Two Quotes for Creatives that Could Change Your Future
Quotes are brain teasers. Good ones make you think harder and clearer.
I love good quotes that get the brain fired up and thinking about correlations, metaphors, and how the quotes can be fleshed out to be more relevant to our own journeys and destinations.
Here are two that I absolutely love, and I think they are so very powerful as to be sort of ‘truths’… in everything that implies.
Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
-Francis of Assisi
And that begs a few questions;
What is necessary?
What is possible?
Ask yourself what you must do each day. Make a list of what is necessary for you to get to the end of the day and feel you have accomplished something.
We want to avoid the cycle of not being productive > then being depressed because we got nothing done > and then being even more unproductive because we are depressed.
And on and on.
Do what is NECESSARY.
Binge-watching Yellowstone is NOT necessary.
Sending out 10 emails IS necessary.
Going through your portfolio — again — and moving the same stuff around is NOT necessary.
Making some new photographs IS necessary.
YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are NOT necessary.
Learning to do effective cold calling IS necessary.
Unnecessary actions keep you static, or slipping back
Necessary actions move you forward.
And they can be big, important actions like filing your taxes on time, or small actions like making sure your marketing is being addressed each morning.
But I’m not saying you have to grind every moment, live a life of work-work-work, or neglect your family. Grind porn is not interesting to me, nor should it inspire you to forget your physical and mental health.
Sometimes taking a day off, and hitting a restaurant with the family can be absolutely necessary.
Sometimes riding a motorcycle over the top of the Rockies is seriously necessary. Just sayin’…
You will have your own list of what is and what is not necessary.
And when you focus on those items, you will find less friction in actually getting the work done.
Do what is possible.
Well, bucko, this is up to you. The ball is firmly in your court.
What is possible for you?
Can you spare two hours a week? Three hours a week?
Can you find the time, the energy, the creativity, and the grit to get to it?
What is possible can be different for each of us, but it is made easier by doing what is necessary — and passing on much of what isn’t.
Do the impossible.
The impossible today is the possible of tomorrow.
It is impossible to imagine redoing your portfolio. The work, the time… overwhelming.
But if you do what is necessary, and take action when possible, the impossible new portfolio will be right there in front of you.
I always wanted to write a book. But writing a book seemed impossible. I mean, you’ve seen books right? Big, thick, lots of text! Writing a book looked like a daunting exercise I was not going to be able to do.
Then an editor asked me if I could write 750 words a day, and I said that yeah, that was possible.
“If you write 750 words a day”, he said, “you will have a book in 3 months”.
Dayam!
Then all I had to figure out was what was necessary for me to do, and what unnecessary things could be excluded in order for it to be possible to write 750 words a day.
I have written 6 books and finishing a 7th in early spring.
No matter what you want to achieve, you can break the impossible into many little possibilities and then let it rip!
The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.
-Harry Golden
Oh man, I love this one.
Because it is true.
A lot of us have had a virtual gut punch these past couple of years.
2020 was not what we expected. We couldn’t imagine that 2021 would be just as chaotic and fucked up as 2020.
But it was.
And then came 2022. This was going to be THE year that we got this going and that going and were going to finally be rid of the bullshit, misery, and streaks of insanity that had been the hallmarks of 2021.
But it wasn’t.
And it took the wind out of a lot of sails. That fire that burned in 2019 was somewhat dampened by the on-again — off-again — on-again nature of our pandemic response, politicians with no interest in the populace, and a business climate that saw prices rising much faster than wages.
Or fees.
It is not something artists are comfortable with. We want to make order out of chaos, but if the chaos disrupts our ability to make that order, then we can become confused, mentally overloaded, and depressed.
I have talked to artists who have had it pretty tough these past years.
Some even had to throw in the towel and look for “respectable work”. To a person, they all say they will be back as soon as they can.
But there has been damage to the creative industry. Some of it is transient, and some of it is permanent.
We call that bad luck.
And it may be. But it is also just the nature of the day, and we have to find something to help pull us up from this daily walk along the abyss.
Hard work is the antidote.
Joel Grimes makes at least one new portfolio piece per week.
Peter Lindbergh never let a week go without shooting — even if he had to finance it himself.
Dan Winters never goes anywhere without a camera.
Neither does Sabastio Salgado.
And Chris Crisman.
These are huge names in the commercial photography business.
Can you see the recurrent theme?
Stop thinking of it as hard work (if you do) and start thinking of it as doing what is necessary. And fun, too, right?
Hard work is necessary. Creative expression is life.
Embrace it.
And watch your life, creative balance, and work improve by a factor of 10!
I am doing a class on creating diverse strategies for photographers in March of 2023. I call it “The Creative Class” and it is focused on preparing photographers for this new landscape of business. It will be a six-month-long course, available in January 2023, starting in March.
More information coming soon.
I am a photographer, designer, and photo editor. You can find me at my self-named website or at Project 52 Pro System (enrollment begins January 6, 2023) where I teach commercial photography online. This is our tenth year of teaching, and it is the most unique online class you will find anywhere.
Check out my newsletter and community at Substack. We are new, but growing.
You can find my books on Amazon, and I have taught two classes at CREATIVELIVE.