That's Enough.

Balancing Ambition with Discipline and Knowing the Difference Between Goals and Greed.

In my last MONOLOGUE essay, I addressed how photography is a special medium because it’s confined by limitations: time, natural conditions, and serendipity. We do have Photoshop and AI to edit a photograph after the fact, but the essence of the camera’s capture is immutable, fixed forever in an unrepeatable past. In a time of on-demand, bespoke living, with photography, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset” (It’s a preschool mantra, but life is often best ascertained through a child’s eyes).

Photography, like all arts and mediums, is a discipline. And, a “discipline” is defined as the ability to work and behave in a controlled way. Discipline implies a sense of humility and self-awareness. It’s knowing just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And even if you can’t, that’s okay… It’s enough.

Enough. A word on the endangered species list. An idea with no purpose or place in an insatiable world.

Because, it’s never enough! Endless-scrolling doesn’t just apply to the Internet these days. We want infinite dating options, more cash, new stuff to buy. And the more we’re given, the more ravenous our appetite grows. There’s no better time to be a glutton, to engorge yourself on media, information, and pleasure.

Yet, there’s a flipside to this runaway avarice. We’re never satisfied. Our expectations are unmet. Life feels less dazzling around the edges. When I was a child, we had 13 television channels and I loved and miss those programs. Today, we have millions of channels and there’s nothing good on TV.

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Our lives and careers are also never enough(!). When I entered the workforce, I endless-scrolled the future ahead of me. It wasn’t just about money, it was about ego, glory, and domination. In the late 2000s and into the 2010s, entrepreneurial “hustle” culture was wrapped around this notion that not only was anything possible, EVERYTHING was possible. The Hundreds was catalyzed by this school of thought. We weren’t just a T-shirt brand, we made clothing. We didn’t stop at apparel, we started a footwear line.

The Hundreds became a media brand, centered around my blog. With time, we had fifty contributors worldwide. Like Vice and Buzzfeed, it wasn’t enough (!) to just have one voice. We needed an army of reporters on the frontlines of global culture. We created an eyewear brand, we built four flagship stores, we eventually founded a food festival.

Even within those projects, it was never enough(!). The brand needed to output more product, more designs, and those designs were never quite finished. Everything could use a tune-up, nothing was ever complete. It drove staff mad. Some of my strongest talent were unable or unwilling to keep up with the demands. It’s like hiking an unknown trail and promising to take a break at the next rest stop — but beyond every bend, the path unfurls forever. There is no destination, only more embarkations and inceptions.

After twenty years of barreling down this path, I started to question when it would be enough. More importantly: Could I be successful with enough? Could I be happy with enough?

Listen, I’m nowhere close to being done and my dreams runneth over. But, I’m starting to understand the difference between goals and greed. Am I willing to accept that, within the limitations of time and age, money, geography, social position, ability and network, there are specific opportunities best crafted for me and where I’m at in my life? Can I swallow the fact that sometimes, there are ceilings? And am I discerning enough to know that these constraints can actually work to my advantage?

Caps aren’t always handicaps…

Along my blind and passionate trajectory, suppose I was to take a turn a mile back. Perhaps I was meant to stop and water the garden at the last fork. Maybe my destination was 25 bloggers instead of 50, footwear instead of eyewear. I’d been so fixated on reaching a hypothetical finish line (see vintage Nike advertisement: “There is no finish line.”), that I neglected the empty gas tank and blinking maintenance light.

Greed is ambition’s dark twin. Only one is harnessed with discipline. Like photography, ambition — fitted with guardrails — can take a dreamer far. Greed, left unshackled, can lead to burnout, creative frustration, and unfulfillment. Greed is like cancer. It takes more than it needs, without purpose or reason. Ambition, meanwhile, aims for what it wants and little else.

In building a brand / a career / a life, it’s best to identify your boundaries and work between them. It’s knowing when is enough, that which makes financial sense, what is logistically feasible and healthy, but also what is sustainable. I still believe in dreaming beyond borders, but I also think that if you shoot for the moon, you’ll fall amidst the stars. And compared with a cold and desolate rock that you’ll never reach, the warmth of a starry bed is much preferred…

One of my favorite Souls of Mischief rap lyrics is, “Emcees should know their limitations.” We tend to think that limitations restrict freedom, art, and creativity. But my experience has been the opposite: boundaries are liberating. Freelancers know how paralyzing it can be when the client offers no direction, only carte blanche to imagine haphazardly. If the client stipulates the rules, however, then it’s much clearer to know how to play the game, how to devise strategies within those parameters, and eventually win.

Life isn’t a canvas in the sense where you can paint over your mistakes or wipe the slate clean. Life is a photograph where the circumstances fall short of ideal and the results are absolute. However, within the flawed photo, there is beauty in finality. It is humbling to relinquish control of the work to limitations. It is freeing to accept the outcome. There is a magic in letting chance and kismet fill the cracks where your diligence and ambition left off. Let’s do the best we can with what we got, and if we can be happy with the image that develops, then that is more than enough.