I saw a billboard today from a job that I didn’t get.

It was going to be a pretty big gig for me. It would’ve been a great boost to my biz in terms of exposure, money, and inroads into the ad agency that produced it.

But I didn’t get the project.

When I saw the billboard it was as if I had had the wind knocked out of me. A feeling of failure and envy crept through my mind and under my skin. It was bad timing, too. I was on my way to show my portfolio to another agency for the first time. This wasn’t the best time to have my confidence pulled out from under me, either by my own thoughts or the sight of the billboard itself.

I arrived at the agency a little early so I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes trying to get my shit back together. After a while I started to get past the self-defeating thoughts and focus on mundane or non-photography things like deleting old voicemails and text messages from my mobile phone. Anything to get my mind off of that billboard.

A few minutes passed and it was time to go in, composed and confident. From that point on things only got better.

The portfolio review went really well. They had great things to say about my work. We made plans to collaborate on an in-house project. We talked about life in Charlotte as compared to other cities we’ve lived in. In all it was positive, promising, and a perfect contrast to the events of just an hour before.

This path I’ve chosen has some drastic ups and down. In the short time that I’ve been at this full-on I’ve heard more “no’s” than I ever care to hear and have had more emails and voicemails ignored than I ever thought possible.

However, I’ve also heard more comments along the lines of “your work is really great” than ever before and have had more people trust me with my vision and their money than I ever dreamed would.

It brings to my mind a couple of lines from a tune by The Hold Steady called “Massive Nights” (taken totally out of context from the song but perfect in their isolation for this example): “We had some massive highs / we had some crushing lows.”

As my skin get thicker and tougher the lows are less crushing. Likewise, the highs get better and better. The bonus is, especially after today’s experience, that the turnaround time from low to high is getting shorter.