Hey everyone,

We often believe that for a real transformation to happen in our lives, it needs to be a seismic event—a dramatic change, a giant leap, a sudden breakthrough. We wait for the perfect moment or the grand solution, and in the meantime, we can feel stuck, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the mountain we want to climb.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because my own work has been teaching me the opposite is true.

I was recently struggling with a persistent technical problem in my photography. I was convinced I needed a major, expensive upgrade to fix it. But after some quiet tinkering, I found that three tiny, inexpensive mods—costing less than $20 total—improved things. The relief was immense, not because I saw progress, but because it reminded me that the path forward is often not a giant leap, but a series of small, gentle corrections.

I shared the story of these tiny fixes in a video here, if you’re curious.

This lesson has been echoing in other areas of my life, too. I've been looking back at my older creative work, and my first instinct is sometimes to cringe. But I'm learning to look with kindness instead. I'm trying to see that past version of myself not as flawed, but as someone who was doing the best he could with the tools he had.

Healing and growth aren't about erasing who we were; they're about integrating our past with compassion, and taking one small step to be better today. For me, that small step is simply trying to make the first 30 seconds of my new videos a little better than the last.

This is the quiet, unseen work. It’s happening as I slowly build my website and figure out how to offer prints of my art to you. It’s not glamorous. It’s a slow, steady process of chipping away at a big dream. It’s the foundational work that no one else sees, but which makes all the difference.

I wanted to share this because I know how heavy the pressure for a "big breakthrough" can feel. I just wanted to offer a gentle reminder, for you and for me: healing isn't a race. Growth isn't a single event. It is the sum of a thousand small, brave choices.

It is the decision to make one tiny adjustment. The courage to look at your past with a little more grace. The patience to trust the slow, quiet work. That is where the real transformation happens.

Hit reply and send me your thoughts... I'm waiting to hear from you,

With warmth,
Karl