Central Texas Wine Harvest. Early morning start.
I've given up listening to advice about the 'inevitable' winding down of a career on the account of age. My clients don't seem to notice. The gear still works. Both photographic and human. And it's really nice to work with people who are willing to pay well for what you like to do.
Everyone tells me that if I retire I can spend my days doing whatever I want. Hmmm. What would that look like? I could get up early and go to swim practice! But I already do that. I could pick and choose the projects I'd like to work on! But I already do that. I'd be master of my own schedule.....and if you don't think I already do that you don't know me well...
Last month I did three jobs. Or assignments. One was to take portraits of advertising people against a white background and then drop them into a nice, believable composite with various industrial backgrounds I'd also photographed. The portraits took the better part of a Monday morning. The industrial scapes took a "mixed" day which I describe as a choppy salad of photographing mostly when the mood struck me but almost always while out for a walk with a camera and lens. You know, something I regularly do without the crutch of an assignment. The post processing took a day. The payoff matches or exceeds our domestic "burn rate" for a month.
The second assignment, also for a local advertising agency was a bit of a rush job for an art director with whom I've worked for over thirty years. We met at a seafood wholesaler and photographed various arrangements of fresh gulf jumbo shrimp on crushed ice. We were in and out of the location in three hours time. There was a bit of post production in the afternoon and the payoff was somewhat about having fun goofing around with my friend, but also a quick payment that would easily finance another (contraindicated) used Leica CL.
The third assignment was a half day spent photographing attorneys in front of a white background in a comfy, large conference room at the Four Seasons Hotel. After the photo selections were made I also composited each image with a corporate looking background. I spent two days doing post production. The payoff is another month and a half of burn rate for the domestic operation we call "home life."
If you have the ability to meet your financial obligations by working three or four days a month I would have to say that 'official' retirement really wouldn't gain me a meaningful amount of spare time or time to play. I think I have that pretty well wired right now.
When I finish a project I always have the thought that, because of the markets, or the recession, or the plague, or my age, or something, this will be the last time I ever get booked. The last email from a client. The last phone call. The last request for a bid. It's sheer paranoia but there it is.
And so I delivered my "last" two jobs on Monday and sent out bills to the clients on Tuesday. And then I steeled myself for the eventuality that this was it. The gray hair (white, actually) would serve as work repellent and age-ism would take care of the rest. I'd never work again. Never be able to justify buying new cameras based on actual mission critical need. My work life would be over and I'd resign myself to an attempted relevance by volunteering for something. Anything.
It's horrifying being an extrovert and needing to have frequent (and fun) human contact.
But then, after a rousing swim practice in hot water, surrounded by long term aquatic friends I came home to make coffee and read my email. And there it was.... a booking to photograph a doctor on Monday. Then a second email from the same very large medical practice letting me know that they had eight other doctors who needed to be photographed in the studio this month. The doctors would each be getting in touch to set up individual appointments.
No negotiations. No wrangling over details. No requests for budget reductions. Just solid, fun portrait work on my own home turf --- with me making the schedules. Yay. Something fun to do.
On Monday I'm going to try pressing that odd assemblage of the Sigma fp and the 35-135mm Zeiss lens into service. It's probably a really bad idea and I should just default to the easy solution and use the Leica SL2 and a portrait lens. But there it is. It's really the play that makes all this fun.
For now the biggest task in front of me between now and Monday is to clean and straighten. Clean and file. Clean and set up lighting. Not a bad way to spend another couple of days in the Texas oven.
11 comments:
The key word, Kirk, is not "retirement," but "semi-retirement." I think you've managed to thread that needle very nicely. There's no reason to not continue until either the calls and emails stop coming or you begin to feel differently.
Continue to do whatever makes you happy in life. Retirement is really a bad word for how we live out our lives. I would use the word Enjoyment.
You may have "self-actualized" while you weren't paying attention. The top of the pyramid is swimming, coffee and taking photos. Who knew?
Writers, jazz musicians, photographers, and many more- practice your craft until you can't type, hold up the instrument or camera. The saying is do what you love and you won't have to work a day in your life.
Kirk, I could never see you in the future where you have to say that you can't purchase a piece of gear because you're living on a fixed income! ;-) Seems to me that you've figured out the perfect amount of work required to satisfy your occasional GAS.
Sounds like you have retirement figured out. I'm not too far away now, about four years. Teaching is different in that it comes with a rather significant emotional drain. By the end of the school year, I'm toast. I know I could teach and do it well for another decade at least but I won't. I'm figuring out what my retirement will look like and I'll be ready when the time comes.
Barring an untimely death we're all going to "retire" from work at some point. I think the thing I'm bent on discovering is how to have the most fun with it. In my mind staying somehow relevant to my friends and family, and to myself, are the most important goals. I'm not concerned about health or money. I can't control the economy and I can't dodge every malady that comes down the pike. The secret, I think, is to enjoy everything in the moment... and to relax.
Karmagroovy, Life without at least the potential to buy new gear seems bleak. I'll have to have a discussion with our wealth manager to make sure my spending doesn't falter.
crsantin, my older brother was a Latin and Greek teacher in public and private schools right up until early last year. He loved teaching the kids, hated grappling with the administration and hated even more having to "embrace" each generation of "labor saving" computer apps foisted on him by the schools.
He inherited some money last year and finally, at age 67, decided to retire from the classroom. He's pretty happy. He's made renovating a big, century old house into his full time project. He's also working on getting his exercise quotient up and his blood pressure down. He seems happy and almost carefree. But with three adult children one is never really totally carefree.
My younger sister taught for many, many years. Mostly as an English teacher in under served high schools. She developed a scary cancer five years ago and has been successful in battling it into remission even though having this same type of cancer was considered to be a death sentence a decade ago. She also retired and is now a volunteer reading tutor who does her service online.
Both had rich careers in teaching and both have told me that there is a certain feeling of freedom in leaving it. But both of them miss the interaction with their brighter students.
I'm finding the idea of retirement more difficult than the logistics of it. But my smarter friends assure me that it's a process. I'm okay with that as long as I get to keep making photographs.
B. has handled her departure from the workplace with much more elan and gusto. At least I have a good, in house role model....
So a couple of days ago, my wife and I masked up and risked going to a near-empty movie theater to see "Top Gun Maverick." We were both somewhat disappointed by the movie, but this isn't a movie review, so...At one point, the "Iceman" who is now commander of the Pacific Fleet tells Maverick, who is an aging Captain, that he has to "let go" of himself as a fighter pilot. Maverick says he can't. Being a fighter pilot, he says, isn't "who I am, it's what I am." In other works, who you are is something you make yourself. It's optional. You can make yourself into something else. What you are is something you can't escape; it's like what nature made. My sister has a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, with color illustrations, that belonged to my father. Inside the covers are my first attempts to write, just a bunch of letters and scribbles, that I wrote in there before I went to kindergarten. I dread it in some ways, but I know I'll be writing until I drop dead, because that's what I am. It's not optional.
Well said, and well thought out. Great comments. I particularly liked the "it's not what I do, it's what I am" comment. That's it.
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