My Reflections on Endless Self Promotion

In reading Donald Miller’s blog recently, I ran across this post: Reflections on Endless Self Promotion. He states, “I’ve never been more tired of any human being than I am of myself these last few weeks.” It’s a good read, better than anything you will find here. Go check it out.

So much about my blog is me, first person, Anne Lord, what I like.. love it or leave it. So much of me is confused by the fact that anyone, myself and my mom included, would want to read, look at, or listen to anything I have to say. Often I am paralyzed in this confusion and end up not sharing a thing. I cannot bear to read my blog after I put a post out here.. on the internet.. to the world.. in digital space.. to exist forever. I am, essentially, in the midst of the toddler stage of my photography company, just trying to find my own voice, and I like to pretend I’m not vulnerable.

Someone told me recently that part of being good at something is knowing what you are not good at. I’m not good at estimating editing times, therefore I’m not good at self-set deadlines. I’m not good at asking for help. I’m not good with saying the right thing at the right moment. And I’m not good at busting out non-choreographed dance moves (whatever that has to do with anything). While I agree with this advice, I suppose, with all of my analyzing, this has been my mantra all along. I’ve begun to focus so much on MY negative to try to build my business. Which is, I feel, counter productive to what I do, considering what I do is about celebrating. That celebration, that joy is what has attracted me to this job so much. I’ve been caught crying tears of happiness at more than one wedding I’ve shot, but ask me in person and I will still deny it. I am very tender hearted, covered with a thick layer of opinions posing as a hard shell. And this year has been hard.. there have been some rough patches from which I’ve tried my best to glean “the moral of the story”, ask forgiveness, mend my heart and learn.

In a recent and much needed phone heart-to-heart, a friend of mine exclaimed, “Anne! You have a true artist temperament! When you are up, you are way up. When you feel stifled creatively, you are down down down. And you have the strangest reasons for why you do what you do.” It is strange, having gone to art school, I’ve struggled so much with calling myself “artist”. (Trust me, go to a fine art school and you’ll understand why. But that’s a whole other post.) Hearing my friend say that got me to thinking about my “strange reasonings.” My husband and I more openly refer to ourselves as creatives, and as such, we acknowledge the belief that we feel we were created. With that, we believe that nurturing our creative “gifts”, as it were, is very important. It is an attribute, a tiny portion, of something we feel is so much bigger than our itty bitty peon lives. To use that gift for someone else is monumentally important to both Ryan and myself, and I struggle as a business person for it. I want to give, it is my desire to give everything. We have been given so much. Grace has abounded in ways I never thought possible. But so much about what I do is subjective, and we do have to make a living. It is a persistent struggle.

This is probably one of the most terrifying posts I have ever considered just putting out there.  I’ve sat on this for a few days, trying to think of a way to tie this up with a pretty bow. I just do not know how, and maybe that’s what this post is really all about. I am, in all of these meandering thoughts, inviting you to follow this blog, asking forgiveness for my flubs and desiring help in this struggle to build the giving, joyful, creative business I hope to become. I feel it is my responsibility, as the photographer I am, to bring out the best in people. In the end, I certainly hope that THAT and not my opinions, not my SELF, is what my business is really all about.