Alright. Here goes.

One of the great missions in my life is trying to understand the forces that pull me in one way or another. On the ground, the forces are so huge they seem invisible. Then something happens that causes me to look back at my past that I see them, like a man cresting a bare mountain peak only to turn around and look over the great range he crossed under the cover of trees. Everything makes sense.

"There is the that bog that dragged me down. There is the campsite where I met a friend. There is the road where I went into the city. There is the mountain I worked so hard to climb, and there is the beautiful waterfall I saw near the top."

The good, the bad, the unexplainable; it’s all laid out so well when you just turn around and look. It all just fits.

I turn around a lot these days. I forget sometimes that the past is made up of the present, and that it slips eventually into the future. Time marches on like the strokes of a paint brush, each day a coat of fresh pigment, drying and becoming the fading past in the blink of an eye.

The strokes seem random and outrageous until you hold them away from you. Then the content materializes. The colors compliment one another. The pattern unfolds and both fascinates and terrifies you all at once in it's completeness.

What is difficult is understanding where the artist is going with the work, what it will finally look like when it is finished, and more ominously 'when' will it be finished. The forces of creativity and the concept of the future are one, and they can be totally frustrating or liberating depending on your faith in the artist.

That’s what it takes to live in the present: Faith, a belief in the future. That’s why I wasn’t frightened by my decision in the summer of 2005 to drop everything and fly to a distant corner of the earth, to live in a strange land, in a strange job, with strange people speaking a strange language. I had faith. That was why I wasn't afraid to walk 2,176 miles through hungry-bear-infested woods.

I believed in the creative power of doing something different. I closed my eyes as I applied the paint to my canvas and trusted that the stroke would compliment the others that came before it, and it did. Korea was a beautiful stroke, a learning experience, a place where I grew in a positve way. It was hard, really hard, at times, but I stuck with it because I knew deep inside that I was on the right path.

When I returned back in October, I jumped into starting my business. I felt like that was the logical next step in my life. I'm a good photographer. There is lots of demand for photography in Atlanta. Everything has been going alright, but at the same time, things haven't. I find that I keep looking back, like a man who thinks he might be lost. I spend hours reading this blog, smiling, laughing, crying, wondering why I can't put it down and I can't add to it.

I work on my business, but there is no force behind my work. Like a loaf of bread with no yeast, I work and work and work and the bread doesn't rise. I don't seem to have my heart in the work, and my mind is always full of doubt. I am a person who, once his heart is behind something, becomes unstoppable, irresistable, consumed by the task at hand. When it comes to the photography business, I feel consumed only by doubt.

I'd like to share a story with you from 2003 when I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. I think it will illustrate how I feel right now.

The Appalachian Trail is managed by thirteen or so 'trail clubs,' with thousands of volunteers who maintain it year after year. It moves my heart to think about all of those people giving their time, money and sweat to maintain a simple footpath. This spring I plan on joining their ranks, but that's not where I'm going with this. Every year those clubs decide that a certain section of trail has had too much traffic and the trail needs to be re-routed for a few years so the old section can 'heal.'

Some of these re-routes were so new that they hadn't made it into the maps (mine were four years old) or guidebooks. The old, well-worn and muddy rut of the old trail would wind off in one direction and the new path with it's blinding white blazes and freshly cleared underbrush would stretch off in the other. There was usually a sign indicating that the trail had been re-routed. Sometimes, due to weather, forgetfulness or vandals, the aforementioned sign would go missing and many a hiker would simply cruise right on past the intersection and keep following the old rut.

I did this a lot, sign or no sign. Lost in thought and not paying attention, I'd innocently follow my happy feet down a former section of trail. Sometimes I'd have no idea that I had taken the unofficial route until it re-connected with the new trail sometime later. I'd come to an intersection (not expecting one), look dumbly at my map, scratch my head, realize what I did, shrug, and keep walking.

One time, I gave myself an awful scare. To doubly make sure no one followed the old trail, the trail crews would paint over the south-facing blazes with dark brown enamel. North-bound hikers would see that there were no white blazes and thus take the new route. However, many of these trail crews would neglect to paint over the North-facing blazes, thinking there was no way a northbound hiker would miss the sign indicating the detour.

One time (I think I was in Virginia) I was walking along and noticed there were no white blazes on the trees. Confused, I looked behind me, and lo! There were white blazes! I thought I was on the right path and I kept walking, but the lack of blazes on the south side of the trees bothered me. Was I going the right way? Did I miss something? Maybe the blazes were old and faded. If indeed I am on the right path, why are there no blazes? It took me almost a mile of walking in confusion before I realized the ruse innocently played on me by the trail maintainers. I hustled back to the intersection, cursing.

That feeling of not going the right way, of looking for signs of affirmation and seeing none, that's the feeling that's been eating me since late December.

I believe that every human is endowed with 'blazes,' internal truths that guide them through life. Angels, the Soul, God, whatever you want to call it, I believe they are part of every person on this planet. Some people listen to them, others ignore them. I believe that when you listen to them, success and happiness follow; and when you ignore or repress them, misery, doubt and failure become your companions (read "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho).

So what has kept me going if all this time I've felt that I've been walking in the wrong direction? What have been the North-facing blazes that have confused and misguided me? Well, for starters, I am a talented photographer, and when I was in Korea, I felt that I should give that a chance to grow and blossom once I got back to Atlanta. I felt that I couldn't be anything else. My parents were going to support me with housing and a car. I thought that was to be my career, my life path. I was stubborn, and that has paid dividends of uncertainty. This dogged adherence to a former dream has kept me asleep to reality.

I've tried fighting it. I bought $9000 in equipment in an effort to force myself to keep going, which has now ended up simply making me feel trapped. I justified my misery by banking on my future. "Don't worry, Stephen. You'll get rich and then you'll have all the time in the world to do what you really want," I tell myself. There is something really insidious about that statement, if you think about it.

So what do I want to do?

The greatest thing about realizing that you may be walking down the wrong path is that the right path is usually very close at hand. In my case, it was in my face every day I breathed the Korean air: teaching.

Make no mistake, teaching in Korea was hard. I lived in a dump. I had few friends. In the classroom, I got no supplies save a chalk board, thirty screaming children who didn't speak English six to eight times a day, and daily xenophobic torment from my superiors. Still, something about it felt right. The days when I came to school and did a great job, I got an equally great reward: A feeling that I was doing something worthy and additive to the common good. And when I left at the end of my contract, the children proved those feelings contained a modicum of truth with their letters, flowers and tears.

My roommate and I would laugh and talk for hours about our students, our successes and our failures. We still do.

Teaching appealled to me in many ways. It harnessed my creativity, my caring nature and my love of people. For these same reasons, photojournalism appeals to me. Even writing about it now, I am energized and excited. I look forward to my chess classes every week, and I am beginning to get a handle on the discipline issues that plagued me in Korea (speaking the same language helps a lot).

This morning I had another existential conniption and got really depressed. I consider these little depressing fits something of an alarm ringing in my head, like the guy on the Titanic yelling, "Iceburg right ahead!" Could I just be a lazy asshole who doesn't want to put in the work needed to start a business? No, that's not me. When my heart is behind something, I'm like a juggernaut. Nothing stands in my way. Aspects of my personality appear that I didn't know existed. I become excited, resolute, unflappable.

Booking a swim meet just doesn't ellicit these feelings. The thought of harrassing another editor for a morsel of an assignment doesn't, either. Barnstorming bridal shops is not me at all. I am beginning to realize that I may be the photographer, but I'm not the businessman. In this market, you can't have one without the other.

But every week, my uncle Steve's secretary tells me that, "As much as we'd like to give another coach the chance to teach at Mt. Carmel, the parent coordinator says she wants Stephen Jones and no one else."

If that isn't a south-facing blaze, than I don't know what is.

--Notes