It is not often that I write words without intention and a plan, so today, you’re in for a treat.
Today I am exploring the anxiety of the tomorrow. That sweet, precious hope, that perhaps, it will all be very much okay, and everything will go to plan. I don’t get anxious for the worst case scenario — because I have already planned for that. In essence, the worst case scenario is that nothing happens, and the universe goes on without my agency being imposed upon it. But in fact, I’m delaying what I really want to write about.
The anxiety that there will be an uproarious success.
Tomorrow, I am hanging up my photographic exhibition, Myth. It is my first solo show in many years, and my name is at the top of the flyer that’s been distributed around town to promote the festival that enables the exhibition. I have joked that this means that I am “headlining” the festival, as though I am as cherished and important as that band that draws the audience.
Really, it is just a matter of the geography.
I get anxious for success.
I have never been trained to deal with success.
I hold the belief that I have never truly experienced it in any meaningful way.
You probably don’t want to read the lamentations of a man rapidly approaching middle age. (Though on reflection, we all travel through time at the same rate.) A man confessing on the topic of self-sabotage, imposter syndrome and worry. As a man I’m not as pretty as a damsel in distress, and it is unlikely any princess charming will leap to my aid.
Distress is felt all the same, and the anxiety of potential impending success is one of the reasons I probably do poorly at self-promotion. It is why I often don’t bother. If you’re reading this far, thank you, because that is a success that I could not anticipate.
By all external measures, I am a success. I made it through childhood. I did well in school. I lost people to terrible diseases. I lived on. I went to University. I lost other people to sudden, unforeseen circumstance. I lived on. I completed my studies. I travelled. I was lost for a little while.
I lived on.
I came home. I got a job. I got lost again for a little while. I missed my creative side. I returned to it. I lived on.
For you see, I have always wanted to tell stories, or at the very least, through my photographic work, hint at larger, polynomial stories that are woven from the viewer’s thoughts, a moment distilled from a larger, ongoing, manufactured narrative.
People tell me my photographic works are stunning. That they’re well captured, interesting, and beautiful. That’s the surface. I want people to dig deeper. To find themselves suddenly at the bottom of a well.
Not everyone is Roland Barthes. Not everyone thought as deeply as a French philosopher on the notion that every photograph embodies death. Even a simple selfie, or a smiling bride beaming at her husband, situated just out of frame.
In his wonderful, book-length essay which reads more like a memoir, Barthes is poetic, beautiful, miserable, and approaches the image(s) produced by photography with child-like wonder.
The same child-like wonder I have when observing representations of things. Then, he too, tragically, became a victim of inevitability, perishing as a pedestrian, after being hit by of all things, a Laundry Truck. A remarkable life ended in an unremarkable way. Camera Lucida was the last book he published.
To steal a quote from Barthes, in every photographic representation of the late man, we can look upon it and say, “He is dead, and he is going to die.”
Returning now to a man not recently deceased — myself! As I look upon the boxes of picture frames that will be loaded into my vehicle tomorrow and hung up upon a wall — I wonder about an audience of an unknown number will gaze upon the images.
The creative energy I have extracted from my mind and into picture frames. I wonder what they will think. Not only of my images, and the things they represent, but what reputation the work will give, to me, the man anxious about success.
They will observe a moment that I observed, first in my mind, which I then manufactured, observed and then captured.
Showing my work and telling others my dreams will always be a moment of extreme vulnerability and one of confrontation. No one asked for my images to be produced, created, or displayed. I am imposing it upon others, and their eye will wander across the image along the railroads of light I have harvested.
Many of these works have hung in my home for some time, others have been nothing beyond pixels and digital representations of a moment in the continuum of history. I’m afraid of losing my creations to sale, but I hope that they might lead different lives and bring reflection upon the minds of others, for only a short while.
I’m afraid of success.
Myth is on display at Cafe Nova, 19 Murray St, Gawler, South Australia 5118, from October 10, 2025 through October 20, 2025 during Cafe Nova Business Hours.
It's completely normal to be nervous. That anticipatory feeling is utterly normal. If course you don't want to think about success, because what if you aren't, in the way a part of you would really like to be? There's no telling you that you already ARE a success, is there?
I could bet right now that you are going to have a great time, learn a lot, and have something to say about the experience.
Vulnerability is hard. Ironically. Because it requires softness and leaning in to whatever blade may pain you. How delicious.
Oh, and not everyone likes Barthes either.
You don't need to like a man's output and musings in order to acknowledge the influence he's had on tens of thousands of individuals, but I am nitpicking.
I guess it is something ingrained in my psyche at this point of my life. I need more self-imposed CBT, and to practice what I preach, and to actually listen to those who care deeply about it(I am leaving that typo in because it was meant to be "me" - nice Fruedian slip).
I am sure that the opening will be amicable and full of people talking and speaking - but I am defining my metric of success on this one as money. Cold hard cashola in my wallet.
I absolutely adore this definition of success. Thanks for that :) Otherwise, it'd be a bit strange if you weren't nervous at all, don't you think? Because there's uncertainty, and I don't think you can ever approach uncertainty with a completely relaxed face (much as we try).
I hope you have a blast, and congrats again on your show!
The meekest of affirmations. I live on. The opening is tomorrow night - but it is a communal opening, so I get to spread my success(?) among a broader audience, who will each have successes and anxieties of their own.
These liminal phases are really disorienting.
But success is here already: you have a show.
I hope it is fabulous and you enjoy it!
Perhaps the show has me? :) It is six years of work! There'll be a virtual, Hive-Version published in the coming days, as many of my dearest friends on Hive won't be able to make the multi-hundred (or multi-thousand) kilometre trip!
Have a taste of success and then you can't live without it 😈
No, just joking ahah
I like how you talk about living your life as a success by itself. That's kinda how I feel recently too. I'm working hard and struggling to reach some sort of success but I used to get too depressed when things went wrong. Now I learned. I learned to let go. I know that if I "fail" I will live it through it anyway. And until I'm alive, I just can try again and again. And the more I try, the less painful failing becomes and it starts to just blend in the process. And I live on.
Living on is the prize. It lets us try again. The award for living on is the gift of future failure, but at the end of that road there are two things: either an opportunity to build more road, or success.
I know how to keep building the road, I don't know what I will do with success. I think that is why I keep putting it out of reach. :)
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