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Hey, You know what, I suspect there is an art to loving what you do. The obvious way to love what you do is to do what you love. But even those things we don’t love with a passion white-hot, I believe we can grow to love those things too. Since working as a deckhand on a forty-nine passenger cruise ship in 2015, I’ve been pondering how we relate to the things we do. Four of us deckhands boarded the ship together. Three gradually came to despise the job and quit before our twelve-week contracts were up. I, however, gradually grew to love the job and long flirted with the idea of a career in private yachts afterward. Quietly watching our perspectives diverge over close-quartered, twelve-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week shifts, I was struck by the difference: it was not about what we were doing, but what we thought about what we were doing. In other words, it was a perspective thing. And perspective is highly malleable, a thing utterly in your hands, or head rather. While the other deckhands ruminated on the negatives (low pay per hour, daily laundry duty, the same-old meals), I relished in the positives (high pay per week, the laundry room had this big beam I could do pull ups on so I got paid to workout every day, unlimited free food). The others were constantly on their phones, thoughts far from where they were, tethered to whatever was going on back home. I leaned into what lay before me: piloting a ship, throwing docklines, tying knots, learning the engine room, and generally getting lost in the adventure of living life on the water. Since that gig, I have deliberately minded the approach to whatever I do. This is more than glass half-empty or half-full. It’s an approach that leans into going with the experience because going against whatever you are doing is backwards and friction and senseless. It’s acknowledging that you probably don’t quite grasp the gifts someone who loves this does. It’s being where you are. It’s also daring for heights your more critical contemporaries would laugh off or shoot down. Real estate photography has recently ascended to such heights. What started as building a website for a friend became a side-gig, a part-time gig, and is now a full-fledged business. I began taking photographs, picked up on a few principles, learned how to frame things and work with lines, etc. Now, two years of shooting in and after composing a guide to the art of shooting real estate photography for our business, I find I have internalized many of the principles and simply show up and lose myself in a most transcendent way shooting some of the more architecturally exquisite abodes. With writing, I have sometimes deeply resonated with this Matisse quote: "The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer." What blows me away, though, is that I have been lately touching this state with real estate photography. This is not to say that I love shooting real estate the same way I love writing, but that something I began with a mind for making money can bring me into a state of mind that approaches prayer. This, to me, is nothing short of miraculous. So I thought to write and ask, how do you mind the approach? And what ride might take you there? Til next month! With love & stoke, Ethan P.S. OCTOBER 13TH - 18TH — SIX DAYS, FIVE NIGHTS — WONDER WANDER 2022 IS ON!!! As WW2021 was so rad and deep and life-affirming the decision to host this year’s gathering felt more of an inevitability than a choice. Dig the link below for more info and do not hesitate to apply if you feel called to join.
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