At Famous Dave's earlier this week, I waited on two men who were on their way home to Huntsville, Alabama, making the last few miles on a Harley trip/caravan that began in Milwaukee. I don't remember how, but school came up, and I told them I was going to school in Chicago and that my ultimate goal was to make a living doing photography. The one on the right smiled politely and wished me luck, and the guy on the left just stared at me. I smiled, because I thought I knew what was coming. "Can I ask you something? Why in the HELL would you want to do that?" It's hard, obviously, to portray via internet, but as serious as his question was, his tone of voice was not menacing or offending at all. Long story short, I spent most of their meal doing what I hadn't had to do in months- convince someone that I can do this. Convince someone that I am doing this. They were nice, southern gentlemen (ha), and at the end of the meal, I gave them both my Flickr url. After having said all that I could, I told them that I wanted them to decide for themselves if I was wasting my time, or if what I was doing was going somewhere. Since, there's been a few extra views on the pictures that have been sitting on my website for a while, and I can only hope it's the Harley guys from Huntsville who told me I would "make a great computer engineer."

This is what it's all about. Convince people, friends, family, neighbors, competitors, strangers, that you're going to do what you say you're going to do. Make them believe in you, even if they want to think you're crazy.