New Year, Attitude, and Goals

So I'm finally getting to follow up my New Year's Eve post. I promised I'd work on updating this thing much more often, so this is part of my attempt at refocusing my energies in 2010. You'll have to excuse me if from time to time I repeat myself or just ramble. I want to make this whole social networking thing work for me this year, so I'm going to be doing a lot of stumbling at first.

Anyway, it's still too soon to tell if this year will be a good one or not overall, but I'm going to try to look at everything with a refreshed view anyway. Does that mean I'll be deliriously positive? No way. In fact, I might be doing a lot of dark work in the coming months in an effort to purge some of that negative energy. It's not art if it's not interesting, right?

I want to make 2010 a big year for DIGImmortal Photo. I've recently been talking over some of my goals and plans with my ever-so-supportive fiance, and realizing that I'm putting a lot on my plate. I'm used to it though, so it should be OK. Plus, I'm tired of failing at nothing. I walk around at times with a huge weight on my shoulders and a feeling like I'm not doing anything right. The truth is, most of the time I don't have any real reason to feel like a failure, what I'm really feeling is the pressure of paranoia and being scared to fail. Those thoughts and feelings hold me back from ever trying anything and put me into a rut, a funk, a standstill. I need to break those chains that my mind puts on me and face things head-on. This morning David Hobby of strobist.com put a link up on Twitter to a video about failure. This is the first time I'd heard of this site or this video series, but it's called 30 Second MBA. It's a 30 second video, so just go ahead and watch it and come back. I'll wait...

OK, you see? There's a very important point there. Think about it for a minute, most of the wisest people we've ever known are always telling great stories. Our grandparents, parents, mentors, bosses, etc... they all have amazing stories of what it was like either growing up, growing a business, or just plain growing as a person. They have stories because they tried things, they attempted to make changes, try new ideas, new angles. They didn't sit in one place scared for their lives and not making a move. I'm not saying any of us should just up and leave if we have something worth sticking around for, but if you've got an idea and you think it's a good one, go for it. Even if it fails, at least you know not to try it again. Better now than later, right?

I've got some ideas for my business that could possibly result in me losing time and money instead of making anything, but the point is not the money, or even the time, it's the lesson that I can learn from it. I've got some goals that may seem miles away from what I could pull off in a year, but if I don't at least try, I won't even know exactly how many miles. It's time to embrace uncertainty instead of fearing it.

2010 can be a banner year for DIGImmortal Photo if I let it be. So I'm inviting and welcoming all of you to come along for the ride and keep up with things as they progress. I hope to be able to keep the steam pumping from this engine for long enough to see most, if not all, of these ideas through. If I can accomplish even half of what I've got my eye on for this year, then I'll still have finished ahead of what I should realistically be expecting.

Deepak Chopra always says something along the lines of "In the realm of uncertainty, anything is possible" - So I'm going to try my best, and it will be hard, to embrace uncertainty and make my visions a reality.

In other news, I had to take down the Twitter feed that used to be on the right side of this blog. For some reason, all of the updates were someone else's, even though the account info in the back-end here was right, and even the preview that it shows you did, in fact, contain my tweets. For some reason though, when it would publish, it would be the updates of someone from the UK. So you can just click here if you want to follow me on Twitter.

That's all for now, I've got some ideas cooking in this noggin, but I don't want to give them away yet. I'll be back with more updates soon, so stay tuned!

More soon.

-Rob

Happy New Year: What's In Store

So, this is it for 2009, and good riddance to such an awful year. But now isn't the time to air our grievances with what has passed, it's time to look to the future and try to expect the best.

I want to take this time to thank everyone who has read this blog through the course of this year and who has followed me on Twitter. The online community is great because it can bring people together from across the planet and I am grateful that so many of you have been appreciating my work and coming back regularly to see what's new.

I also want to apologize for not being as active on social media as I had wanted to be. This has been a trying year for me on the personal front and professional front alike, and I am sorry that I let it get in the way of keeping people informed on what's been going on with DIGImmortal Photo.

2010 is going to bring some big changes for DIGImmortal. I've been spending the last few months researching the best uses and practices of social media services as well as traditional marketing techniques and I plan to hit all of them pretty hard this coming year. It's time to take that next step and really push myself in everyone's faces. I've got some nice job prospects on the horizon that will allow me to round out my portfolio even better but I am also taking Zack Arias' advice and will try to be more selective about what kind of work I show. I will also be applying much of what I learned at a recent Joe McNally seminar to my location lighting techniques.

I've basically been sitting around this year wondering why my business hasn't grown in the ways I want it to, and as it started to come together for me I realized that I need to stop admiring some of these big-time photogs that I follow and start embracing what it is they put out there for us to learn from. At the same time I finally started that 365 project that I had been putting off for so long, and so far I'm very happy with the results. Not only the results I get from the photos themselves but from what it's been doing for my discipline and creative eye. I will be doing this thing until October 2010, so I've got a long way to go, but it should continue to be both trying and fun all at once.

Anyway, there are only a few hours left in 2009, and I want to wish you all a safe, healthy, and happy new year. Let's all focus on what good can come in 2010 and put our collective conscious together and make it happen!

Happy New Year, and thanks for everything!

More soon.

-Rob