This is one of those things that built up slowly in my head for a while, then suddenly crystallized with numerous people and sources suddenly (unaware of each other) all started giving me the same advice. After some thought, and a little bit of regret, I’ve decided that they are right and I need to make some changes in how I approach my art.
I need to slow down. This is very hard for me to do; art is my obsession and I want nothing more than to be producing all that I can as often as I can.
I also need to set my focus more narrowly on DreamWorld. There is SO MUCH that you guys have no idea about yet, and I need to get to the place where I CAN show you all that stuff!
The thing is, I have to accept that for the time being, I have very limited supplies of time, energy and money. I’m hopeful, of course, that I will eventually start feeling better, but for now, I have to accept that this how things are right now. My energy and time allowances have shrunk every year since I first came down with ME. My chronic pain, daily headaches and frequent migraines don’t help anything. Since I’m dealing with far, far fewer productive hours in the day than your average person has, I need to hoard them and make the absolute most that I can with them. None of those minutes can be wasted.
I’m still weighing things, but I may (for now at least) not edit every shoot on my hard drive. Don’t despair, models waiting for images, I’m not saying none of them will be edited, I just have to really pare things down and only spend the time editing images which I REALLY love.
This also means that I’ll probably be putting out fewer images per year. This makes me sad, and is the main source of my resistance to the idea of slowing down. It’s really hard to watch all my friends and colleagues churn out fantastic image after fantastic image and have nothing even on the radar to be shown soon. You get used to a certain amount of being left behind by the rest of the world when you’re always sick, but it doesn’t make it sting less each new time you feel it. I love getting to show you guy a new piece! It’s usually the highlight of my week when I post an image. 🙂 But despite this, I know that this is the right thing for me to do now.
I’m also making some big changes with a lot of DreamWorld concepts; changes which will make the images I do create even better and more impactful, but which requires quite a lot of work on my end which and won’t produce anything I can show you guys, even as a work-in-progress sort of thing. On one hand, I feel dangerously close to being forgotten and left behind while other artists quickly turn out magnificent pieces… but again, I know that I need to do this preliminary work. It’s going to have a ripple effect through all of DreamWorld and the images which come from it will be better than ever! I hope you guys will be patient and not forget about me or DreamWorld in the periods when I have nothing new to show. 🙂
Thank you all for the love and support you have shown me and my work over the years. It really means so much more than I can say! I am so grateful for every single person who enjoys and follows my work. Even if I can’t put out as many images as I have in the past, I can make sure that the ones I do create are the BEST that I can do. It may frustrate me sometimes, but the extra work I’m pouring into DreamWorld is only going to make it better, brighter, tighter, more emotional and more meaningful. Thank you for bearing with me.
You’ll notice there isn’t a new image with this post; that’s kind of the point!
And thank you, as always, to Geoff for being an unending font of wisdom, clarity and sage advice. 🙂
A Strange New World © Sarah Allegra. A self portrait, one of the first images I shot for DreamWorld. I imagine this girl has just returned to our world after years of journeying through DreamWorld only to find that not a day has passed, much like Narnia. 🙂
Mythic Pictures 