Redefining Who I Am Part 1 - Trapped in my pride
About a month or so before I had just done an art show that I’m sure most of you are aware of, and some of you came to see. I think that was the beginning of my false sense of security in my own abilities to be able to carry myself out of working in the corporate world to working at a privately owned agency. I had a night of showing off what I had worked so hard for in the past few years and had a great night of congratulations and well wishing. A sense of pride and enthusiasm swelled within me that night as I proudly would talk about the images that flashed across the screen I was using to demonstrate my photographic work.
It was a great event. Everyone was all dressed up and were there to celebrate art, music and creativity. I thought to myself that this would be the first of many art shows I would do and that my work had finally had its first big step up to being properly exposed. Wonderful friends came out to see my work and support me and it was definitely something I had been waiting for.
The weeks that followed were filled with a new sense of pride in the work that I showed off and I was sure that it would begin to launch me into the world of professional photography as I’d always dreamed it would. I was about to embark on a journey and “leave the nest” so to speak to see if I could spread my wings and fly off into success and growth. What I didn’t realize was that I was making these huge decisions without really taking into consideration of what I was about to do. I had been looking for so long to get out of my corporate job and into a “more fitting” role that when the opportunity presented itself, had my heart been in the right place, I would have made the choice to make sure I was ready, rather than just jumping at the opportunity to prove myself to everyone around me.
My ego and pride had been built up so fast and so high that I mistook it for a strong tower that couldn’t be toppled over. I forgot that a structure is only as strong as its foundation, and mine was horribly cracked. But since it was hidden beneath the surface, I had no idea what was about to happen.
My foundation was being held up by things that were not solid. I had laid a trap for myself because I was putting a lot of my joy and reason for what I did behind selfish desires. One great mistake I made was relying on what I had done in the past to dictate what I needed to do in the near future. I thought my skills would carry over from one job to the next. However, what I didn’t plan on was finding out that the job I had taken on was going to be very little like what I had been doing before. Oh, it dealt with marketing and design. That’s the whole basis of what I do. But my desire to be part of something else other than my current job was so high on my priority list that I didn’t really look at myself and the opportunity with the watchful eye I should have.
Assumptions, selfishness, and faith in my own abilities were the foundation of my decision to leave my job and join another company. I thought about the title I would have and what great things could come to me with that experience and position. My desire to leave where I was and dust myself off was so great that I misread what was needed for this position. Discipline, an true entrepreneurial spirit, fearless belief in a cause to do great work for our clients and partners is what was required to do this right. I didn’t have those things planted within me when I left my job. I had a dream about proving to myself and my previous employers that I didn’t need them, that I had outgrown them and that they would be the ones who would miss me. Although I wasn’t very outspoken about this, in my heart that’s what I felt. I never wanted to burn the bridge of where I was just because I felt my time there was done. But towards the end of my time there, I did indeed begin to feel like I had outgrown my position there. What was really going on was that my ego had expanded. Egos are usually empty, hot air. A gas that quickly escapes once the container holding it in is ruptured. There is no solid mass to hold it’s shape. Once the containing force is gone, the gas escapes and there’s nothing left.
But when I finally left my job, I felt free for the first time in a long time. I thought to myself, and I remember telling some close friends this as well, “I feel like I can just go out and do all the things I’ve always wanted to do now with my photography! I have all the time in the world to shoot wherever I want in between projects!”
The core of the problem was not jumping into something without really having what it took to make it successful. My main issue was that I had been poisoning myself with my own selfish desires, ego and a power trip so much that I couldn’t see the destruction of who I was and how quickly it was coming to me. I slowly began to just feed the lies that what I was doing was a good use of my talent. It became about the prestige of what I could do, who I could work with and where that was leading me instead of the pure joy of being a servant with my gifts.
My gifts were there to serve, please, and feed me. I no longer had a humble approach and became very forward about what my accomplishments were. I was feeding myself poisoned fruit the entire time and the worst part of it was I wanted more. The whole foundation of why I was doing what I was doing had changed.
When you begin to put your trust into things that are not stable, pure, and holy, you begin to eat away at the foundation that your life is built upon. My foundation had become rotten. It was full of lies, filth, and the self satisfying pleasure I gained from it rather than to bless others. I became boastful and proud of what I was doing and began to lower my standards of what I would do and for what reason. I had a few instances where the work I did was a huge blessing to a few, but everything else about how my heart was at that point was just rotten.
By the time the end of July came around and I was already a month into working my new job, I had forgotten about why I had been able to achieve what I had already done in the first place. All the gifts I had, all the talent and all the desires I once had to do what I did were now covered up with lies and deceit. I had been feeding myself poisoned fruit for so long that when it came time to do something truly great, I had no real nourishment to take me from one level to the next.
My core was filled with rotten thoughts and selfish desires. I was no longer a proud and successful leader. I was a tired, lazy, and gluttonous slave to my own pride and ego.
A lot of the art that I was most proud of were things I couldn’t and wouldn't even show publicly. It was a constant battle within me that I thought I could win by just shutting out the thing I knew to be true. I knew that my work needed to reflect the goodness of what God had done in my life and the truth that my family had brought me up to believe. My life’s work was supposed to be done to bless and elevate my clients and friends. In secret, I was slowly starting to decay. My heart had been molded to seek out my own pleasure and selfish gain.
Little did I know that out of those seeds would come a harvest of fear, doubt, depression, anxiety, desperation, and loneliness like I’ve never felt before. It was just around the corner and I wasn’t prepared to get hit as hard as I was. A dark spirit of death and fear had begun to reside in my home. And on Monday, August 12th, it showed itself to me, put it’s hands around my throat and smiled at me as I lay there powerless to stop it.
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