I usually find clearing really fun.  There’s nothing that brings me joy like snapping open a giant contractor sized garbage bag and throwing out crap that collects and no longer serves. 

But the past few weeks have been really unfun.  After a year of trying to launch myself into my new town and having limited success, I had to get really clear about what I wanted for myself going into 2024.  Now that my kids are doing so well and in a great groove, and my wife has launched her new business, it’s time for me to start finding that success that I can feel is right around the corner.

I’ve been working, pretty much non-stop, for the past few months on something that I know is going to work.   But it is a GRIND.  And it has been unearthing all kinds of issues with how I’ve been doing things behind the scenes.  I’ve been hitting all kinds of walls, re-assessing, hitting more walls, barreling through them.  

Including having to completely switch website platforms, which, when you’ve had your platform for almost 15 years and blog and share photos as much as I do… is a lot.  These issues have been looming for almost a year… and though I kept implementing workarounds for all the shortcomings it had, every workaround ended up creating problems.

I’ve always felt conflicted about this part of my personality… I can find a workaround for anything… which makes me unstoppable.  But my ability to do that means I sometimes miss when it’s just time to move on.   

In the past few weeks the need to move on was made obvious… but because I’d waited so long… major issues ensued that required a full on abandon ship and restart with a new platform which involved a lot of learning.  And I’ve been crying a lot.  Not because I’ve had to rebuild my website (that was actually a ton easier than I thought it would be)… but because I feel like I keep having to start over from scratch and get nowhere. 

But something feels different about it this time.  This feels like a clean slate.  This feels like exactly what I needed in order to succeed at what I’ve very clearly set as my goals for this year.  

Though photography is what I’ve done for soooo long, the thought of bringing all that content and all those photos forward with me to any new platform felt like a massive undertaking… so much so that I realized that THAT was the thing that had kept me from moving platforms this whole time.  Anytime I’d get frustrated enough to bite the bullet and change, I’d talk myself out of it because of how much there was to move.  

So, I went through every.single.blog.post since my website's inception.  I had all the memories and feels looking through old family sessions and weddings.  Looking at the work I’ve created for friends and for clients who then became friends.  I saw my life as it unfolded in my work and the progress I made in life because of it.  And I gave myself credit for all of the beautiful work and memories that I’ve created for people. 

And then I gave myself permission to let it all go.  Sometimes things that we love dearly no longer serve us.  Sometimes things become so much of our identity that we lose who we’re becoming.  And if we aren’t willing to let it go, it eventually becomes a burden.  

Nothing in life should feel so heavy that you can’t move forward when you’re called.  Even something you love.

As I went through all of my content for so many years, I realized that beyond photography, there was one other thing that persisted through everything.  One other thing that I have relied on heavily through all that I’ve gone through and something that I often credit a lot of my healing to over the past 7 years…

I’ve been writing.  

So that’s what I brought with me.  

And that’s what I’ll be doing more of here, now that I’m clear.