Finding Purpose

I am trying to get back into photography. It was such a passion for me for so long. I would go out during the golden hour--I especially loved dusk--to photograph flowers and foliage. If I had been in possession of the funds, I would have spent perhaps tens of thousands on gear.

Life intrudes, as it often does. Financial failure, family pressure, deaths and sickness. It stripped my pleasure from me. I am now pathologically incapable of focusing on something that does not enhance my personal brand or provide the possibility of direct financial gain. This hasn't been entirely bad. My desire for engagement has lead me to write many excellent answers on Quora as I try to give others, who perhaps suffer as I have suffered, with guidance on the path that I have found. For today I have money, and more than most. I stumbled onto a rich road hidden between trees.

I was once able to find satisfaction in producing something and giving it to the world. But now, with fear such a dominating part of my psyche, those flickers of creation are so quickly snuffed out. I miss them. I remember them. I hate how the amazing focus and ability that these difficult years has given me cannot be easily applied to my past passions. I yearn for a time when I could spend hours at an art desk.

It is perhaps best that I couldn't find it. Because now I find myself feeling tingles of creative energy that have no end but my own satisfaction. But with the habits years behind me, I have nearly forgotten how to do it. I can go through the motions but no satisfaction is found. I feel that I must rebuild the emotional and psychological engines anew.

There is no purpose to this post. I only wanted to say that. I only wanted to say that life hammered away at me, and destroyed everything but the ember, from which a new fire must be nurtured. I'm angry that a new fire must be created. I'm angry that the world is so uncaring. I'm happy that I found purpose in helping others find the path I walked, but am angry that this purpose has nothing to do with me.