What if we took that out of the equation? That is a very difficult thing to do in the society we live in. People are constantly flaunting their success on the internet. Magazines feature the “most beautiful people” on their covers. We watch reality TV shows and wonder why our lives aren’t so amazing. We constantly compare, and at the heart of those comparisons is the basic question: Who is more successful? Me or them?

Who cares about success? When all is said and done, and we’ve gone to our graves, no one cares about how much money you had, or how famous you were, or anything else for that matter. You are the only one living life every single day, every single moment, with yourself. You are your best ally and friend. You are the one who is going to get up in the morning, try hard, and go to sleep at night. So erase the word “success” from your vocabulary and try replacing it with something more productive: happiness, for example. Or love. Or meaning. Or…Anything at all.

Because we don’t have the time to waste on thinking about something so intangible and destructive. Success is a word that inherently means competition and comparison. The only reason we understand how to measure success in society is because we are fed a daily dose of news about who is successful and who is not, and we are taught to judge those people based on that. From there we are taught to be those people, and to strive for more, and to allow success to define who we are.

Focus on bliss.

Follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell would say.

Find what it is that makes you whole, and become that.
Chase it.
Let it fill you.

You might feel like you’ll never figure out your style…

…or feel feel inferior if you use your bathroom light because you can’t figure out how to turn on the fancy one…

…or you may give up on lighting completely and take a chance on the midday sun…

…you might create your first big print and only then realize all of the editing mistakes you made…

…or you might get a deal to have your artwork on a book cover, only to realize you lost that file ages ago…

…You might be really proud of an image one day, and then look back and cringe years later…

…You might look back at your work and think you were drowning…

…but that would be the biggest lie of all. You were jumping higher than you thought…

…you weren’t watching time pass, you were living it…

…and when you look back at your journey there are no mistakes to be found, only lessons…

…no failure, only success at living your dream…

…and yes, there were growing pains…

…times when you felt vulnerable, naked, and exposed…

…and times when you needed to protect yourself from the harshness of the world…

…yet dreams are always worth carrying, no matter how heavy they seem…

…You are more powerful than you know…

…and can fly higher than you ever imagined…

…and in the end it won’t matter if you were the most talented, but instead the most fulfilled…

…for you are on a journey that only you can experience…

…and every moment of it, the ugly and the beautiful, is perfection.

The biggest mistake there is to make is to believe the lie that you are not good enough to seek happiness, fulfillment and bliss.

Make your journey one for the storybooks. Live it.

I feel very fortunate for growing up in a house where creativity was not just encouraged but rewarded. I grew up writing magical stories and children’s books and poetry, and then when I “grew up” some more I went to college and studied filmmaking and literature, both completely scary degrees to have in the “real world” but they made me happy. In all of this time my parents never tried to persuade me otherwise. I heard the typical murmurings of how little money I’d be able to make with those degrees, but my mom would always respond by saying “Then you don’t know my girl…”, and so I felt validated.

When photography came into my life in a big way, I had a lot to consider. There were people telling me that it was unwise to jump so wholeheartedly into something as slippery as photography. They said I would never know where my paycheck would come from, and questioned me about specific money-making plots. I was both critical about that way of thinking but also practical, and for a time I answered all of those questions and did so with fervor until I realized that it was no one’s business but my own (literally). I owed nothing to anyone. It was of no one else’s concern where my paychecks would come from or how it would work, save for my husband who is a part of me.

It is so easy to get caught up in other people’s opinions. And depending on our lifestyles, we may never have lived outside that opinion bubble. I know that I was quite sheltered growing up, and that wasn’t because of my parents, it was because of me. I liked being sheltered and having the same people around me and being close to what I knew. My sister was the opposite, completely free-spirited and wild. Because I preferred living life that way back then, I only knew the opinions of those around me. I didn’t understand enough about life.

But when photography came around something shifted. I understood, almost instantly, what was at stake. It wasn’t that no one approved of my photography; on the contrary, they were very supportive. It was that, logistically, they were truly concerned for my well-being if I quit my steady job and went into…the arts. (said with suspenseful music in the background).

I suddenly had a passion so strong that doing anything but photography felt as though it would kill my spirit, and I value that above most else. So I did quit my job, and it took a lot of long conversations with those I cared about, and zero conversations with those who it wasn’t worth having.

When I began exploring different themes in my work, I would hear feedback about the content of my images. They are too dark. They are too creepy. There is too much nudity. This and that and no one could always be happy. But the thing is this: I was always happy. I was creating what I loved, which is no concern of anyone else. I think that we often forget that just because someone has an opinion, that opinion is not fact. It does not need to govern your life.

This can be exceptionally difficult when it comes to loved ones. For example, I met my husband when I was 16. We’ve been together ever since. He and I are joined in every way I can think of and when he has an opinion, I listen to it because I respect him. It can be difficult to understand when to take someone’s opinion to heart and I think one basic question needs to be asked: is your relationship worth sacrificing for the art? Some people are worth losing over this debate. That is plain and simple, and I don’t mean it in any negative way. There are people that bring us down in the world, people who we are better off without. We need not be friends with everyone, and it is best to surround yourself with those who will lift you up.

You are the only one in control of your happiness. If art makes you happy, you have a duty to perform. To keep that locked inside is a disservice to your well-being and to all of those who you might inspire. Art is rarely kept to oneself. These days it is shared, and because of that, inspiration is everywhere. Take what you love and share it. Others will love it simply because you do. And remember above all else that your opinion should be regarded at the highest level. It is not up to anyone else to inspire you, motivate you, encourage you, or support what you do; you need to believe in yourself first. And when you believe in yourself, others are sure to follow.