One week in and I can’t think of a better way to be spending my summer. The mornings are cool and dark and peaceful, my editing sessions are filled with tea and music, and my afternoons are for working. Evenings bring walks and yoga and cooking up new recipes. Nights bring Star Trek and reading.

When I began creating images years ago, I was just out of college (technically still in the very end semester), and I had nothing to my name. I had no money. I was moving and unsettled and had no place to call home. I took a job as a receptionist and saved everything that I possibly could, eating lots of Ramen soup and paying off my student loans extremely diligently. One year in to being out of school, I had paid off my student loans and I was moving toward this dream career.

I remember waking at 5am each morning to shoot before work and editing when no one was looking throughout the day. I remember how exhilarating it was to have the freedom to create; to come up with a new idea everyday made me feel powerful. I also burned out on it, as we all do at times, and I’ve found balance since then. With this July challenge brings memories of that time in my life, when I had never taken pictures before so everything was new. Everything had never been done before, in my world.

During those times, because money was so tight, I had a strict rule for myself: buy nothing. I used hand-me-down equipment, a tripod from a thrift store, and anything I could find around me. I remember once dragging a shopping cart up the stairs to my second floor apartment, getting stuck and pinned on the way there. I remember gathering branches. I remember finding old fabric in an alley. I remember my utter amazement, and subsequent empowerment, I felt at realizing the great many uses of a bed sheet.

We don’t need fancy things to create. Our imaginations are free. We are free to use them. And they can set us free.

Today I celebrate how wonderful it is to be a CREATOR in this beautiful world. To see the things that others don’t; to see potential where others see roadblocks. Is that not what makes an Artist? Seeing something different in the world and expressing that view in your own unique iteration?

Today I photographed the most ordinary items: a rope, an old oar I’ve had for ages, a candle holder…and I created from that. Can I afford more now than I could then? Yes. Do I feel that I need to spend money to prove myself? To make myself feel more ‘professional’? No. So here I create in my happy world of my own building, where rarely does anything cost more than $10 and I can exist blissfully inside my imagination.

There’s lots of room in here, if you want to join.

When you want something and you take steps to make it happen, you are enacting change in your life. It is the scariest part of the process. We tend not to fear having the idea, or seeing it through once we’ve started, or reaping the benefits, or even failing. We fear the moment when we decide to disrupt our lives. Very much like the first step onto a tightrope, we have no idea what to expect. Will it hold me? Will I fall? Will I stay balanced? Will I hurt myself? Will I turn back out of fear?

But there is a reason why the first step is the hardest. We are programmed to fear change. We are programmed to fear the unknown. But we are also programmed to seek challenges. We are programmed to want more than what we are given. We are so excitingly human because we think for ourselves and develop our own dreams and fears to go along with them. What separates one person from another in the end is which path they chose, and how they affected others along the way.

My fear is to stay stagnant. I fear decaying in my own filth, for lack of a more graceful phrase. In other words, I don’t want to cultivate fear and live in that environment. I want to see the fear around me and step through it. I want to live a life worthy of bravery and kindness. I want to live a life worthy of who I want to be.

When I’m starting to feel too comfortable, I wake up at 5am and jump in a lake. When I think my art looks the same, I do something that I don’t know how to do. When I feel myself becoming mean I immediately do something kind. When I look more favorably in the face of greed I immediately push it away for gratitude. We are so full of contradictions. Move forward or stay behind. But in the end, it is not how far ahead we got in life, it is how strongly and willingly we made the decision to move forward at all. We might get pushed back each time we try, but the choice is still our own, and it should be in favor of betterment.

We all have infinite potential built into us right now. We could make so many choices this very day that could change our lives and the lives of others. What decision will you make? How will you challenge yourself? How will you be a positive force in the lives of others? How will you promote passion?

The question is not how much, or how little, but simply how. Do not measure your decisions on the amount of change, but on the fact that you chose change. Find the strength to move forward, no matter how many times you get pushed back. Make the decision to accept change – it will happen whether you welcome it or not. And above all else, take the first step onto the tightrope. Your dream may be closer than you think.