for me, it’s always important to understand the why behind the what. i can’t endorse something unless it’s part of a larger scheme. if i am playing a video game i need to be recording it and turning it into a youtube series. if i’m taking photos, it’s about building the portfolio or the client base. if i’m writing a novel, it’s part of a series. i’m kind of all or nothing in my approach.
as i sink into this omnichannel mode, i am starting to realize that i need to be more disciplined. i haven’t made much progress on the novel since the first week of january after i hit a point where i need to introduce more characters and am trying to figure out who they should be. i came up with a possible scenario to give them shape, but i rolled it back after realizing that it kind of blows the load a bit early on some of the elements that i want to trickle in piece by piece as the story unfolds. back to the drawing board. and i really find myself wishing i had an actual drawing board to scribble this stuff out on sometimes. i need to look on amazon and see how much a whiteboard is and just get one. write it out, take a picture, erase, start again. take the stock henry approach.
on the photo front, i think i’ve found my rhythm, and i’ve pretty much abandoned my efforts to solicit customers on thumbtack because i’m getting organic inquiries and bookings at this point that are sustaining me. i’m only one gig away from paying off every penny that i’ve invested into my photo gear and online presence. one gig away from being able to buy that drone and maybe even start looking at a mirrorless camera body. from investing in nd and polarizer filters—absolute must-haves for my upcoming travel to europe in april and australasia in june through august. i haven’t really talked about that here, so that will be fodder for posts to come, but the exciting news is that the logistics for europe are 100% booked and australasia is about 75% booked with only two local connecting flights and about a week of hotels and buses left to lock in. we still have some tours and attractions to book for both trips, but essentially we’ll be able to do both of these without dipping into savings and that is huge. especially since as far as we know, i might not have a job when we get back.
i’ve been soft-offered a position at a pr firm that would be a pretty good move from a financial standpoint, and that will hopefully be what i end up doing since we are really focused on investing in a multi-family home sometime in 2020 as part of our retirement plan. depending on how that job pans out, i may find myself with less time for photography and fiction writing, but i’m willing to make that sacrifice for the short-term in order to secure financing and start building equity. once that process is settled out, i plan to take a step back from working for others full time so that i can dedicate more time to writing and photography and build income my own way. of course all of these will depend on how the economy shakes out.
this is a bit of a ramble, but i need to lay all this out. i need to put it on the board so that i can start really organizing this into a salient process and make it happen. i’ve been lucky enough to ascend through journalism purely based on recruiters calling me up for better and better jobs at opportune times, but from here on out i’m going to have to be a lot more proactive when it comes to taking charge of my career path. we only get one life, and i want mine to be mine.