what's the rush?

One of the major things I'm working on right now is learning to slow down. I have this natural tendency to rush through everything, almost blindly, and just steamroll over everything I do as quick as I can. I'm thinking maybe that's not the best plan.

Here's an example. A couple of weeks ago, Jay (my editor) talked to the whole editorial staff (well, everyone who shoots photos, which is about 4 people, including him) about how we need to take better photos. He specified that he wasn't talking about action photos (I'm actually pretty good at those, as are Gus and Bryan). He was referring to artsy photos. You know, ones with mirror reflections and close-ups on people's tears and size illusions, etc., etc. Yeah, I will admit that I have zero ideas when it comes to those. I'm still getting the hang of proportions and lighting and camera settings in normal photos, let alone trying to do something creative. I want to learn though. It's just not easy for me. But I also need to learn how to really work on things I'm not naturally good at anyway.

So, how this is related to my need to slow down is that it never seems to occur to me to take my time and try out an artsy photo when I'm in the moment shooting. For instance, today, I was shooting photos of this really old historic house that's being renovated. I got plenty of shots of the house being painted and all that, but it didn't occur to me till I was driving back to the office that I probably could have tried something unusual. In my defense, the house was so torn up that it might not have been possible anyway. But the point here is that I didn't even think about it until it was too late. I'll have to try my hand at the artsy stuff tomorrow when I shoot marching band practice.

On a similar note, I have really been trying to be the best I can be at work. Yesterday, Jay was out so I didn't have him to turn to or ask questions. I got a lot done actually, and I was proud of myself. But here's an example of how I thought I was being really good and proactive and I totally didn't even think of everything. I got an email from the assistant superintendent about how the district ratings are in. She had done a nice write-up, and all I really had to do was edit it. But it didn't have any quotes, so I called her and asked her a couple of questions. The reason this was proactive of me was that no one asked me to do it. I took it upon myself. So I turned in the story. Well, today, Jay asked me to talk to the superintendent herself about it to add to it even more. I had thought about that yesterday, but the superintendent is brand new. She wasn't even here last year, so she had nothing to do with those ratings. Jay brought up that it would be interesting to get her perspective BECAUSE she's new and we could ask about her plans to improve (I did ask that question to the assistant). Well, that was a good point. So I called and asked for her but she's out till Thursday. Our paper, and this story, comes out on Wednesday. Good job, Sarah.

And, more than that, two of my bosses today asked me if I had found out about ratings for the other two districts in our county (which are both tiny). I hadn't, but only because I thought that we had already gotten them and those stories had run a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, that was something else.

So the moral of this story is that if I think things through a little further, maybe I can avoid some of these stupid mistakes. I know I'm still learning, and I have come lightyears from when I started already, and I've only been here 3 1/2 months. I just hate it when I try so hard to do a good job, my best even, and I still mess up or leave something out.

And really, what's the rush? It's not like school, where the sooner you got done, the sooner you could be free. This is life. It doesn't stop.