It Takes Two (Tries)

I’ve famously tried a ton of hobbies, I mean, a ton.  I’ve also famously quit almost everything I’ve ever tried. I have a theory about that.

I've tried poetry, prose, rollerblading, skateboarding, soccer, ultimate frisbee, track and field, product photography, drifting, YouTube gaming videos, Professional eSports, and probably 600 other things, but I've only kept on doing like one or two things consistently.  Some of that is because I got old and gross and lost the ability to continue doing the more athletic things (granted I could've just elected to stay in shape, but Apple Pie is more fun).  But most of it is because I tried and failed, once.  And, especially if I tried for a couple years or so, and still failed, it became exceedingly difficult to try again.  But something I have learned from things like Automotive Photography, my debilitating Keyboard hobby, or even just writing.  It takes a failure or two before you know you're really into it.  Whether or not that means you failed and got right back up to try again, or if you failed and took a decade off.  There's a much higher chance that you're going to get super into it, super good at it, or at least just develop a love for it that you didn't have the first go-around.  There's gotta be some sort of pysch 102 study on this, but I never got past 101.  And of course this may not have anything to do with the human race, but instead is just some weird quirk of mine, but I feel like I can't be the only one that thinks this way.

In 2011, I started Photography classes at my local high school, my main interest at the time was skateboarding, I was vining for my shots to be in some Thrasher or Transworld magazines (something a friend of mine is actually living right now!  Still super proud of you Corey!). So I had no real interest in photographing anything other than that.  I started with that, and started to find a bit of a groove but ultimately I started to move into photographing cars.  I did the car thing for a little bit, but I found that Miatas are only so interesting.  So by 2015 or so, I was out of it entirely.  I think I was still shooting a bit of skateboarding, and still just using my camera to take pictures of things I was doing at the time, but eventually I saw someone with a DJI Ronin (the first one) at a car show and thought - "Well, obviously I have to start doing that". Inspired by the likes of H20 videos from Krispy, I bought myself my first Sony (A Sony A7s), and a used DJI Ronin-M from a friend (wish I still had that thing, who would've known DJI would transition into single hand gimbals and kinda ruin it for me until way later).  I messed with video from 2014-2017ish, but I slowly got bored of just shooting stationary cars, or the occasional moving car with no real substance other than "Style".  I decided that I maybe was “just a photographer” because I wasn’t able to make videos as exciting as those I looked up to. But now I wanted to get rid of my Canon and fully root myself in the sony world.  Which is ironic because in order to do that, I had to sell my only Sony... but hey, I was falling for the Sony hype I guess.  At this point I sold my Canon 5D and my Sony A7s to buy a Sony A9, I was going to go all into Automotive photography, and that meant getting a camera that could shoot so fast I wouldn't be able to keep up!  That was my second try at Automotive photography and I've been doing it ever since, somehow actually making a little bit of a name for myself and finding my work in places I never thought I would.  And of course, it's something I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.  See, it takes two tries.  Funnily enough as of late this would happen with video as well.  A year ago or so I picked up a Sony FX3 and I've been (slowly) filming interview sections and event coverage since, again, something I don't really see myself quitting.

But okay, those are hobbies/jobs, whatever.  Failing at something like that but keeping an interest in it enough to try it again isn't necessarily super rare.  A lot of that stuff is monetarily prohibitive too, so it's not like when I was 17 I could've purchased a bunch of cameras and started my "professional" photography career very easily.  But what about simpler stuff, stuff that doesn't necessarily take a lot of skill to learn, but just some interest?  Something like being an audiophile?  Yep, tried that.  Bought myself some really nice headphones, and never really felt that they were actually worth it.  Sold them shortly after.  But as of late, I've found myself getting really into surround sound and I've converted my entire living room to middle level surround audio with Dolby Atmos, and I'm... loving it.  Took me two tries.  When COVID hit, I needed an outlet that I could do alone, in the safety of my own room; this became Keyboards.  Something that I almost fell in love with immediately, buying well over $1000 worth of keyboards and keyboard paraphernalia in a short period of time.  I ended up getting screwed by a company that still has over $750 of my hard earned moola, and that kind of took me out of it.  But when a friend showed interest in typing speed and some fancy keyboard stuff,  I decided that I should build a keyboard out of the case I had laying around with nothing in it.  A bunch of keycaps, stabilizers, PCBs, lube, and even a custom Laser Etcher machine, and I find myself having a full relapse back into the world of custom keyboards.  It feels brand new and interesting again, and again... I don't really see myself jumping out this time, since I know a lot more about what I'm going into.

That brings me to WHY I think it takes two tries to fully decide that you love a hobby/job/experience (even person probably).  The first time you try something, you know nothing about it, you might have learned up on it a little bit online, but you don't REALLY know anything about it.  Whether or not we know it, that makes it stressful, and daunting, and with stress I think we're much more likely to quit something instead of knowing how to steer clear of that stress, or at least knowing it's temporary.  So I guess, long story short, if you used to do something, and you kinda wish you did it again, or you're doing something now and you feel like you might want to quit.  It's okay, just know that it might take two (tries).

Photo of Yellow Miata is a photo from 2015, shortly before I “quit” for the first time