No One Cares What You Do
No one. But I invite you to repeat this to yourself. At some point you realize...
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Sometimes there’s another perspective.
It had been a cold and extremely windy day, and just another in a long succession of cold and windy days.
The artist moved slowly across the cold studio, touching this and that, and adjusted the prints stacked neatly in an old office cubby.
He remembered the joy of finding it in the throwaway pile and lovingly restoring it.
He smiled.
For a second.
His camera sitting there on the old Gitzo tripod seemed dusty. More dusty than usual, and he felt a tingle of shame. Keeping his gear clean and neat was one of his firmly held beliefs.
Having checked his Instagram early that morning, he was – again – disappointed that there were so few engagements.
In fact, it wasn’t a few, there weren’t any at all.
Sitting in the old chair, he grabbed a pen and wrote a note to himself.
“No one cares what you do.”
A sweet sadness flowed over him.
A lifetime of doing and now… nobody cares.
He works tirelessly, on weekends, late into the night even.
But nobody cares.
The words sit like buzzards in a tree waiting for death to come and allow them a meal.
He turned and looked into the studio and said the words outloud this time.
“Nobody cares what you do.”
Silence.
“Of course there’s silence”, he said to himself.
Nobody cares.
Not one bit.
The clouds moved ever so slightly in the west, and a small shaft of light burst through the window, alighting on his face and the note sitting in front of him on a little yellow Post-It.
Head in hand, he looked down and it again.
This time with the warm sunlight illuminating it.
“No one cares what you do.”
Silence.
Suddenly he sat straight up in the old, leather chair.
He gasped a little and read it again, but this time he shouted it out.
“NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU DO!”
And in that moment he realized that if no one cares what you do, you can do whatever you want. You do not have to please the algrorithm.
You can play, you can experiment, you can love your work even more because no one cares… no one but you.
When we figure out the real meaning of “no one cares what you do,” true freedom washes over us like the seventh wave on a tropical beach.
And it is absolutely true.
No one truly cares what you do.
So do what you want, and if there are others that may be attracted to your work, they will know that it is because you care so much that they like it.
That’s how we win.
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HOW did you know this was exactly what I needed to read today?!
I've felt such a mental block for a good several months now. Finally caved and I swear I've got an appointment with an actual psychologist to figure out why I don't want to do the one thing I absolutely LOVE doing: picking up my camera to photograph food.
Why the hell does perfectionism have to exist?!
My studio partner and I had a chat today and he mentioned something really interesting: just go in and tell yourself you're going to test something. And then actually get there and do it.
Whatever it is, even if only to see how the morning light hits oat milk dripping through a glass of hot coffee.
I know the world does not care.
But also... damn if that's not REAL FREEDOM 🎊
PS: I've signed up for the Food As Art Workshop. Waiting for your details. Here's to hopefully getting out of my own head.
It's true that ultimately no one cares, it's only you who must care, but sometimes the world tells you it cares more about certain things you do than others. 60 likes vs. 6, for instance, seems to be a small measure of caring.