{"id":3928,"date":"2012-07-31T11:38:08","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T01:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2012-07-31T11:38:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T01:38:08","slug":"pushing-through-the-self-hate-barrier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2012\/07\/31\/pushing-through-the-self-hate-barrier\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing Through The Self Hate Barrier."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been on a bit of a rediscovery of photography of late, driven by my desire to fulfil the promises that my red-wine laden self proclaimed loudly over the Internet just a couple months ago. I&#8217;ve always had something of an interest in it dating back to the time when I wanted to capture my wife and I&#8217;s first trip overseas together all those years ago. However that interest was put aside for other things that seemed more important at the time: attempting to build my own start up, trying to build 100% passive income streams and all manner of things that, more often than not, left me burnt out and wondering why I had bothered in the first place.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/551239_10150961570881409_235325205_n.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-3929\" title=\"551239_10150961570881409_235325205_n\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/551239_10150961570881409_235325205_n.jpg?resize=576%2C384&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"576\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/551239_10150961570881409_235325205_n.jpg?w=960&amp;ssl=1 960w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/551239_10150961570881409_235325205_n.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll have to admit that my knowledge of photography was average when I first started out on this journey, although I didn&#8217;t know that at the time. Ever since then I&#8217;ve been feeding myself on a steady diet of Wikipedia articles, photography blogs and lurking continuously on the photography subreddit. In that time I&#8217;ve come to realise that many of the assumptions I made about certain things, like the reasons why people spend so much on Leicas or why the TSE lenses are actually useful, were totally wrong and that&#8217;s had me doing a hell of a lot of self reflection.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest thing to come of this seems to be an incredible distaste for nearly every picture I&#8217;ve taken since I first laid my hands on my new bits of camera equipment. I should have expected this, I even <a href=\"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2009\/07\/10\/a-creative-coming-of-age\/\" target=\"_blank\">blogged about this<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2011\/02\/01\/it-would-be-so-easy-to-give-up\/\" target=\"_blank\">very phenomena twice<\/a> in the past, but it seems that every time I set out with the best of intentions I end up looking back at all the pictures I took and feeling like I&#8217;ve wasted my time. It&#8217;s a really painful feeling, especially when you&#8217;ve hyped up everything in your head before hand.<\/p>\n<p>The reality of the situation is actually something that everyone who sets out to improve themselves goes through: the stage where you realise what it takes to be the thing you want to become and the desperation in knowing that you&#8217;re no where near there yet. This isn&#8217;t a bad thing at all, it&#8217;s in fact a critical step to progressing forward as up until this point you were operating on the rush of starting out in new territory, picking up a few quick wins but still being blissfully unaware of all the challenges that lay ahead of you. This self realization is usually what kills most people&#8217;s motivation to continue on in a particular pursuit but realistically this should be the point where you push through the pain barrier in order to make it to the other side.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately there&#8217;s no quick fix solution other than pressing on in spite of your feelings to the contrary. You&#8217;d think having been through this process twice in recent memory that I would&#8217;ve predicted this feeling of ennui and planned accordingly but for some reason I just&#8230;didn&#8217;t. Thankfully other parts of my personality, namely the fiscal one, scream loudly enough to force me to continue on. I absolutely detest the feeling that I&#8217;m simply doing photography for the sake of getting my money&#8217;s worth out of the equipment I bought but it&#8217;s enough to keep me going and hopefully enough to drive me through to the other side.<\/p>\n<p>This post will also form part of the strategy for me to keep on developing as a photographer. I&#8217;ve already put myself in many situations that I wouldn&#8217;t have otherwise for the sake of photography and, whilst I might not feel like I&#8217;m doing anything of worth at the time, I have produced some pictures that, on\u00a0reflection, do meet my criteria for being &#8220;good&#8221;. I keep making a promise to myself that I&#8217;ll do 1 post here a week based on my latest photographic excursions and maybe its time that I made good on that instead of getting caught up in a circle of self loathing.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I think its time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been on a bit of a rediscovery of photography of late, driven by my desire to fulfil the promises that my red-wine laden self&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[3735,3736,3737,2045,420,730,698],"class_list":["post-3928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ennui","tag-improving","tag-knowledge","tag-learning","tag-little-hater","tag-photography","tag-skill"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/551239_10150961570881409_235325205_n.jpg?fit=960%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-11m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}