Adding Restrictions, Resisting Comparison

We can turn things around with the right perspective, we just only need to allow ourselves the creativity to do so.

Gummy Bear stuck on a window, Downtown Corvallis.
One of the first photos of the night. It's stuck and dirty,
often like our perspectives of ourselves- stuck on the negativity.

Taking night photography with anything but a low aperture is not the most thrilling activity. A visiting friend from Canada called for an occasion of a downtown Corvallis nighttime photo shoot. I, without my 1.4 nifty-fifty, grabbed my 24-70 4.0 lens, hoping I’d get something, anything, half-decent. 

Rather than letting a long day of inconveniences, bad moods, and isolating thoughts kill my creativity, I decided to restrict myself. 

I was unhappy with my lens choice but decided to use its macro settings the whole night, hoping my gloom could shine through my photos. Why force something that isn’t there? No dancing lights from shop windows or portrait-style silhouettes. Instead, a new perspective to outlet depression and self-hatred. 

Maybe allowing myself to grieve and express through this restriction will help bring me peace.

I saw this angel in a shop window and loved
the mood the light hitting its wings created.
We are angels mourning in our own darkness.

Boxing up grief and pain, wrapping them in cute wrapping paper, and selecting a matching bow to complete the look, brings peace or a sense of peace only temporarily. We have to stop ourselves from packaging these things.

Rather than unwrap each carefully crafted nightmare that stays tucked away in drawer's we keep locked with our imaginations. We tell ourselves to ‘forget and move forward;' don’t mind the gap between reality and the power to blow things out of proportion - our ability to drown ourselves in self-pity.

I untied a bow of comparison. That evening I shot downtown and let people know I was hurting. I had them around, though, just for the company and a distraction. But I was able to talk, reflect, wallow in the emotions linked to that dreaded, “he did it this way.”

Broken glass. It was as if a metal ball pierced the
window; it was a round, jagged pattern. I
have a fascination with broken glass.

I get he was good, but I am different. 

Ironically, I was sharing that as I was stuck in the comparison game. Told my friend, stop comparing yourself to him, I’m doing it, it sucks. Escape while you can. 

We are not others before us and we are not those we look up to-- we are us. Us is the experiences, the ideas, the drive, or lack thereof in my case, us is me. Me is my own person. Me is a person who has a different vision and is learning in a unique manner from those before me. This is I. I am me.

I am not he, and I should never be, because I can be better if I truly believe. 

And you should not be he, for he is his own, and you are your own. You should be free. 

Free from comparison.

Reflection from the Tokyo
Steakhouse in Downtown Corvallis.