I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately. I recently saw this video of NPR host and producer Ira Glass, wherein he is speaking about storytelling and sharing about how long it takes to become good at something.

It really got me thinking about how I approach my writing and my photography. First let me back up. I would be remiss if I didn’t first explain that I feel like I’ve had a little bit of a breakdown over here at Salty Sweet Life.  I mean, it’s kind of been the elephant in the room, so to speak, or at least that is how I perceive things. It all started in May when I went to a photography workshop with Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple. The workshop was really amazing. Almost three full days of intensive photography work learning from a couple who really are the best in the business. I took some of the best photos of my life during that workshop and I learned a lot. I came home, ready to crank out some masterpieces…and then reality set in. The photos that I took at home looked nothing like what I was producing at the workshop; and I was mad. The lighting in my house was challenging to deal with. I didn’t have access to a full studio worth of props and surfaces and textiles. My food looked funny. And I sucked.

Let me define “suck” for you a little better. In this context sucking at something doesn’t mean that what you are doing doesn’t have any merit at all. It just means that what you are putting out doesn’t quite meet the standard that you’ve set in your brain to reach. No matter what I did, my photos didn’t approach the quality of photos that I was producing at the workshop, not to mention they didn’t come close to looking like the work Todd and Diane were producing, seemingly effortless, on a daily basis. Even the photos they deleted far exceeded anything I could create! And this is not to say there was anything wrong with the workshop or how they taught it. What was wrong was how I thought about it. In short, I was expecting my photography, something I’ve been practicing inconsistently for less than 2 years, to be as good as someone who has been doing it at an expert level for more than 20 years! It’s staggering to me just writing that. I am offended by my own hubris!

Blogging is a challenge. Photography is a challenge. Almost anything you can undertake that’s worth doing is a challenge. I know a lot of us start blogging with stars in our eyes and think that instantly we are going to start producing content that everyone wants to read or view. We ourselves read blogs and think, hey, I can do that! I can [insert the thing you can do here]! Why not blog about it? But then it hits you that there’s a learning curve, and that maybe your traffic isn’t where you thought it would be…or that your article didn’t get featured by, well anyone. And then you realize, that you kind of suck at this. And you wonder if you should keep going, because let’s face it, sucking doesn’t feel good. And then, if you’re me, you’ll look back at 2014 and realize that for the better half of the year, you’ve been stuck in a fog of writers block, photographer’s block and general malaise, wondering if you should just throw in the towel. The thing was, I didn’t want to quit. But I certainly couldn’t keep feeling like this.

I knew I had to do something to pluck myself from this very bad, sucktastic place. Last October, while on vacation in Portland, I was browsing through the stacks at Powell’s Books and stumbled upon this really great book on the creative process called Make it Mighty Ugly, by Kim Piper Werker. I hungrily consumed the introduction right there in the bookstore, and I knew what I needed was inside this book.

This book was life changing because it made me realize I’m not the only one with the desire to pursue a creative passion without having a clear idea of how best to express it.  Then, after expressing it, realizing that the outcome is not nearly as awesome as I’d envisioned it. I wanted to chuck my projects right into the trash. It’s frustrating. What this book taught me was not only is it ok to make ugly things but it’s ok to embrace the ugly things I create as I develop my skills. This place…this middle ground between where I aspire to be and where I currently find myself is completely normal.  In other words, unfortunately, I’m going to have to suck for a long time before I don’t suck.  And this is hard for me because I’m the oldest child of an exacting military father and and artist mother, who raised me to believe that failure was not an option and anything less than excellence was grounds for discipline.  Unfortunately, instead of pushing me to greatness, this emphasis on perfection created so much self-doubt that when I made something that wasn’t perfect, I simply stopped creating. It’s ironic how the quest for perfection paralyzed me to the point where I couldn’t even begin.

Now it’s 2015 and the start of  brand new year begs, no, requires that I make strides. That I set goals and make plans and resolve to be better than you were the year before. And so, I have resolved to suck less in 2015 than I did in 2014. And I think part of that process has to start from me learning to be ok with not being the best at everything right away and to simply be ok with sucking sometimes.  I feel great about this, because I know that it’s temporary and that one day, just as Ira Glass said, my product will match my visions and expectations.

So, in the spirit of New Year’s Resolutions, I’ll lay out a few things I’m committed to this changing this year.

1. Consistency. 2014 was all over the place. I started off the year blogging two to three times a week and ended the year barely eking out a blog post once a week. This sucks, and I know those of you who read this blog deserve better. So I am committed to getting on a more regular blogging schedule. I’m not quite sure what that schedule will be yet, but I’m working on it. 

2. Writing good. A friend of mine who reads this blog sent me an email saying that a blog post I wrote recently really resonated with her. I immediately emailed her back, anxious to know why this particular post moved her and not others. In a nutshell, she told me that it was less peppy and used fewer exclamation points than my usual posts. It was more real, more from the heart and  it showed my life wasn’t perfect. I scanned my previous posts and realized with horror that, sure enough, I was throwing around exclamation points like a rap mogul with a handful of dollar bills in a strip club! This one email probably changed me more than anything else in 2014, because it made me realize if my life looks perfect, then I’m not writing from a place of real honesty. It made me realize that sometimes I write from a place of wanting to fit in–I call this my “inner band geek”. Take a look around the blogosphere. Bloggers are a rather peppy lot. They use a lot of exclamation points and funzy words like “amaze-balls” and that’s fine, but it doesn’t really reflect my truth. I’ve never been one of the “cool kids” and I am ok with that.

Over the holidays I availed myself to the public library, a place I hadn’t been in almost a decade. I came home with a Jenga-esque stack of books from notable food writers like Ruth Reichl, Gabrielle Hamilton and Molly Wizenberg and through reading them, I realized that I want to be a much better writer than I am; and in order to be a better writer, I need to be a better reader. So, I am committed to reading good food writing in an effort to learn how to be a better food writer. This commitment is actually fun for me because I already love reading. It’s like my parents grounding me by sending me to my room, which is where I wanted to be all along. Incidently, this same friend gifted me Best Food Writing 2014 for Christmas. I took the hint and I’ve read at least one article from it every day since Christmas. I highly recommend it.

3. Seeing the light. I realized if I’m going to ever going to be good at photography I need to practice a lot more than I have been. One thing that Todd and Diane shared in the workshop was it takes a long time to learn to see light and how it plays off of an object. I heard them say it, but I don’t think I internalized what that meant until I got home and tried to take photos. The thought that I would actually have to practice hours and hours on food photography was an overwhelming and seemingly insurmountable task and I wasn’t feeling the joy. I hate practicing. I wish I didn’t, but I do and I’ve been this way since I was a little squirt, defiantly ignoring my mother as she desperately wrung her hands wanting me to practice the piano lessons that she could barely afford. Because I realize this trait of mine, I have committed to practice photography and food styling. Over on my Instagram feed, I am sharing some of my practice photos wherein I’m replicating photos from my cookbooks. In recreating these photos, I’m forcing myself to think about composition and lighting and along the way, I hope to improve my food styling skills.

I know I’ve blathered on for quite some time and you’re probably wondering if I’ll ever get to the recipe–I promise, I will. But I just wanted to finish with saying that I know that Salty Sweet Life can be a really good blog. In fact, I know in my heart that it can be an awesome blog…eventually (totally “amaze-balls”!). My posts may never “go viral” but they can still be good. My writing and photography can be something I’m proud to say I created, and you know, with enough work and commitment, one day it won’t suck. I hope you can stick with me for the ride!