William Oldacre Photography

Tag: excitement

  • A New Phase

    A New Phase

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, orange, mauve, streaks, pattern
    Orange Overriding Mauve, 2012 – Light Signatures :: (Click to see more)

    I’m entering into another phase of my – well dare I say, plan? More a loose collection of ideas, ideals and intents than a coherent plan. All the same I’m entering into a new segment of it. On one hand, I’m excited, or more simply, I’m thinking – oh at long last, on the other hand I’m kind of tired of thinking about it for so long and not so jazzed. The excitement and anticipation come in waves interleaved with apprehension and corresponding fear.

    It’s somewhat unknown territory for me but stuff I’ve had a good long time to get to know in a kind of conceptual way in my imagination at least so its not completely unknown. And of course part of why it’s taken so long to get to this phase is my intense discomfort with this stage. A lot of the lead up has been practice, working out concepts and just plain getting myself as familiar with the ideas as possible without actually executing. Kind of like a lot mental dry runs.

    My fear and apprehension is completely irrational I know, but the intellectual understanding of my irrationality doesn’t diminish the gravity of my emotion – unfortunately. So I’ve had to find other ways to gradually pry my fingers off the ladder rung I’m on, in preparation for the leap of faith into the great void of the unknown – part of which has been to familiarize myself so the void is not so unknown. Does this mean I don’t have faith in myself? Hmm.

    In many ways I find it easier to do things when I don’t know so much – which is how I got started when I seriously committed to following my photography practice as a career. If I had known as much as I do now or known as much about the obstacles and pitfalls, I wouldn’t have had the guts to make the leap. I would have buckled. I’m not sure why the unknown nature of the void has been such a unusual stumbling block for me this time, especially considering unknown is usually easier for me.

    Perhaps its to do with high expectation – unreasonable expectation? More likely its because my vulnerable feelings are at stake. I don’t like getting hurt. I don’t know, and I kind of don’t care at this stage – or so I tell myself constantly in the hope of lulling my fears. I’ve kind of beaten the whole thing until its a dead horse so I might as well give up thinking about it so much and just stumble on through.

    Clip, clop – here I go.

  • Don’t Worry So Much – Focus

    I have a tendency toward impatience for change. I have a clear goal visualized in my head and expect it to happen essentially immediately. Yeah, I know just how immature this is – its an emotional issue. Intellectually I know this is ridiculous and impossible, but emotionally, I want it now! wah!

    The thing is, I can usually keep this in check – that is usually – until I am fatigued then my emotional side quite readily gets the better of me. And when it does I tend toward depression that all my dreams are not coming to completion IMMEDIATELY.

    I recognize that everything takes time to unfold, that its the journey not the destination and anything worth doing will be difficult. And typically these concepts are not a problem for me – indeed I rise to greet their challenge with excitement and vigor. But when I’m low, I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders so crushingly that I almost can’t function – it’s brutal.

    I have to constantly remind myself not to run myself down, to get enough rest and to pace myself, but I’m rambunctious by nature and easily excited by the possibilities of everything I lay my mind to. When I’m able to harness that excitement for useful projects its amazing what I can achieve in a short time but when that excitement blares away like an untended fire hose, it flies around knocking other things over wasting precious energy while flailing about at nothing in particular.

    Focus – is what I’m gradually – glacially – learning as I grow older and hopefully more mature, so I can direct the fire hose of excitement in my mind with useful intent. The ability to keep my attention trained on a single particular goal – not just any particular goal, but a mental committee, carefully considered, stamped with approval, designated, grade A goal – one that I’ve decided is worth committing time and effort to. Sure I can concentrate on single goals at any given time – its just that I don’t want to waste my precious life concentrating my efforts on pointless tasks or ideas.

    The difficulty I have is self doubt as I’m focused on a task. For example, is this task REALLY the one I want to dedicate myself to? Is this task the one I SHOULD be concentrating on first vs that other task I also decided to do? These are the self-doubts and self-flagellation I endure while working focused on something – usually during a particularly onerous segment or when I would really rather be elsewhere. I suppose one could argue that having these thoughts in the midst of a task signifies a certain LACK of focus and I suppose that’s true. Well that’s just one more thing I have to learn on my long road to maturity.

    Ah well, here’s to keeping focused ,which hopefully results in great accomplishment.