As an artist, you probably have ideas about what success looks like. Right? It’s probably pretty easy to pinpoint a few things that, once achieved, would make you feel successful. What are your metrics for success? I think it’s important to look deeply at this, because oftentimes those metrics are largely outside of your control (getting picked for juried/solo shows, being published, getting tapped for museum collections or gallery representation). That’s a great way to give all your agency away, you know? I’ve seen it make some artists really angry. They don’t get picked and they get angrier and angrier as the years go by, until it infects their entire art process and they cash it in.
But really, all we need to do to shift this pattern is to consciously choose a different set of metrics for success. Yours could be: spending 5 hours a week in uninterrupted creative space. Selling your prints yourself instead of believing you need to be sanctioned by a gallery that takes 50% of your profits. Creating your own opportunities instead of believing you need other people to pick you for their gigs. Believing that making art is enough and that everything outside your process, your heart, your mind…is noise. It’s like releasing sacred cows (let’s not kill them, let’s release them - that’s nicer). There’s a teaching in Buddhism that can be summed up like this: our ideas about what will make us happy are directly contributing to our unhappiness in the present. It’s like that with success too, I think. Our ideas about what success looks like can directly contribute to our feeling like a failure in the moment. And, that can make us feel blocked and bitter. What if we didn’t let that happen?
It’s helpful to write a list of all your metrics for success with photography. When you’re really honest with yourself, what does success look like to you? Write it all down. How many of the items aren’t serving you? How many are actively hurting you? How many require decisions by external arbiters? How many do you have complete control over? Ultimately, it’s about moving away from disempowering beliefs - towards empowerment. That feels like worthwhile work, doesn’t it? Onward!