Art and the American Dream: NJ photographer

Vacations are fun, relaxing times to unwind and stop and smell the flowers after the chaotic regular lives we lead. I always enjoy time off from work, even if I am staying local or taking day trips and I have never regretted taking a vacation regardless of what my day job has been. So why is it that the weeks leading up to vacation are such insanity that it almost makes you wish you weren't taking a few days off? Why is that? Why do you end up running around like a lunatic just so you can sit on the beach for a few days. And those of you with children, I applaud you loudly. I can't even get myself straight, let alone a five year old!

I have a few theories that I will now share about why I become insane during pre-vacation. Please note that this is my own personal brand of insanity and my brand may not necessarily work with your brand of craziness. Regardless, I think most people should be able to relate on some level:

OCD-If you have mild OCD that isn't necessarily life-altering but that forces you to make random lists, replay everything you have to do in your head throughout the day (and night!) and basically just stress about everything until it is checked off that list you made, then pre-vacation time is not your friend. I will be checking my list twelve times, rewriting the list a few times and generally driving myself very near to the point of insanity just making sure I packed enough black shirts to wear. And if you know me, you know that there is no shortage of those black shirts in my wardrobe. They always need to make it to the suitcase though...

Forgetfulness-I usually have so much on my mind, that my husband will tell me things two and three times and I will forget I ever heard them. To have to repeat oneself two or three times does not make someone happy, even if you are an easy, perfect person to live with (which I am not). In the midst of forgetting general information he shares with me, I also forget things like my toothbrush, hair gel and other assorted annoyances. Yes, I know, unless I am vacationing in Siberia (and probably even if I was), I can buy those things I forgot. But when a perfectly good pack of hair ties is sitting on the counter at home with a brand new brush, it bugs me to have to buy another set. General principle, I guess...or just being cheap!

Having a business/businesses-When I had a regular job, I just asked for time off and then had a few things to follow up on. Having your own business is a little harder in this area. Everything above that I mentioned about making lists and checking them twice? Make that three lists-one list for me, personally, and one for each of the businesses I run...this equates to even more stress and utter chaos when you realize that you forgot to update the outgoing phone message, website or whatever. I used to be worse at this but have gotten better at it with practice. This means that now, most everything gets done, prepped and ready-except at home, where I still forget the hair gel...*sigh*

Packing-Years ago, when I traveled for work each week, I was the greatest packer on earth. Literally I packed exactly what I needed and never, ever had a problem. I could make it in and out of an airport in record time and had my routine so scaled down that carrying my suitcase and laptop was no issue at all. Granted, I was also ten years younger but still, I had the packing thing wired. It was awesome. And somehow, in the time that has passed between then and now, I have completely lost every packing and efficiency skill I acquired back then. I have turned into that person with the 30 bags and suitcases heading out the door. What the hell happened? I have not become any more high maintenance. I just can't stand the thought of not having a choice between 4 pairs of black platform sandals when I am getting ready to go to dinner. Seriously, what is up with that? Why can't I just bring one of every color? Why do I need three of every color shoe that goes with an outfit. And then, after lugging them everywhere, why do I wear two pairs of shoes the entire vacation? I am seriously insane on this front. And if it is local vacation that is even worse because then I give myself permission to pack even more bags. One shoe bag, one bag of books to read on the beach, one bag just for lounging clothes, etc. I have gone from the Queen of Packing to a packing disaster. Someone help me please....

So vacation time is totally worth it but a totally stress-inducing activity and really, I don't know how else to say it. And yes, I know it's my own fault and maybe some day I will change things but for now, there just isn't time...I've got to go make another list....

I saw this on my facebook newsfeed this morning. It is Steve Jobs giving a commencement address to the Stanford University Class of 2005. This spoke to me in an incredible way so I felt some value in re-posting this.

I am certainly not an innovator of Mr. Jobs' level (and really, there aren't many folks who are). Prior to 2001 I lived a normal life of working 75% of the time to support myself and 25% of the time in "leisure activities" (as well as spending time on worrying about work.) Generally, this was not the happiest time in my life and I was definitely not being true to myself. Then September 11th, 2001 happened. This was a turning point for a lot of people and I include myself in that. I could not fathom that all those people in the Trade Center and the Pentagon did was go to work. And so many of them did not go home that night. To me, hating my job and not being true to myself and playing the role of what I was supposed to be was bad enough. Imagine going to work at that job you hate and never getting to do what you really want to do?

As I reflected in the weeks that followed September 11th, I made some decisions and hatched some ideas that began to take shape. And I have been working on perfecting those road maps ever since. Part of those decisions was Creative Genius Art Gallery and Studio which opened in 2003 and also, the idea of photographing people professionally, which began happening actively in 2004. I had always been close to the arts and even wanted to be a professional artist as a kid. And I had been digging deep into learning photography since I was 18 years old. And now at 35, I was kicking both "loves" into a prominent place in my life. I was probably not fully ready for either endeavor and yet I just went for it. I look back now and say that it's a good thing I didn't know more or I might have talked myself out of doing what I did.

Since I opened my gallery in 2003 and started photographing people professionally in 2004, it has been a constant struggle to stay afloat. And yet, amidst all the people who told me I couldn't do what I wanted, I continued to move forward and I continue to still move forward today. It has been far from easy and far from painless and yet, these two "jobs" are the best things I have ever done in my work life because they are exactly what I feel I am supposed to be doing and I get to do them daily.

When I watched the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave, it really brought home a lot for me. Things are not always easy and often they downright suck. Things are not always fair and sometimes you get to deal with nastiness, jealousy, negativity and selfishness. Sometimes you get screwed. But in the end, what matters most is being true to you and finding what you love to do and the universe will have a way of helping you make that happen, even if it takes a while. Sometimes when you look back, those dots will connect in a way you hadn't planned but somehow it all works out. I couldn't agree with that sentiment more.

I have included a transcript of the address below, in case you'd like to read it. Perhaps it will speak to you too...

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.