I took the image some time ago at the equestrian base in Shumen town, Bulgaria. Early morning. The rising sun makes the manure heaps steam and veil the background. The sports horses need some walking done.
Behind the 80 or so seconds on the parkour track, and eventually, another 40 or so seconds finals, there are months of work in preparation. Morning after morning. Manure pitching, hair grooming, dust washing, medical care, training, training, and training. Wait. Training happens briefly each day so that you do't screw up the horsie's feelings. I mean...tendons, or joints, or muscles...anything.
If you think a racing horse is an asset, wait until they send you the bills. The carrot fees, let's call them. Few horses win races. Fewer still win big enough races to pay for themselves. Many are trained and paid for by enthusiasts. For the love of it.
My position as a freelance photographer is similar. As in that Picasso example @tarazkp told about in This cool post of his, each single image that I had rewarded between...let's convert it into HIVE as it would cost right now...between 200 and 10 000 Hive, took more than a single click. It took my whole experience up to that point. The hundreds of thousands of clicks that made that particular click possible. The millions of steps that brought my ass to the precise spot at the precise moment. If we were to measure carrying weights around in kilos per second...kps, how cool is that...you get the idea.
Luck?
It was always a matter of chance, too. Also, recognizing the chance provided, taking the chance by making an effort, but more importantly, in the spirit of what I am raving about here,
Creating thousands upon thousands of chances so that this one chance would work.
Then waiting a couple more years until the chance for proper application of that lucky shot arises.
Yeah, in my experience there was a madam who said something like "oh, you're charging this much, it should be easy for you to make a living working only four times this much in a month..."
I was charging five times less than what I should have at that point. I didn't know it. I thought I was charging half of what I should. But I knew that the work was not only on those hypothetical four occasions per month but also on all the days between those hypothetical occasions.
On a certain occasion, I also had a reward worth something like 2 000 Hive for 9 words. The precise 9 words for the occasion. It only took me transferring what I learned for a couple of days at the university into practice. But those couple of days at the Uni could not have existed in vacuum. They were part of my six-years-of-studying plan.
The smart thing to do for me is to work for the love of it and when it comes to finances — look for a way out of the red ocean*. By becoming an investor, for instance. I had a taste of it on a very small scale and I am turning it into my goal to increase the scale.
It was either W. Buffet, or Rock-a-fella who said something like:
I prefer making 1% of 100 people's efforts than making 100% of my own efforts.
(Citing from memory, so please, do correct me on this one if I was wrong.)
Can you see how 100 % of your own is both riskier and takes up all of your time? My present opinion, at least.
Peace!
Manol