There are so many new ways of becoming distracted, so many new products and forms of education bidding for your time.  In Photography all you have to do is look at the plethora of YouTube tutorials to easily lose yourself for days or weeks.  Than there is the pay training, the DVDs, forums, Internet classes, seminars, workshops, covering every niche of this industry.

How many different ways to retouch a face, an eye, a mouth.  Painting a photograph in Photoshop or Painter, lighting, posing, composition, business, marketing, one could easily spend a lifetime with the choices available right now.

New products, better, cheaper, making your existing equipment obsolete in months and not years.

Thousands of con-artists coming out of the closet telling you they are making big dollars on some new promotion, concept, idea, scheme. Everyone searching for your dollar, giving false promises in return.

When I think of breaking chains these are the chains I think of breaking.

When the dust settles very little has changed, photography is still between a photographer and their customer all the rest is just noise.  Expensive noise in both time and money.

I know exactly the style of photography I wish to pursue, I know exactly which mentors I wish to pursue, I know exactly the direction and route, now if I can somehow turn off the noise.  :)