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The Terrible Creative is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative humans trying to stay honest in a world that rewards pretending
Okay, so in this episode, I'm gonna let you in on some Fore family lore. That's what my last name is, 'Fore' in case you don't know. I know, insert golf joke here.
So last year, I had some time on my hands and I started to dig into my family history. To be honest, I knew absolutely NOTHING, zero about the family on my dad's side. I couldn't even remember my grandfather's name. I know, judge me all you want. He died before I was born. And that side of the family weren't close to us, we were typical mid-western family where people didn't talk about a lot of stuff.
But I digress.
So in my research, I counted the generations in my family.
Colonial period.
Revolution.
Civil War.
Three hundred years.
Jamestown. Virginia. Colonial laborers.
And next to every name—every single one—there's an occupation listed.
Metal Worker.
Laborer.
Farmer.
Tradesman.
Metalworker.
Laborer.
Laborer.
Laborer.
Multiple generations. Survived the colonial period. Survived the Jamestown massacre even. The Revolution. The Civil War.
And not one of them—not one—ever owned anything that lasted.
[BEAT]
So my last name used to be Fauer. F-A-U-E-R.
Germanic. Probably meant fire. Or forge. Or someone who worked metal.
Someone who stood near heat all day. Someone who hammered steel for twelve hours straight, making things they would never use, for people who would never know their name.
In 1726, my great-great-great grandparents, Jean Pierre Faure and his wife Ann, had a kid. They named him John.
And John was the first Fore in the family.
He was born in the British colony of Virginia.
A place that ran on tobacco and hierarchy.
Where land meant power, and most people didn't have enough of it.
My family were legally free, but economically pinned.
Farmers or tradesmen. Probably tied to tobacco, because everyone was.
Tobacco wasn't just a crop. It was money. It was credit. It was leverage.
Leaves hanging in barns, curing slowly, the air thick and sour. Fingers stained. Backs bent. Seasons ruled by weather and debt.
They likely worked marginal land. The kind that floods too easily or dries out too fast.
Not the wide, clean fields you see in paintings.
The scraps.
Life would have been repetitive and narrow.
Early mornings. Hard soil. Tools repaired instead of replaced.
Shoes worn thin. Food simple and the same every week.
You didn't plan ten years ahead. You planned through winter.
They were always one bad season from owing someone something.
When Jean Pierre stood before a clerk to register his son's birth, the man on the other side of the desk heard "Fore" instead of "Fauer."
And Jean Pierre didn't correct him.
Maybe he didn't know how. Or maybe, when you've spent your life as a line in someone else's ledger, you realize your name doesn't actually belong to you anyway.
The ink dried. The "u" was gone. The fire was out.
And for the next three hundred years, the spelling changed, but the pattern didn't.
And now I'm Patrick Fore.
Not Patrick Fauer.
And you know what's poetic about that?
The spelling changed.
The pattern didn't.
[MUSIC SHIFTS: Something more personal, wounded]
My name is Patrick Fore, and this is The Terrible Photographer—honest conversations about creativity, identity, and discovering your voice.
Today is Episode 45. I'm calling it " ."
Three words: Rivers. Patterns. Control.
If this is your first episode, welcome. Feel free to jump around—they're in no particular order. And as always, you can email me anytime. Questions, thoughts, rage at ancestors you've never met—I respond to everything. Email's in the show notes.
[MUSIC FADES]
After the Civil War, my family moved to Missouri.
This wasn't random like I thought it was when I first started to dig into this stuff.
My family benefited from something called the "Soldiers' Homestead Act." Basically the government said: We don't have money for veterans. But we have land.
Explicitly designed to reward service and populate frontier states.
Missouri was perfect for this.
It was a border state. Huge tracts of available land. Railroads expanding. Counties being formed and reorganized. Land offices actively advertising to veterans.
It wasn't the frontier. It wasn't the establishment. It was the middle.
Just right for exhausted working-class families who wanted land and quiet.
So they took it.
Not because they were opportunists.
Because it was the only asset offered to people without connections.
[PAUSE]
Here's what nobody tells you about the Homestead Act:
Land without capital is just more labor.
You get a plot. You clear the trees. You farm it. You survive.
But you don't build. You don't accumulate wealth. You don't have the leverage to hire help or expand.
You're just farming your own plot instead of someone else's.
It's the same system, just with different scenery.
And they stayed there. For generations.
Productive. Useful. Essential.
But never owners.
Still laborers.
Still in the system.
Just with different scenery.
[BEAT]
Three hundred years my family has been in America.
Pre-Revolution. Colonial. Foundational.
And they never broke out.
Not because they just got here.
Not because they were figuring it out.
Not because they didn't work hard.
Because the system was designed to keep them exactly where they were.
Productive. Useful. Essential.
But never owners.
[MUSIC: Building, frustrated]
And here's the part I'm ashamed to admit:
I'm fucking angry at them.
At dead people I never met. At ancestors who lived 300 years ago.
I'm pissed that NONE of them tried. That none of them looked at the pattern and said: Fuck this. I'm doing something different.
That they just... took what was offered. Accepted it. Floated.
And now I have to be the one to break it.
[PAUSE]
Which is insane. And unfair. And confusing.
Because they were just surviving. They didn't have the privilege to risk. They took the land because it was the only thing offered.
And I DO have privilege. I can try. I can risk. I won't starve if I fail.
Which means I'm lucky.
Which means I'm responsible.
Which makes me MORE angry.
[BEAT]
How can something 300 years ago—people I never met, in circumstances I can't imagine—still control me in the here and now?
How can I be angry at people who had no choice?
How can I have empathy for them AND resent them at the same time?
I don't know.
It's complicated. It's messy.
And I don't have it figured out.
[MUSIC FADES]
So. 2026.
Everyone's doing the thing. New year, new me. Fresh start. This is the year everything changes.
And I'm sitting here thinking about lazy rivers.
[PAUSE]
You know those lazy rivers at water parks? Or maybe you've done one of those tube rides in rivers where a bunch of people connect their tubes together and float down a river while drinking cheap beer and getting sun burned.
If you've ever done something like that, you know how it works. You get in a tube, you lay back and then the current just... takes you. Around and around. You're not swimming. You're not steering. You're just floating.
Comfortable enough. Safe from drowning. But zero control over where you're going.
That's most people's lives.
And there are different categories of people in this river.
Some people were born with boats.
Not tubes. Boats. Nice ones. Engine. Mini bar. GPS. Leather seats. The river isn't something they're trapped in—it's a playground. They can go anywhere, stop anywhere, pull over and buy the land next to the river if they want.
They were born into families with capital, connections, businesses. Generational wealth. The kind of safety net that lets you take risks without risking everything.
Some people are just swimming.
No tube at all. They're in the water, trying to keep their head above the surface. Exhausted. Desperate. They'd kill for a tube. They'd kill for the stability most of us take for granted.
And then there's the tubes.
That's where most people are. Including my family. For three hundred years.
You're floating. Comfortable enough. Not drowning. Not struggling in any dramatic way.
But you're not steering either.
You're just... going wherever the river takes you.
[MUSIC: Restless]
And here's what I realized looking at that family tree:
My family has been in tubes for 300 years.
Not because they were stupid. Not because they didn't work hard.
Because it never occurred to them there was another option.
Everyone they knew was in a tube. Their parents were in tubes. Their neighbors were in tubes. The whole country was floating together, going wherever the river took them.
So they never questioned it.
They never looked around and thought: Wait. Where IS this river going? Could I get out? Could I build something?
They just... floated.
And died.
And their kids got in tubes.
And floated.
And died.
For 300 years.
[BEAT]
Six months ago, my brother Brian called me.
My older brother. The MIT PhD. Cybersecurity expert. The guy who breaks web applications for Fortune 500 companies for a living. Brilliant. On paper, the smartest person in most rooms.
His company was being sold. He might lose his job.
And he called me—the college dropout photographer who's constantly worried about making rent—for advice.
He wanted to know: How do you freelance?
Not the technical work. He's got that. He can break any system you put in front of him.
But:
How do you find clients?
How do you price yourself?
Do you need an LLC?
What's a retainer?
How does health insurance work when you're self-employed?
Basic stuff. Fundamental stuff.
And I'm sitting there, trying to help, and the whole time I'm thinking:
If HE can't figure this out... I'm fucked.
Because here's my brother. PhD from one of the best engineering schools in the world. Decades of elite-level work. Successful by every conventional metric.
And he has no idea how to work for himself.
Not because he's not smart enough. He clearly is.
Because it never occurred to him—to any of us—that people like us could own things instead of work for people who do.
[PAUSE]
He's in a tube.
I'm in a tube.
My dad was in a tube.
Three hundred years of Fauers and Fores. All in tubes.
Smart people. Hardworking people. Some of them educated.
All floating.
Never building anything that lasted. Never owning anything. Never even realizing there were other options.
Not because they couldn't.
Because no one ever told them they could.
[MUSIC SHIFTS: Darker, more frustrated]
I keep running into versions of the same guy.
Different names. Same shape.
I'll call this one Marcus.
Wedding photographer.
Ten-plus years in. Always booked.
The kind of photographer other photographers describe as "solid."
Not flashy. Not desperate.
Reliable. Predictable. Safe.
He's not scrambling.
He's not failing.
And that's the problem.
The work is fine.
Technically excellent. Clean timelines. Happy couples.
He delivers exactly what he promises.
And he's miserable.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just this low-grade exhaustion that never quite lifts.
Marcus didn't grow up dreaming about work.
He didn't rebel against anything.
His dad worked. That was just… the weather.
Plumber. Electrician. Something like that.
Showed up when people called.
Fixed the problem.
Came home tired and quiet.
Marcus never looked at that life and thought, I'm not doing that.
It never even occurred to him to think about it at all.
So he picked up a camera.
Not to escape the pattern.
Just to do something he was good at.
And now he shows up when people call.
Executes their vision.
Smiles when they push back on price.
Delivers the product.
Waits to get paid.
He's not broke.
He's not drowning.
He's just… inside something he didn't choose.
We were sitting together after a wedding once.
End of the night. Empty venue. Chairs stacked.
He was scrolling invoices on his phone.
And he said, almost casually,
"I thought being creative would mean more freedom."
He laughed when he said it.
Like the sentence surprised him.
That was the moment.
Not an epiphany.
Not a breakdown.
Just a hairline crack.
He hasn't quit.
He hasn't changed anything.
He just flinches now when the phone rings.
Same role.
Different tools.
Still trading skill for stability.
Still working inside someone else's frame.
Still floating.
Not because he chose it.
Because no one ever told him there was another option.
[MUSIC FADES]
Here's what nobody tells you about fresh starts:
They don't exist.
January 1st isn't magic. It's just Wednesday with better marketing.
You're bringing the same brain, the same history, the same family patterns into 2026 that you had in 2025.
The calendar flipping doesn't erase 300 years of conditioning. Doesn't rewrite "we work for other people."
And here's the thing that's been keeping me up at night:
I hate the tube.
I hate floating. I hate not having control. I hate feeling like I'm just going wherever the current takes me.
I'm bad at it. My brain doesn't work that way. ADHD, neurodivergence, whatever you want to call it—the stability everyone else finds in the tube, I don't feel it. I just feel... trapped.
I want a boat.
I want to build something. Own something. Control where I'm going.
But I don't know how to get a boat.
No one in my family ever built one. No one ever taught me how.
And I'm terrified that if I get out of the tube, I'll just fall in and become a swimmer and drown.
[PAUSE]
Because that's the real fear, right?
It's not just "I don't know how to build a boat."
It's: "What if I try and fail and lose the stability I have?"
The tube is boring. The tube is soul-crushing. The tube is not built for how my brain works.
But at least I'm not drowning.
At least I have something.
So I'm paralyzed.
Can't stay. Can't leave. Can't even imagine what getting out would look like.
[MUSIC: Building, determined but uncertain]
Here's what I keep thinking about:
My daughter is watching.
Lucy. She's creative. She's smart. She's got ADHD like me. She thinks differently. She sees the world in ways other kids don't.
And right now, she's learning from me what's possible.
If I stay in the tube—if I float my whole life, comfortable but never building anything—she learns that's what Fores do.
We work for other people.
We float.
We don't own things.
We don't build things.
That's just how it works.
And then her kids learn the same thing.
And their kids.
Forever.
Not suffering. Not drowning.
Just... floating.
Never even realizing there was another option.
[BEAT]
Three hundred years. That's how long the pattern has been running.
Three hundred years of survival. Of taking what's offered. Of floating.
And I'm the first one angry enough—or privileged enough—or stupid enough—to try to break it.
[PAUSE]
So here's what I figured out in 2025.
The worst year of my life. Financially terrifying. Emotionally exhausting. Constantly worried about money, about my daughter, about whether I'm failing at everything that matters.
And somehow—somehow—I did my best work.
Launched this podcast. Finished the book. Had the most honest creative conversations of my life.
Not because I transcended the struggle.
Because I finally stopped trying to be anything other than what I am.
I'm a laborer.
Fauer. Fore. Doesn't matter. Three hundred years of laborers made me.
But here's what changed:
I'm choosing what I labor for.
The podcast? Labor. Hours of research, writing, recording, editing.
The book? Labor. Months of drafting, revising, doubting.
The commercial work? Labor. Always has been.
But I'm not laboring for their dreams anymore.
I'm laboring to build a boat.
I don't know if it'll work. I don't know if I'll drown trying.
But I know this:
Someone has to be first.
Someone has to look at 300 years of tubes and say: Fuck this. I'm getting out.
Even if I don't know how to swim.
Even if no one taught me how to build boats.
Even if everyone in my family stayed in tubes and told me that's just how it works.
Maybe I fail.
Maybe I drown.
Maybe I just tread water for the rest of my life.
But at least I got out.
At least when my daughter asks me, "Dad, did you try?"
I can say yes.
I can say: I saw the river. I got out. I tried to build something.
Even if no one taught me how.
[MUSIC SWELLS]
So here's my question for you:
Are you in a tube?
Comfortable enough. Going wherever the river takes you.
Do you even know you're IN a tube?
Or do you think this is just... life?
Did your family teach you about boats? Or did they just teach you to float better?
Are you staying because you CHOSE it?
Or because you're terrified of what happens if you get out?
[PAUSE]
Three hundred years my family floated.
They weren't failures. They worked hard. They survived.
But none of them ever built anything that lasted.
Not because they couldn't.
Because the story didn't exist.
That conditioning doesn't disappear because you got educated or got a creative job.
It's deep. It's invisible.
Until you see it.
[MUSIC BEGINS TO FADE]
I don't have answers.
I'm in the middle of this fight myself.
I'm angry at people who had no choice. I'm grateful for privilege they never had.
I don't know if I'll build a boat.
But I know this:
You can't make a conscious choice until you SEE the system.
Most people never see it.
They float their whole lives.
Never building anything.
Never owning anything.
So. 2026.
I'm not telling you to get out.
I'm just asking:
Do you see the river?
[MUSIC OUT]
[THE LIGHT LEAK]
If you're starting this year feeling trapped between staying comfortable and risking everything, like you're the first person in your family trying to build something:
You're not alone.
You can be angry at your ancestors AND empathetic.
You can recognize your privilege AND still feel the weight.
It's complicated.
But at least make it a conscious choice.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah—stay terrible.