What If You Are…

When I started my career, all I ever heard was no. So many doors never opened, and the number of times I felt I wasn’t good enough were endless. But still something inside me kept trying. I kept asking myself, “How can I get better? How can I grow?” And my answer to that never changed – and It still hasn’t changed:
Keep trying.
Work harder.
Stay out of your head.
Ask for advice.
Ask for honesty.
Stay open.
Listen.
And no matter how bad the criticism or the word “no” feels, don’t stop believing in what you have to say photographically.
So, I say to all of you: What If you are good enough?

Whatever it is you want to do, you can do it. Whatever it is you want to be, you can be it. So go do it. That is your final assignment.

There is no way I could have ever anticipated what an online, live-streamed food photography workshop would have ignited in the thousands who watched this past weekend.
I couldn’t sleep a wink Sunday night after it was over, I was stirring so much; the energy, the adrenaline, replaying moments, thinking about the different scenes we created in one weekend, all in the name of food photography. But still, that wasn’t what kept my mind racing. It was all the tweets, Facebook messages, comments on this blog, and the hundreds of personal emails I received over the past 72 hours.
Many of them were thank you notes, others heartfelt words of gratitude – and some were very personal accounts of lost dreams that people have decided to reclaim and believe in again.
These words from you all have moved me beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Something changed for me personally, too. I have no idea what all of this means, but I do know one thing: we walked through a threshold this past weekend. No one knows how or when that will materialize or manifest, but I personally can’t wait to see what happens.
Thanks to all of you from the bottom of my heart for the support and kind words.
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from an email that especially touched me when I read it early Monday morning. I think it says everything:

“I turned forty years old a few months ago, and out of nowhere, someone just showed me how to find the passion I had when I was fourteen. What the hell, Penny? It’s a tremendous gift, and maybe I deserve it, maybe I don’t. But if I fail to do anything with it, then I would have answered that question.

Someone just took me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye, and laid out the simple truth: “If you’re not doing what you love, why not?” I have no answer for you, but that was the point, wasn’t it? There’s just no acceptable answer.

The last three days—and most especially the final hour of those three days—I heard my muse give me the ultimatum. And I don’t care that I’m forty; this fire within feels ageless.

I’m not going to say that you showed me the career I always wanted, because I’m not looking for a new career. What you showed me is much more than that: you showed me who I was, who I’ve always been. I never realized how much I needed to see myself again. I’ve lost so much recently, and I’m still listing the things I’ve lost in an endless parade of spreadsheets. But no one makes you list the dreams you’ve lost, the hopes you’ve abandoned, the passions you’ve pushed into the background.

So thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart—a heart much larger now because my muse has finally reclaimed her rightful space in it”