Rest, Recover, Return.
Working on getting great images is nice, but sleep is better, and being able to walk is even more so.
The act of photography can be surprisingly exhausting, especially for all the daily street crawlers out there.
Not burnout. Burning out. You know that feeling when your heart is screaming at you, your brain wants to shut down because you’re running on fumes and black coffee, hanging on until you can no longer maintain yourself. I kindly beg of you, and I should take my own advice, stop doing that and get some REST.
If you don’t have “time” to rest, take it easy. You can’t be at everything nor can you see everything. It’s not logical or possible.
It doesn’t click until you take that break. You are depriving your body of rest and repair, and no amount of coffee, energy drinks, or tonics will save you from your body shutting down on itself. Let your body hibernate and take that siesta.
Injuries/reoccurring pains will shatter your daily energy supply. If you’ve walked around with me over the past year or so, you may know I’ve had a few problems with my knees and recently an ankle/foot injury due to a combination of bad jumps and landings, falling and tripping, projectiles hitting the wrong spot, wearing the wrong trainers, trapped between people, manhandled by the police, the list goes on.
For most of the summer, these reoccurring issues have been putting my body on overdrive just to walk, something that really should be reserved for real fight or flight moments, which isn’t happening on a majority of days on the street.
I personally had to learn the hard way and miss out on about 6-8 weeks worth of shooting on the streets and postponing portraits.
Give yourself approval to do nothing and heal for the future. I think many of us have gotten used to always needing to do something with our time, and fair enough; you want to optimise and utilise the time you’ve been gifted with as much as possible.
Life is short, but living is long, very long. A good chunk of you reading this, including myself, haven’t even reached 10,000 days (I’m on 9,704 and counting) worth of living yet. Spending just 3-5 of those days to recover and heal will help you in the long run.
Longevity is the key!
My current form... I was pushing my knee and foot to an extreme, stupid really. Limping around day in day out pretending nothing is wrong was not a smart move, but hey-ho, we learn.
As of right now, I am around 80% back to form. I can walk; I have the right footwear, I rest more, I relax more, but I still have re-occurring pain.
On the rare occasion, a quick shock of pain, but it’s better than not being able to walk at all. I’m just glad to be back.