“What the hell am I doing?” I said to myself as I sat alone in my van. I was dirty, tired, stressed, out of money and almost out of hope. “Is this worth it?”
I had been alone for seventeen days, living in a Wal-Mart parking lot in the rain. I had spent my last bit of credit on the $6 per gallon cost of fuel to get to British Columbia, banking on getting to shoot with a few hotshot adventure athletes. They had a different plan, and I no longer had any way to remove myself from this situation and move on. Even if I did, where would I go?
Six months earlier I was relaxing on the couch in my mountain-top loft after a great day of snowboarding. I had regular income, a community of friends and a bathroom. I had a life. I had given all of that up to chase a dream and live a life in photographs, stories and my own meaning. I had given up a comfortable existence for one of uncertainty, risk, and inevitable discomfort and strife. It was a bold move.
The investment in myself was paying dividends that I wasn’t sure my psyche could handle. My van had become my ticket to freedom and fulfillment as well as my own prison. It was in this moment, within the confines of El Guapo’s muted gray interior, that I knew I was beginning to lose it.
Self-doubt is one of the nastiest, most underhanded beasts one can ever encounter. It can break anyone, and it was doing it’s worst with me. I’m not sure there is any way to describe the feeling of utter desperation, loneliness and failure. It might be one of those things you just have to experience.
It was in that same moment of downward spiraling misery that I also had my own burst of clarity. Confidence and believing in myself, no matter how difficult the task, is what got me in that position in the first place. Surely it would get me out. It would have to. In fact, it was the only thing that could.