maybe you were meant to read this…
No, you didn’t miss a page. This is the beginning. And I’m glad you’re here.
When I say “do it,” I’m intentionally vague. Because whatever just popped into your head — the thing that made you pause for half a second and think, maybe I was meant to read this — that’s the thing I’m talking about. The business. The leap. The question. The risk. The version of yourself you keep circling but haven’t stepped into yet.
There was a time when I needed someone to tell me to do it, too.
I was in my last year of college when the COVID-19 pandemic made internships in my field nearly impossible to land. I knew I wanted to work in creative strategy and storytelling, but every job listing asked for experience I couldn’t get without being given a chance first. I didn’t have the internship. I didn’t have the finished degree yet. I had ambition, anxiety, and a growing fear that no one was going to open the door for me.
I spent a lot of time wondering if anyone would give me permission to start.
And then I realized something uncomfortable and freeing at the same time:
anyone could be me.
Those people didn’t look like me, and they weren’t photographers, so how was I supposed to step in shoes that weren’t designed for my feet?
There are opportunities sitting inside every person reading this. To start the business. To pop the question. To pivot careers. To embrace the parts of yourself you’ve been taught to quiet. We all say we’re waiting for opportunity, but when it shows up, doubt convinces us we’re not ready, not qualified, or not the exception. For me, the lie was that building a photography business in college was unrealistic. That turning it into a full-time career was reserved for tech billionaires and once-in-a-generation success stories. That creative work wasn’t “stable enough” to bet on myself.
But here’s what actually happened.
From 2022 to 2024, I worked two jobs while building Black Pepper Photography on the side. I photographed weddings on weekends, edited late at night, learned marketing, contracts, lighting, and people management in real time. In 2024, I quit my full-time job to pursue photography fully. Today, I’ve photographed over 100 weddings, worked across Virginia and Washington, DC, and built a growing team of wedding professionals who share the same values of care, intention, and storytelling.
I didn’t become an exception. I became my own anyone.
There were three steps that helped me get here — and they’re available to you, too.
The first step is to imagine. Not casually. Persistently. Be just as committed to imagining the best-case scenario as you are to spiraling through the worst-case one. There is no such thing as false hope, only false assumptions. When you let your imagination run the full spectrum, you realize that failure is only one outcome among many, not the default ending.
The second step is to imagine on paper. Write it down. Search it. Ask the questions you’ve labeled as “dumb” and stop apologizing for not knowing yet. If you can scroll on your phone for thirty minutes, you can research something for five. The world opens up when you actually engage with it instead of assuming the answers are out of reach.
The third step is to build the paper airplane.
Write the plan. Fold the idea. Execute before you feel fully ready. Let it fly. Learn from people who have done it before you, borrow their framework, and then adapt it to fit your own life. There are multiple paths to the same destination — theirs doesn’t invalidate yours.
I originally wrote this when weddings really took off for me - in April 2023. That was a blog about possibility. Now I rewrite with the living proof of “doing it.”
Be your own “anyone.”
Build the airplane.
Channel your inner Nike or Shia LaBeouf.
Do it.