Catching a ride to the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
The irony of "motoring" across the Pedestrian Bridge.
Life is always interesting. When you are working in the middle of your career you feel like you are too busy to even breathe. A bit later you feel like you are just calling it in. I guess I could go on photographing for clients and running a business until I drop over dead but this year has been a pivotal one for making decisions. Do you stay or do you go? Or...is there some middle ground?
At the end of next week I'll be turning 68. I've had a long and successful run as a photographer. I count myself lucky at 67 to be able do the same kinds of physical work I've always done as a photographer. Packing up gear. Hauling it upstairs and downstairs and across muddy fields in the heat. Getting home on red eye flights at one in the morning and keeping track of all the gear until the Uber drops me off at the office and I unload. My eyes still work and my hearing is fine. My balance is good and my swimming (when not injuring myself) is challenging but still achievable. Still fun. But as much as I've kept my energy, and my passion for making images for myself, I seem to be losing my motivation to make clients happy. To keep generating images for advertising campaigns. Even for nice, fun clients. It just feels .... futile and boring.
I've explored options. Many of my friends tell me I am lucky to own my own business so I can just ratchet back and take only the jobs that are really fun. They call it "lucky" that I can also keep my toes in the water, so to speak. To be able to just step in and say, "wow! that sounds fun! Let's do it." And that's an option, I guess. Picking and choosing. But it never really works out as neatly as that sounds.
People who are only motivated by money might look at the business and see an opportunity for me to go on and on until I'm physically spent, in order to get the money, take the tax advantages, and operate my life completely out of cash flow; putting off the time when I'll actually have to reach in and start taking money back out of retirement accounts and the like.
More realistic friends generally look at the overview of my situation and ask, "Why in God's name are you still dealing with clients?!!!" "Go and do your own work and have fun with it." The message is: retire already. Even our wealth manager occasionally calls up and suggests I could spend more money. That I'm not in danger of running out too soon.
I guess my subconscious has been preparing for this for a couple of years. During the pandemic I stopped marketing to clients entirely. That decision worked well to separate the boring and commodity type jobs and clients from the real deals but the friends in advertising I've made over the last 40 years are more tightly bound than I would have imagined. They're not ready to let go. Not entirely.
There are three or four companies that I still work with. They are kind and smart and their budgets tend to be...generous. Everyone else, from tech to healthcare to manufacturing, the ones I looked at as a necessary job in order to wrangle a profit, a "pay check", those have been culled. When they call me now my pat line is: "Well, we've stopped offering that particular service." and any other service they might need....
The sad reality is that most working photographers who've been successful have come to value the continuity that the work itself provides for us. They miss the work. I'm no different. The work creates a foundation and format in which to exist. We know where the boundaries are. We know which buttons to push. And good work fills the days with purpose. Retire and all of a sudden you have to confront an additional eight to ten hours a day without real, external structure. Retire and you need to find new purpose.
The trip to Montreal was a test run for real retirement. Could I be satisfied with a full week of self-directed photography and could I emotionally flip the switch from saver to spender? I discovered that I'm pretty good at self-propelled engagement. And I like the freedom to change plans at random, and to embrace a certain amount of chaos. The money doesn't really figure in.
Anyway, when I walked around yesterday with a "primitive" camera and a single lens (Sigma fp + 45mm) I realized that the freedom to photograph is the thing I most enjoy. Being able to leave the house in the middle of the morning and walk until it's time for dinner, just taking frames and soaking up the rich tapestry of life in the moment. That's delicious.
I spent the weekend trying to decide what to do with the business part of life and came to the conclusion that it's time to progressively step away. It's just not very meaningful to me anymore. And, as far as work in the advertising and marketing community goes it seems obvious to me that, at some point, everyone ages out. Priorities change and focus changes and we start more jealously guarding our time. And it's only fair, I think, to step aside so a younger generation can have more opportunities. They'll need em.
I'll miss the ability to rationalize buying the latest toys. Not that a lack of clients would stop me from buying expensive crap I don't need. But not having to prove something at every engagement robs the toys of some of their purpose; their fun.
I used to spend too much time surfing the web for photo gear and new techniques. New faces in industry and new ways of doing art. Now I'm spending a lot more time surfing the travel sites. Tossing money at hotel reservations and plane fares. Becoming newly appreciative of nonstop airline routes.
Every place seems to have some sort of charm, some reason to visit. And with a camera in hand how can it not be fun? As long as we are careful to maintain the balance with swimming, dinners with friends, and time for myself everything should work out.
It's time to claw back some time and to learn how to spend money effectively to achieve maximum fun. I think these are things I can work towards. Not much will change with my writing and blogging. That's still fun and it was never really about earning a paycheck or marketing to work clients. No workshops. No print sales. No advertising links. It was just community and sharing and .... fun. And it's still fun.
heading to the concert. Me? No. I'm heading in the opposite direction.
Been in Austin longer than I have. And still serving great stuff.
mannequin modeling day of the dead flowered headpieces.
the Summer version of the Stetson "Open Road" hat.
ooo. ACL Fest is such a class act...
A custom, silver cowboy hat.
the coffee shop inside the hat store makes a decent latté. Not perfect.
But quite decent.
group tours always make me just a bit nauseous.
The endless line for coffee at Jo's Coffee on S. Congress.
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| Crocs with applied decor. |
regular contrast.
I love all the "I love you so much" photos! Moar please someday no rush :-)
ReplyDeleteThis and the previous post have a high hit rate! Love them Kirk.
ReplyDeleteEric
I'm looking forward to the VisualTravelLab Blogspot!
ReplyDeleteThat FP is quite something
I don't know if self-directed projects would give you something to focus on, if you're not needing to make money from them then maybe something like a small exhibition somewhere you frequent like a cafe or a space at the theatre for instance, or it's fairly cheap to get 10 or 20 small books printed, or maybe a small amount of volunteering would give a little more structure, it sounds like you have a fairly well-structured life anyway from what you write on here, but if there's a work-shaped gap you'd like to fill then something like that might work, might not need to be much, half a day or a day here and there, I imagine you might have some kind of volunteer agency in austin, we have one here, they have a huge range of things, from planting trees to supporting people with various problems, parents of addicts, probably something for dementia too, and all kinds of other stuff.
ReplyDeleteHi Kirk,agree with Matt Shaw - looking forwad to the Travelblog! All the very best. R
ReplyDeleteThese new shots have all been really interesting to this former Austinite. I moved south to Kyle in 2021 after spending most of my 85 years in Austin. I still have all my doctors in Austin, so I'm up there pretty frequently, but I hate the traffic, so I make my appointments for either very early in the morning or no later than 2p.m. Your photographs are a real treat and seem to me to show that, while Austin is ever-changing, the attitude, like the Dude, abides. More, please!
ReplyDeleteStefano: dear Kirk, work is life as it gives us freedom, but don't run the risk to be a prisoner of work. If you are lucky enough to enjoy more the life after 40 years of work you can start to live at 100%. In your shoes I would have no doubts.
ReplyDeleteA good read as the similarity to my situation is plentiful. I've been shooting part-time assignments for the last three years since my forced early retirement from the work at which you and I crossed paths a few times and am giving myself an end of the year deadline to decide if I want to continue. Rewarding work? Definitely, but, much of my thinking about desire relative to clients echoes yours. I want to rekindle the desire, that has been in too short supply lately, to shoot photos just for myself. Thanks for helping me work through the process as well.
ReplyDeleteRay
Well I had a financial goal I wanted to meet before retirement! Met that in my late fifty's ( hard work, good planning, some luck, and most of all my wonderful wife) and hit a bump in the road. Overcame that and in my early sixty's did retire- comfortably. Took a year to decompress and sit on the porch! Loved, and needed every minute of it!Then, as someone who had only seen a doctor once a year for the dreaded cedar fever sinus infection, the bottom fell out for me health wise!You name it- it happened! Everything from open heart surgery to shattered leg to developing a nerve disease only 100 people out of a million have!
ReplyDeleteWhile I still have challenges I've worked through most of them or at least have them where I feel I can seriously go about the business of "retirement"! I wont call it five years lost or wasted but definitely NOT spent as expected.
Kirk, you will make your own decision but my experience made me an even firmer believer in living today to the fullest! You just need to decide what that means for you! Best of Luck!
Thank you, a really interesting personal story. Sharing these kinds of stories are so useful and valuable to others.
DeleteAt the age of 43, and with only moderate success in various aspects of life, I don't anticipate my advice being highly valued by someone much older. However, I have come to realize that our leisure time, interests, and motivations outside of work deserve the same level of planning and discipline that we naturally apply to our professional lives. I propose treating yourself as your most valuable client, as you are the one who needs it the most. Dedicate yourself to planning for fulfillment with utmost seriousness and discipline. Instead of viewing your next vacation as a typical "holiday," why not see it as an important research project in portrait photography?
ReplyDeleteI should mention that as an early childhood teacher, my profession, similar to that of psychotherapists and counselors, demands a high level of self-care, self-reflection, and self-compassion that naturally prevents burnout and prolonged unhealthy levels of stress. For anyone transitioning into retirement, the initial step is to engage in this process of introspection, enabling a deep understanding of what their most significant client - themselves - truly requires.
Thank you Alex. You are so right.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Long time reader, erratic commenter.
ReplyDelete