David McElroy

I found you a thousand times
Guess you’ve done the same
But then we lose each other
It’s just like a children’s game
— Harry Chapin, “Circle”

I’ve had a terrible week. It wouldn’t look that way from the outside, but I’ve felt tortured inside.

It started Monday with a disagreement over the way I’ve managed a part of my company’s investment real estate. There was no argument. There was nothing nasty. It was just a philosophical disagreement that I’ve bumped up against numerous times in the last couple of years.

I’m confident about my approach and about the financial results I’ve consistently achieved with the property, but an investor was fretting about some expenses I was approving for maintenance and repairs. Investors never like to spend money — and I felt the icy judgment of his disapproving words. It felt like a personal attack, even though it wasn’t personal. I seriously wanted to quit. Right then and there.

The next day, I reported some income figures to the same investor. He was ecstatic, because I was bringing in cash better than he ever had when he managed the property for himself. He praised me, as he’s done on other occasions — and I felt elated.

Then the clear truth hit me. My self-worth is far too tied up in whether I make someone happy with me or not. I can be incredibly high or disturbingly low, depending on whether someone approves of me. And it’s not emotionally healthy to be affected that way.

I’ve learned this lesson a hundred times, but I keep forgetting — just as I forget dozens of important lessons — so I keep having to learn them all over again.

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Everybody knew Kent wasn’t going to last long. He had been hired as sports editor of a small daily newspaper — and he was a disaster from the beginning.

I watched it all happen because I was managing editor of a small weekly in the same company. I had friends in the daily paper’s newsroom who were telling me everything as it happened. In his first week on the job, he and a local high school football coach were talking privately about a star player for an opposing team who had been injured in a shooting a couple of years before. A bullet had been left in his head after the shooting because it was too close to his brain. It was a miracle that he had returned to play football.

Kent and the coach were talking about the player and were jokingly referring to him as “Bullet Brain” in their private conversation, but Kent didn’t have the judgment to know this wasn’t something to be made public, so he quoted the coach — in a story that ran in the paper — calling the opposing player “Bullet Brain.”

He wasn’t fired, but he clearly wasn’t going to work out.

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A woman recently asked me how she could become a good photographer. I told her I’d let her know how if I ever figure it out for myself. I was joking, but there was truth in it, too.

I have a tortured relationship with photography, just as I do with any kind of creative work. I have a need to create — something which I can’t explain — but I go through predictable cycles. I try to create the beauty or truth that I see in something, and I quickly rage at myself for ever thinking I had the ability to rise to the task.

Then I struggle. I learn more about my equipment. I study different techniques. I experiment and get frustrated with failure. I spend ridiculous amounts of time in Lightroom and Photoshop. After all that work, I finally create a photo that represents a glimmer of what I had hoped to make. I feel exuberant for a few minutes.

And then I notice every little detail that’s imperfect about it — and I’m back to doubting whether I’ll ever be a good photographer.

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