square one

a starting point; initial stage or step: If this plan fails, we’ll have to go back to square one. The phrase started somewhere from the years 1955–60 and refers to a board game, when a player is penalized and sent back to the starting point.  The picture above seemed to fit that whole idea, a game with a lot of little squares that you hit, zig-zagging through all the boxes to get to the other side.  A sort of elaborate game of hop-scotch or chinese checkers, and in its own unique way, photography is definitely a game-changer. You start in the first square, and you stare out at an infinite amount of squares that are full of stuff to learn and find and experiment with. It’s hard to know what to learn first, how to practice the art while learning the technical skills, which equipment to invest in, what aspect of photography to focus on, and so on.

There’s room to fail, but no way to get sent back to square 1, even though square 1 is part of every single thing you learn and build on. Once you’ve started on this awesome and thrilling walk to the other side, you discover that when building on what you know, the adventure will lead you on to exciting places, hard places, frustrating places, but intensely beautiful discoveries. And you can’t get sent back to square 1. Already the ground you’ve covered is so much further than where the starting point was. The game changing part is just coming up where you discover that this journey has no end point, and this is the good part:  the only way to lose at this is to stop perfecting what you do, what you shoot, and sit at square 1001.

 The best piece of advice I’ve heard for starting on new ventures, or even just continuing the one you’re already on is to, “do the next thing.” Don’t focus way out ahead and overwhelm yourself  today with what you’re working toward for tomorrow. At the same time,  focus on excellence, and some tomorrow wake up to square 1002.