Want Some Advice--Photographic and Otherwise?

My images can be found here.

Do you want to be a better photographer?  In fact, do you want to have a better life?  Read on, my friend.  The doctor is in and I have a prescription for you!

How many times have you heard that stress is bad for you?  Stress can kill you.  Stress is not only bad psychologically, but it can do physical damage to you and, if you experience enough stress over your lifetime, it can shorten your life and even kill you. 

To be a better photographer and have a better life, my advice is to avoid stress.  That's easy to say, but how do you do that?

First, strive for mediocrity.  Do everything you can to be mediocre.  Striving for excellence is nonsense.  Excellence is overrated.  If you try to do your best, if you try to become the best photographer in the world and make amazing images, you just put yourself under a whole lot of unnecessary stress.  If you are mediocre, then you are in middle of the pack, about where most others are and you will not stand out in the crowd.  Not standing out in the crowd is also a way to avoid stress.  The better you do, the more people expect of you.  What do you get in return?  More stress.  Stop trying to do well.  Just kick back and stick to mediocrity and be stress free.  You won't regret it.

Second, education is a dead end street.  You go to school far too long in your life, you or your folks spend lots and lots of money on college and you may even go on to get a graduate education.  What do you get?  First, more stress as your parents, spouse or you put a lot of stress on you since it costs tons of money to go through school.  Then your health starts failing.  When you finally get out of school, not only may you not get a job in your chosen field of study, but you may not be able to get a job, period!  What does that get you?  More stress and more health problems.  Then your parents or your spouse get all over your case because you aren't doing anything with your life and all that money and time was spent on your education and you start to feel like a failure.  Lots of stress.  Avoid education if you can.  Save your money and your time.  After all, you only have so much time on this earth.  The earlier you drop out, the better off you will be.  You don't even need to know how to read, write or add/subtract/multiple or divide anymore.  With smartphones, it can do everything by voice command.  You already know how to talk so there is no reason to get an education to learn how to do that other stuff when you can talk into your smartphone.  You can even take pictures with your smartphone so skip the photography workshops too.  There are plenty of jobs out there flipping burgers or cleaning cheap motel rooms where you don't need to waste your time with education.  If you want to be a photographer, then take pictures of how you can perfectly make a bed or fry a burger.  You will thank me.

Third, staying in shape is difficult.  It is against human nature.  My advice is not to even try.  Why stay in shape?  It costs you time, effort, money and, who knows, you may even injure yourself trying to stay in shape.  Worrying about staying in shape can stress you out.  Don't do it!  If you are in shape, you have nothing to work towards.  If you are out of shape, you get to make plans for your future and how you will be getting into shape.  Why wreck your future?  Why spoil your plans by already being in shape.  Stay out of shape, make plans one day to get into shape and save your money that you would have spent on expensive tennis shoes and gym memberships.  Go out and have a great meal, drink some adult beverages, enjoy the friendship of your friends, walk around and make some images and make those plans to get into shape--one day.  You will thank me.

Fourth, eating the right foods seems like it is a good thing to do but it is not.  Kind of like getting into shape, eating right will cause you to be close to your ideal BMI.  Here you go again.  Ideal BMI's sound too much like being in shape.  If you eat right your blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, lipids and other blood chemistry will be good.  What do you have to work toward if everything is good?  Nothing.  If you have nothing for which to work, you will get bored and unsatisfied with your life.  You may even fall into a depression and think about doing bad things to yourself.  My advice is to be fat, eat all the wrong foods and sit around a lot enjoying your meals.  Eating junk and talking photography is much more satisfying than eating healthy.  It makes you happy and your stress level goes down!  Like working out, you now have something other than photography to discuss with your friends, you can look forward to developing an eating regimen to get you healthy and you can map your future.  If you always eat well, you have nothing to work towards.  Don't do it.  Eat as much crap as you can.  You have decades to plan to eat well.  No use in doing it now.  Why use up your valuable limited time on the planet doing something stupid like eating well. You will thank me for it.

Fifth, get your teeth pulled before you are 21 and save yourself a lifetime of trouble.  It is much easier to deal with false teeth than real ones.  False teeth don't rot, they don't need brushed or cleaned and they last a lifetime.  Besides, you can keep them in your pocket if necessary.  Save yourself the stress, worry, money, time and aggravation of having real teeth.  You will thank me for it.

Oh!  One more thing...    If you follow this advice, well, rest in peace my friend as I suspect you won't be around on this earth much longer.  If you have taken me seriously, then I'm afraid you should be in a home somewhere where you can't do harm to yourself and not have access to an Internet connection!

I used to give this advice when my children were young.  We all got a kick out of it, but they got the point.  I hope you do also.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook


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