First it was no maps and Just Moments but there’s a silence that’s louder than noise, the kind that creeps in when the city quiets, the inbox slows, and the pressure to produce dissolves for just a moment. I’ve come to love that silence. Not just as a pause, but as a place. A place where I begin again.

They call it stillness but it’s not passive, lazy or lost but sacred. Stillness, I’ve learned, is where my best work comes from and not just the work that ends up on a camera roll or in a blog post. I mean the deeper work. The kind that happens in the spaces no one sees. I used to think creativity lived in motion, in the rush of inspiration, in the grind and hustle but more and more, I’ve found it in quieter things, a long walk without a destination, watching steam curl out of a paper cup, waiting for the sun to move just right across someone’s face before I click the shutter. Photography, too, is an art of waiting. Of stillness, listening before you shoot.

Then there’s the journey, the part they don’t give you a manual for cause I didn’t take the safest path and maybe you didn’t either. There’s no GPS for leaving your 9-5, or for trying to build something from scratch with nothing but your hands, your eye and instinct, no signposts for days that feel like failure. There’s no map for building a creative life in a city that keeps moving while you’re still figuring things out and what I’ve come to understand is this, getting lost has brought me closer to myself. Every wrong turn, slow month, awkward pitch or missed opportunity, has shown me something about who I am, what I value, what I’m willing to stand for. This life, the one without maps, without perfect timing, without a 10-step plan, has asked me to pay attention and in paying attention, I’ve arrived in places I never could have planned for and I begin today, between stillness and the unknown, slow mornings and the restless nights, art and survival, becoming and being. No maps, just moments. I trust they’ll take me somewhere honest.

“no sign posts for days that feel like failure ”

— Jamie

Seventeen days ago, I left my 9-5. I had it all figured out or at least I thought I did. A carefully lined up remote job to cover rent and bills. A severance package that would handle my visa for two years. Enough cushion to breathe and dream to build something I could call my own and for once, everything felt like it was falling into place. So I took the risk doubled down and bought a new lens, a 1.2, the kind you don’t just buy but bet on and I was ready to create, to capture, to live fully in the story I’ve been trying to tell through images and on my last day, the vibes were everything you’d want them to be, nostalgic, grateful, warm. People clapped. I smiled. It felt like a beginning. Until it didn’t.

That very night, everything slipped through my fingers. My phone. My camera with that new shiny 1.2 56mm lens, my wallet with IDs, cards, everything tied to my name and access. Gone. Just like that. I woke up the next morning not to the start of my new creative chapter but to a slow motion nightmare. No way to reach clients. No camera to shoot with. No documents to even prove I existed. It took sixteen days to rebuild the basics, a new phone, new IDs, a thread back to my finances and every one of those days felt like a crawl through sand. Long, exhausting and lonely. It really felt like someone hit pause on the movie just when the music was getting good. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This wasn’t the story I had in mind when I said I was ready to walk the creative path but maybe that’s what a journey without maps really means. No guarantee or detour signs but Just a dark road and your breath to keep you company there’s something uniquely cruel about the universe testing your faith immediately after you’ve declared it and it feels like it’s asking, “Did you really mean it?” “Are you sure this is the road you want?” and the moment you say yes, the ground doesn’t applaud. It disappears and I honestly don’t know what happens next. I’m still trying to find the new rhythm. Still sitting in the rubble of a plan that collapsed before I could even begin but I’ll keep going slowly and it’s not because I know what’s ahead, but because turning back feels like a worse betrayal than falling forward and if this is what it means to live without a map then I guess i’m ready to explore and get lost along the way. It’s not just romantic metaphors or poetic detours. It’s real life and it’s brutal.

And I can only hope that one day, when I look back, this moment will make sense. That all this breaking was just a clearing for something I couldn’t see yet.

I’ve made a note for myself that i’ll look at every time i’m in despair.

And Still, I Stay even though this journey didn’t begin the way I imagined, it wasn’t a clean break from the 9-5 or a quiet, steady glide into a creative life but a storm, a test. A stripping away. Seventeen days ago, I left everything familiar behind and I had a plan until that plan disappeared in the space of a text message and a single night of loss. My camera and lens. My lifelines and what followed wasn’t inspiring but just a survival mode. Sixteen long days without access to my own money. No tools or a way to create, Just silence, the kind that suffocates and teaches and In that silence, I’ve met myself, not the curated version but the raw one, the scared me, the one that made mistakes, the one who still wants this badly enough to stay because stillness isn’t always beautiful, it’s brutal and relentless, holding up a mirror and asking you questions you can’t avoid. But it has also given me something back, clarity and resilience which is proof that even when everything is stripped away, you’re still you. How about the journey? well there’s still no map and only moments and lessons and footsteps made in faith.

So I continue not because I know where I’m going,

but because I know who I’m becoming.

And for that… I stay.

The Fall, The Fire, and the Faith to Stay.

THE ART OF WAITING.