Overcome resistance
This is my first blog post ever. It’s not going to be very well written or very long but that is exactly the point.
Sometimes in life, multiple things culminate into one definitive action. For me, that action is this blog post and the “multiple things“ have been a wide variety of books, social media posts, youtube videos consumed over years, and my hobby of photography.
Let me start by describing the influence of these materials by referring to the title of the post. I have recently (re)read “The war of art” by Steven Pressfield and that was part of the nudge I required to stop procrastinating the further development of my website. Please read the book, I can not recommend it strongly enough. The crux of what I gained from it is to be aware of, and then overcome this intangible force of “resistance”. Resistance takes the form of anything that could slow progress towards a goal. Naturally, he explains it way better, but for me, as I’m sitting here writing resistance is like a confused boggart not sure what form to take to get me to stop. Flashing between the allure of scrolling Instagram, wanting to exercise, staring out the window, or whichever other form procrastination can take. I won’t have it. Therefore just getting this post done, and posted is a majour step towards overcoming resistance.
I can feel it creeping up on me though, so I will be brief with the next couple of influences. I’m giving myself 20 minutes to finish this post.
The next influence came from “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and it is a straightforward motivation. Once again, great book please read it. For this post, however, the relevant message from the book is that with continual effort and practice almost any skill can be honed. I’ve never fancied myself much of a writer, even to the extent that I feel my writing sometimes negatively affects my work. Therefore, like James(sort of) I’m planning on creating an environment in which I have to write a blog post every day. The hope is that it will aid in the improvement of my writing. The semi-journaling effect it has is an added bonus.
14 minutes to go. Help.
So, you might ask what this all has to do with photography.
Enter Peter McKinnon. Huge fan of his work, and always have been. Cliche as it might be, one can not help but be motivated and inspired after some time spent with his content. After watching one of his recent videos he reignited the interest I’ve had for a while in doing a Photo Everyday type challenge. I was thinking 30 days, but Peter mentioned 365 days and I won’t argue. Having someone like him endorse the concept gave me the reassurance that there might just be something to be gained from doing such a challenge.
6 minutes to go. Things might start looking like the final season of Game of Thrones from here on.
My #365project will therefore start Today, 19/08/2022 with the primary goal of honing my photography skills and hopefully creating some awareness of my work through daily content creation and sharing. I will be sharing the photo/s on my Instagram and Vero accounts and practice my writing by blogging about every day’s photo excursion.
I’m playing with the idea of having weekly or monthly themes, but I will let the first photo govern my decision on that.
-1 minute. Damn
