Loser.

A reckoning with visible failure and invisible success.

”There are currently 19 37 drafts sitting in my folder, formed thoughts that are more than just blurry shapes. It would be easy to publish one of those that has nothing to do with how I am feeling right now. Less effort, less vulnerable and scary. It would be easier to publish a more polished version of me. And maybe I will.
But I know that some of the most transformative work is done in the middle. Not at the end, when it's figured out, neatly placed in a box, archived under 'life lessons', but whilst I am in in the thick of it, in the mess, while it still doesn’t quite make sense. Because writing is how I make it make sense. Writing is how I hear my own heart. Because letting others see the not-knowing, the naked fear, the uncertainty, is how we all feel less lonely. It's how we all feel less wrong. There is a time to let things mature. To leave them to rest, breathe and rise. But there is nothing quite like a raw place of momentary, uncensored, wild truth.”

This ends up being my modus operandi most of the time. I can’t not write from my feelings. And sometimes, it’s just ugly. The way I describe my state right now is often just by arrrgghhhhhhhh screaming shrugging sincerely: ”I don’t know.”

What is your plan?
What are you working on?
Where are you going next?
What is your goal?
What do you dream of?

I. don’t. know.
I don’t know what to tell you.
I just don’t know.

*proceeds to write a whole essay about what she said she didn’t know.*

---

”Failure doesn’t exist, every failure is just a lesson.”

We hear some version of this echoing throughout every entrepreneur bros’ instagram. I do agree, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely agree.
The problem is, those are just words. In the reality we live in, people generally don’t applaud you for failing. The same people who say this in their TikToks are the ones who probably won’t look at you twice at an event because to them, if you have no success story to tell and no names to drop, you’re not interesting.

Of course, there are levels to this. If you are failing at something at 21, that’s great. It makes sense, you’re still learning, it’s admirable. Go you! If you are 40 though, you get different looks. Believe me you.
People who you thought were friends might even distance themselves from you. Why don’t you have it together by now? Why are you struggling so much? “You’ve been feeling like this for too long now” - a ‘friend’ told me a while ago. A person who had only ever known this version of me because we had only recently met.
It confirmed my worst fear: People don’t want to be around you if you are a sad loser.
The older you get the more failure feels like it’s contagious, a nuisance to have to watch someone try so hard, an inconvenience to be around that energy. People are scared of you and your struggle, turned off, disgusted.

At 20 failure is cute. If you’re still bobbing around at 50, you’re a loser.

{There are also sexist double standards to this, which I can see play out in the dating world. A woman gets a bit more leeway if she isn’t ‘successful’ at a certain age - but a man often does not. He isn’t allowed to still be in crisis at 45. The girlies want a guy who owns a car, has a great income, a purpose and direction and property - even when they have none of it for themselves. This huge topic is for another day.}

There is visible and invisible success, visible and invisible failure - and this is a desperate write-up about both: Can you see it with your eyeballs? Can you touch it? That’s success. According to, well, most people. A life trajectory that goes upwards. Making something that is visible to others: a business, a life’s work, children, property - the likes.

What has felt hardest in the last few years for me is the feeling that I have not made any obvious outward progress. Nothing to frame on the walls, to shout about or bring up at a party with strangers. Big clients or book deals, diamond ring, pregnancy announcements, property ladder climbing, or job opportunities and promotions. I haven’t earned more money, I haven’t had any big career moves or big projects.
I have friends who have done ALL OF THESE and then some during fucking Covid times. Wrote and published books, bought houses, met and married someone, switched jobs and tripled their success and so on. While I was simply trying not to drown. (To be fair, I do not even want most of the aforementioned. I just want to be able to do something)

I have just been existing, with no upwards moving line on the x / y axis of life.
Instead, my life has been flatlining hard, if anything, the only curves have been pointing down.

At almost 39 I have not realised the ‘happily ever after’ that I thought I would have at 19.

I had the 6 figure business and for about a decade, I was jet-setting around the world, shooting weddings from New Zealand to South Africa, speaking on stages, to hundreds and thousands of people. Even typing this out makes me feel like some bitter old person who talks about their long gone ‘glory days’. But, the cliché was real: I never saw my family and friends. I missed out on so much life. I put so much distance between me and the people that mattered to me. I destroyed my mental and physical health. My body had to literally stop me from working by giving me panic attacks inside airport toilets.

When I left the wedding industry I believed I could replicate my success in the portrait photography world as well. But Covid thought otherwise. So I moved to London to have some kind of breakthrough, because you gotta be where the action is. But I realised hard, the world London didn’t care. This industry was so wildly different from what I knew. Undervalued and underpaid. People might double tap my work on Instagram, but they wouldn’t pay me for it. I quickly ran out of steam and out of pocket. And way too soon, I had to leave, even though I didn’t want to leave. I knew, in theory, what I had to do to make London work for me. I know what it would have taken to “succeed” aka remain in London and keep trying to chase proximity to circles that I hoped would see my worth, would buy my work. I could have gotten rid of my cats and moved in with 4 other people in a damp small London room, gone to 4 events a week, like an artist friend of mine in his 40’s is doing. I could have promoted myself more online and through every possible avenue, reached out more than I did, pitched more than I did. I could have knocked on more doors. I could have hustled more. I could have sucked up to BAFTA instead of being my usual honest self. I could have submitted all my time, resources, relationships and my integrity to this one goal: be a successful portrait photographer.

But I physically couldn’t do more.

I have friends who have the privilege of pursuing their dreams while living with their parents, friends who don’t pay rent, don’t have to worry about bills like I do, friends who have husband wealth while they work on their business, friends who you might call struggling artists - but whose struggle is more about getting eyes on their work rather than keeping their basic existence afloat.
It’s a special torture when you not only have to figure out how to put your work out there more but at the same time have to make sure to not loose the roof over your head. I wasn’t granted that privilege. I have always been the provider, even in my marriage, I haven’t had an actual break in 38 years. And at times I resent that heavily. Does this sound too bitter? I want to censor myself while I am typing and make this sound less like I am a victim, but I am going to let it pour all out because we have too many glossy lies out there already. And yes, maybe I am bitter, resentful. At myself most of all. Let me just name the ugly thing. The unspeakable word.

Every uber-successful person you know is sacrificing a huge part of their life, even when they don’t tell you. For every incredible success story you hear, there is a story of privilege or sacrifice and loss that you are not being told. A story of inner failure.

I could have done more. I think about this most days. But more was not a price I was willing or even able to pay anymore because I had already paid it. Just in a different context. Because leaving my first life behind took everything out of me. Because I came to a screeching halt and realised there was nothing left in the tank. Even if I had wanted to do more, my body didn’t let me. In the past few years friends have told me “why don’t you go back to weddings, just to bridge over financially, just for the money.” And I truly wish I could. But I have a visceral, sick reaction to this work. My body and I are connected now, I am listening. I can’t go back. Ignoring my body language feels like peeling off my own skin.
When I try to explain to people that I have this incapability, they smile, a bit pitiful and often with a look that tells me they don’t understand and worse, they don’t believe me. Excuses. She is just lazy.

Loser.

On the outside, by everything our world tells us to value, I am a failure.

There are people who are not interested in me, because I am not about the same metrics as them. They are interested in numbers and capital growth, monetary achievements, they are interested in famous names and connections, interested in more visible stuff. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t count. Those people are not drawn to me. If they meet me at a party and hear what’s happening (or rather not happening) in my life, they will look over me, interest quickly fading, looking for someone else to talk to.

The people interested in me are people who want something real. If you want human connection, if you want honesty, courage, if you want someone to explore the depth of our souls with, someone to smell the rain with, I am your person. If you want someone that will listen to you and ask questions, if you want to witness someone who is herself without apology and the need for acceptance - I am your person.

Last year in an attempt to untangle my thoughts on this, I wrote down an incomplete list of things I have accomplished in the last five years that don’t sound sexy or impressive.

• Like leaving behind a belief system (some call it cult) and community I was born into after 33 years of brainwashing. I lost everything and almost everyone in my life that I loved.

• Then I had to start a second life and rebuild from zero. I mean, I am still alive and so are my cats, so I guess I succeeded.

• I left a miserable, emotionally neglectful, lonely ok-marriage with an ok-guy, because ok was killing both of us and only one of us wanted to do something about it.

• I have uncovered some of the deepest wounds in the last six years and have been recovering from painful indoctrination and lifelong trauma - and I am still on it.

• Somehow I survived the Covid years alone, with no financial help from anyone outside of myself.

• I have created incredibly deep, meaningful and caring relationships with new people after loosing most of my previous social group. My circle is nurturing, loving, honest and an actual community I do life with, not just coffeeshop dates. We are actively trying to build a network of care to support each other through life. My relationships are one of the thing I am most proud of. My people are exceptional and I am honoured to build a life with them.

• My healing has become my biggest work of art. I have become brutally honest with myself, I have given up disguising, pretending and performing. I was never a big people pleaser but now even less so. Living truthfully (whatever that means at any point in time) has become my north star. After deconstructing my faith and leaving my marriage burning down my first life in the name of integrity - how can I not honour myself now? No matter how difficult the truth is, I will align with my integrity because I will not waste my second life to live inside a lie again.

• I have learned to listen to and trust myself, which is a concept that was foreign to me for most of my life.

• I can feel everything now. It sucks.

• My relationship to my body has become more connected, in all areas: food, intuition, movement, sex, emotions - the range of everything.

• I have learned to accept good love. Healthy love. Caring love. Thoughtful love. I didn’t push it away when it came. I was cautious. I was slow (so slow). But eventually, I let it in. And while it didn’t stay, I finally believed that I was allowed to, that I deserved it.

  
  

And yet…it’s not a cool party trick this list, is it? (I sound like I go to tons of parties, when in reality I go to none at all. I can’t even remember the last time I went to anything resembling an event with a crowd of people.)
It doesn’t attract applause, it won’t put me on a stage or get me a book deal, this list won’t get me an award or even just the work that I need to survive. The stuff you see and touch - that does it.

Without a doubt, I can absolutely find the good in these shitty years, and not in a bypass-y, good-vibes-only-way. There is a part of me that is truly grateful for these times I didn't make ‘it’. These years where I am not making much at all. Because how can I see and accept myself for me, if I don’t have everything taken away? Without validation, without outwardly success I am gently brutally forced by life to separate my worth from my work and from achievements. Who am I without any of those things? Without the medals? Without the applause? Without the confetti and bows? How would I know that if I didn't have this season? I get it, I get it, thanks life.

I am successful in all the ways that truly matter if you are a human being - and in none of the ways that matter in our capitalist society.
I know I sound miserable here, but can you hold more than one thing with me? If you know me, you know I am in love with life. And also, right now, I don’t like mine in particular.

I feel peace.

And I feel lost too.

I feel like floating driftwood going down an incredibly boring river. With no aim, direction or willpower, just thrown around by what is happening around it, not able to take action. I am too exhausted to fight the current I just want to surrender to it and drift. Scratch that, I don’t want to but it’s the only thing I can do right now.

My inside and outside realities grotesquely co-exist but they don’t match.

Just ten years ago I felt like I could conquer the world. I had energy. Even five years ago, right after leaving my marriage, I was full of hope. I thought this is it! This is my big moment! Life is only getting started and it will get better and better from here! After all, I did the thing, right? The brave, big, difficult and scary thing? Doesn’t life reward the brave of heart?

Where the fuck is my reward?

I didn’t get a reward, not a visible one. At this moment in time I cannot even see a future, let alone my place in the world. Do I keep being a photographer? Do I give up now? What will I do instead? I love being a photographer. I have ideas, but which is the right one? It's not like I have so many decades to experiment with new jobs. Do I retrain? How will I fund that? Do I try submitting my book again? Do I keep going as is, having the odd shoot here and there, just getting by? I cannot see a path in front of me, can’t see what’s next or if there even has to be a ‘next’.

My life is moving forward. I guess. Does it matter if it doesn’t produce anything big? Not for a lack of courage but a lack of energy? A lack of seeing?

Shedding is my most familiar feeling. I know how to do this, I always have. The zealous role model Christian, the international wedding photographer and Photography educator, the good wife. I burned all of these down.

After 38 years of shedding and re-inventing, after a lifetime of being brave because I always believed in something bigger, in ‘more’ - I am wondering: Was it all for nothing? Was all that courage worth it? What the fuck did I do all of this for?

Because I can’t see anything big ahead. I can’t even see anything small, anything at all to be honest. I just see days. Plodding along. One day after the next day. Many days, doing not much. I side-eye my journal of ideas and plans with a frown … the film I want to make, the exhibitions I want to have, the books on my hard-drive I want to publish… I can’t. I tried. I tried as much as my energy let me. My bones are filled with lead, dragging me to the floor. I am a tired loser.

I know that this flatlining is largely a trauma reaction. I have done so much work to release a lifetime of wounds. I am and will keep doing it. But will it be enough to get me moving again? Are the seeds I have planted just taking exceptionally long to sprout? Or is this empty Duracell bunny just the new me now?

The ‘I-left-my-husband-healed-in-six-months-build-a-six-figure-business-found-my-soulmate’-pipeline is one I only see Youtube influencers do. Why is their “healing” so fast? Am I missing something? Why does my life look worse now, at least to the outside spectator? Why does it make no sense at all?

While I have learned that realistically, some transformations can take years, I am still not ok with the fact that everyone else’s life seems to be moving up while mine is stuck like dirty old gum to a shoe. This is so hard to write because I am not ok with my failure. I am not over here celebrating it because Instagram Bro said failure is just a lesson.

I also know (in theory) that much of my dilemma is a direct result of living under capitalism. The desire to ‘grow’, to achieve, gain more and gather more capital or recognition and achievements is not one I was born with.
Gathering more than you need, having abundance instead of enough, taking more than is necessary is a western coloniser mindset, is it not? It’s not our natural state.

Indigenous thinking, which we have lost in this part of the world, goes more like this:

“Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.”
Braiding sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Maybe having only what you need is the right way to live? Maybe that is peace? Maybe wanting more and big and something exciting to happen is not my own desire, maybe it’s the result of lifelong indoctrination? Would I want more if I wasn’t living where I do? If I didn’t read the books I read and consume the things I do? Maybe I am not stuck, maybe me feeling stuck is an illusion because Capitalism wants me to do more, have more, be abundant, be great, be fantastic, find my purpose, WORK!!!

The list of what I have done since 2019 is a mess. I look at the list of who I have become since then and I know it’s a beautiful list. I know it’s a masterpiece, a true achievement. And yet, I am deeply disappointed too. I am not in love with my visible failure (yet). I even feel somewhat disgusted by it. But why? Where is that disgust coming from? Who taught me that not fulfilling certain metrics makes me a loser?

What if my life flatlining maybe is just a call back to the origins? To let my identity be that of a human being who is simply experiencing life in its fullness, scariness, boredom, wonder, joy, emptiness, grief, true love and ridiculousness.
Why the fuck does it need to be more than that? I do not have the energy for more, I don’t know if I ever will.

I don’t know if anything exciting and ‘big’ in the way society, fairytales, movies and TikTok have taught us, is going to happen for me again. I am certainly not chasing it, so in some completely unrealistic, obscure dumb luck moment it will have to find me I guess.
But I am trying to make peace with not having an upward moving line, simply a forward moving one.

When did visible success become synonymous for a successful life? Rather than a successful career I desire a successful life. What does this mean? This question brings me back to my earlier one: So, what did I do all of this for? I have been moving this around in my heart, tossing and turning the question mark.

Was I brave in the hopes of some ‘reward’, some visible outcome? Something I could show off like “See! This is what happens when you’re brave! Everything gets better! Go forth!” Of course I wanted the visible reward. But that wasn’t the source of my courage. I did what I did because I could not live a lie anymore. I didn’t know or care back then what came after. I just knew that what was, wasn’t me, was ill-fitting.

I was brave because I had to be in integrity.

And then, my visible life became a mess, while my invisible life started to heal. It still is. It always will be. Will the two ever reconcile?

What if this is all there is? What if I am not stuck nor waiting, what if this is right? If this is it, I remember that I chose this because it was my truth.

This is right not because it is easy or because it looks good, but because I chose me, I chose truth instead of lies. I used to be a success according to others - but it felt like loosing. Maybe I am a loser now, but I am an honest one. I am a success by my own standards and that’s got to mean something.