Notes from an old journal, 2017 → now

I found an old journal entry today.

2017.

A different version of me, and yet not different at all.

I sat on the floor for a while before reading it.
Like you do when you know something might hit a little deeper than expected.
Like opening a letter you once wrote to yourself without knowing you would need it again.

It started with one word, written in capital letters:

FREEDOM.

And then questions I had forgotten I once asked:

How does freedom impact our daily life?
How does it shape our creativity?
Do we need to feel free to create at all?

I didn’t expect to feel emotional reading it.
But I did.

Not because it was beautifully written,
but because it was so… painfully honest.

2017

“I felt like I was a little bit stuck in my life.
I couldn’t enjoy little moments. I didn’t see anything beautiful.
It was hard for me to create deep and emotional photographs.”

“Photography was more and more challenging for me.
And it was heartbreaking.
It was heartbreaking to look through my camera and not feel what I used to feel.”

I remember that version of me so clearly now.

She thought she had lost her talent.
That something essential had disappeared.
That maybe she just wasn’t made for this.

So she tried harder.
Workshops. Studying other people’s work.
Long mornings staring at images that felt more alive than her own.

“I didn’t get why they were able to take such pretty and valuable photos
and why mine seemed to get worse and worse.”

And underneath all of it, something quieter:

a growing distance
between herself
and her own voice.

The Part I Had Forgotten

What moves me most reading this now
is not the struggle.

It’s what came after.

“I decided to take a step back.
I didn’t touch my camera for months.”

“I unfollowed wedding blogs, photographers, everything related to this industry.”

“I focused on the things I really started to love.
Sports, cooking, my friends.
Everything that filled my heart.”

I didn’t remember that I was this brave.

Because stepping away felt dangerous.
Like disappearing.
Like risking everything I had built.

“You can get forgotten easily in this fast moving online world.”

And still — I left.

Not dramatically.
Just quietly.
A slow slipping away.

Now

Reading this today felt like being gently called out
by my own past.

Because the world hasn’t become quieter since then.
If anything, it has become louder. Faster. Hungrier.

And yet the pattern is the same.

Whenever I feel disconnected from my work,
I still first assume:

Maybe I’m not good enough.
Maybe I need to try harder.
Maybe I need to do more.

But that’s never really the truth.

The truth is almost always this:

I’ve drifted too far away from myself.

2017 (again)

“The more you focus on getting better and more successful than anyone else,
the more you will lose yourself.”

“I needed some freedom for my mind.
Freedom for my soul.
Freedom for myself.”

“I quit photography and this industry to start loving it more than ever again.”

There’s something almost ironic about it.

That the moment I stopped trying to be better,
I became more myself.

That the moment I stopped consuming everything,
I started to see again.

“I went outside. I saw things. I felt things.”

And suddenly, there were thoughts again.
Words. Images. Connections.

Not because I chased them.
But because there was space for them to return.

What I Understand Now

Creativity is not something you squeeze out of yourself.

It’s something that returns
when there is room.

Room for boredom.
Room for slowness.
Room for living a life that has nothing to do with your work.

Because if everything you consume feeds the same thing you produce,
you slowly become an echo.

And echoes are never original.

What I understood then (without fully knowing it)
is that creativity is deeply tied to freedom.

Not external freedom.

But the quiet, internal kind:

The freedom to not perform.
The freedom to not compare.
The freedom to not constantly prove that you are still relevant, still good, still worthy.

A Small Realization, Eight Years Later

I didn’t lose my creativity back then.

I lost my aliveness.

And I found it again
in the most “unproductive” places.

In movement.
In conversations.
In cooking.
In long walks without purpose.

In moments where no one was watching.

2017 (last words)

“Now I can definitely say that every photograph I create is me.
My creativity, my heart, my soul.
All I do is being me.”

I don’t think we ever fully arrive at that place.

But I think we circle back to it.
Again and again.

And maybe that’s the work.

Not becoming someone new.
But remembering who you were
before you started trying so hard.