Cormac McCarthy died yesterday at the age of 89. According to Wikipedia, McCarthy is "widely regarded as one of the greatest modern American writers".

What I didn't know about him is that after 26 years of writing, none of McCarthy's novels "had sold more than 5,000 hardcover copies". He was labelled the "best unknown novelist in America".

He spent half of his long writing career as a mostly unknown writer. Success did eventually come to McCarthy, though, and only then his early work was appreciated the way it deserved.

The arts, and that includes photography, are not a meritocracy: good work, even outstanding work, is not a guarantee of success.

Another lesson we can take from his example and many similar others is that success is a lagging indicator. The same goes for failure, by the way.

We do not become what we are today overnight; it's only after weeks, months, years, decades, of hard work (or the lack of) that we achieve results (or not). It took McCarthy 26 years of dedication, of not giving up, to get significant recognition.

At the same time, in order to survive for that long, we should not make that kind of success our end goal. Would you be able to yearn for public recognition for a quarter of a century and still find the strength to keep going? I know I would not, I would've given up.

It's only when we find joy in what we do, and when we set our own definition of success, what that looks like for us, that we have a chance to succeed. And even if that never comes, at least we have poured our souls into our work and shared it with whoever was there to listen to us.