Create a Timeline of your Personal and Work History--activity by Tony Luna

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Stuck in a rut? Lost your passion for photography? Wondering what to do with your creative energies to be reinspired?

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Tony Luna's article <a href="/learn/photography-business/rediscover-passion-for-photography/drive-to-create/">How

to Rediscover your Passion for Photography: Part I</a>, takes a look at what passion is and what the "Drive to

Create" is all about.

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He offers an activity on <b>creating a timeline of your personal and work history</b>.

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<i>The first step to understanding the potential of our passion is to do a little personal introspection. For

some of us the closest we get to thinking about our past accomplishments is to do a resume. That is insufficient

since a resume is designed to only highlight the glory and it is necessary to have a bigger picture of our past

(warts and all) for us to honestly evaluate how we are to proceed. To have a deeper understanding of how the past

may hold the keys to our future and to gain a perspective on the roots of our passion, I suggest the following

activity:</i>

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<ol>

<li>Draw a long horizontal line on a large piece of paper, or on a dry erase board, or any large surface you may

have access to.</li>

<li>Along that line mark periods of time in years (say in one, three, or five year increments) starting at some

point important to you—beginning with your childhood, high school, leaving home, college graduation, whatever you

deem important—and end with today.</li>

<li>On the top portion of the timeline, write down significant events in your work history, and below the line

write significant events in your personal history.</li>

<li>When you are finished stand back and take a look at any recurring themes that emerge on how you have handled

challenges or what important choices you have made.</li>

<li>Can you see the way(s) in which passion has played in your life up until now?</li>

<li>Consider the steps you have to take to write the script for your next creative venture and how it will impact

your life.</li>

</ol>

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After completing the activity, you can share some of your experiences, observations, discoveries here. You can

also ask questions to see if others may be experiencing a similar rut or state of creative despair, or creative high!

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Thanks, I'll read it. I've always been drawn to Sam Abell's photos and advice for photographers. In one essay he advised

part-time serious photographers to have 2-3 photo projects that take years if not a lifetime and focus on them only

wandering to other smaller or short-term projects as time permits, to learn something new, or simply change your

perspective for awhile.

In ways, I've already done the mental version of this exercise to plan my post-retirement from one career to another

career using photography, which is learning 4x5 photography (in second year) and producing a photo guide to Mt. Rainier

National Park. This summer I added learning about the first scientific expedition in Mt. Rainier in 1896 where they took at

least 40 4x5 b&w negatives and trying to determine the route of the expedtion and locate where the photos were taken

for new one 110+ years later.

So, looking back is interesting, but for now looking forward has more promise.