I’ve been thinking a lot about my growth recently. Growth for me as a person, leader, friend, and person trying to be able tell a story as well as I can hope to live it. So here’s a story because I’m currently sleepless on a bus headed to Texas, and what is the internet for if not self-indulgence.
A year ago there were three things (relevant to this story) I was really pursuing. The first was to be the best I could be on the field every day. To grow through my work, and support the men and women I shared the field with. The second was a job doing social media for my School of Music. The third was to be able to come back to a drum corps this current summer doing something within admin. A year later and I can’t be happier with how those pursuits went.
Someone important to me once said that it’s not just what you can do, but what you can make from it and how far you’ve come. When you feel especially exhausted or unimproved, don’t just look at what you did today, but how far you’ve come this year. I spent some time this afternoon looking at what I did today, and what I’ve done this year as a photographer.
In the last year, I’ve learned so much about photography without taking a class, a formal lesson, or much of a reason past the desire to learn and grow. I’ve captured tens of thousands of moments, have laughed and cried over the mechanics of photoshop, and have spent more time than I would like to admit googling how to do some of the most seemingly simple things.
In the last couple days, I’ve taken quite a few photos, but one that stuck out to me. I was standing with the souvenir tent perfectly between myself and a beautiful Kansas sunset. I took a picture with the sunset at it’s most beautiful, and then stopped to fix the tent and return to a much less beautiful sunset. So I spent too much time on photoshop, and put the fixed tent over the pre-fixed tent, taking out some lamp posts, and maybe make the sunset a little more beautiful.
The things I did today would not have been imaginable without every day in this last year. Today I might feel exhausted and unimproved, and the photo I took might not be perfect, but what I did with it, and how far I’ve come is something I can’t help but be proud of.
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