In his book Meditations for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman talks about the writer Sasha Chaplin. In his twenties, Chaplin dreamed of being a celebrated novelist, much like David Foster Wallace. But upon coming up against his limitations, he realized that this wasn't possible. And instead of seeing this as a defeat, he found it liberating.

Why would this be liberating?

Because now Chaplin was free to be the writer he actually could be, instead of living under the weight of the perfectionism that he had put on himself. He calls this a sacred state in which you are "playing in the ruins."

Burkeman continues quoting Chaplin:

"You're not seeing the landscape around you as something that needs to transform. You're just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I'm not telling myself constant lies about what it's going to be one day?"

It's too easy to compare myself to others. I have invested too much time into doing this, thinking that the conditions of my life needed to be different in order for me to achieve some kind of creative success. That if I just had this or that, then I would become what I supposed be, or produce the work that I was supposed to produce.

But all of this has just left me feeling paralyzed.

So the question that Chaplin poses "What is actually here?" is question that can put you in touch with your reality, and not someone else's. Or even what you've created in your head. You're looking at the material of your life and asking "How can I work from here?" It puts you in the very place you're in, forcing you to think about the ground on which you stand. The neighborhood in which you live. The people that you interact with on a day-to-day basis. Your interests. The things that pull you.

For me, I've had to come to terms with my situation and not see it as something that's inhibiting me. I spend my days working a job that’s requires me to sit at a desk. And despite my occasional restlessness, it’s a good job. I realize that I don't have an extended amount of time to always write or to go out and make photographs. My life is asking me of something else now, and I'm okay with the limitations that I'm working in.

Limitations are apart of life.

But this doesn't mean I can't do anything from here. Maryilnne Robison has said that "we aren't drifting through the world, the world is revealing itself to us.” And as the world reveals itself to me within my life and my set of limitations, I'm free now to write the things that I want and to make the photographs that I love.