I don’t know what I expected, but the new job, new as in less than a year old, is much like all my other jobs. I am good at the job, not that taking portraits is exactly rocket science, but it does take a bit of practice to get it right. I am fast and have a bit of fun and I am making more money than I have ever made before. And yet, that doesn’t really matter as much as I had hoped it would. Before enlightenment, fetch wood and carry water-after enlightenment, fetch wood and carry water. I still want more, that is the trouble. I am just a small cog in large and meaningless machine that cranks out church directories. So what would I like to do?
Ah that’s the rub.
I would like to be a travel writer. Or a Hollywood photographer. Or do Voice Over work. Or travel the country and sell my fine art prints at arts and craft shows for a year or two. Or roam around China, or Russia, or Europe for a while.
It is possible that two or three of these could be combined into a cohesive whole, but it is still a bit unlikely. There is that whole Catch-22 thing, where you have to work for a living so you can’t do what you want to do for a living. It’s really just a case of nerves at this point. I could write something and send it off, what is the worst that would happen? A form rejection, or maybe a nasty note from an editor with nothing better to do. Then I could get started on the whole Literary Life and start sending everyone a sweet note saying how bracing it was for them to reject me.
Work, as with all work, is full of petty and unimportant things. Photography has been good to me, but not great. I like to travel and it has taken me around the country. So that my main gripe now is that I am not traveling around the country, though to be honest I don’t even do much of anything when I do go to semi-interesting places now. If I can just spend a year or two paying off my debt maybe I can then think about more options.
I guess I will always have too many irons and not enough fire. But life is still good for the most part. It’s the lessor parts that tend to bother me.
