today we cover the idea of "selective retirement." I was having coffee with my friend Anne this morning. I made the mistake of asking about work. I should not mention work to people who still feel compelled to work full time for various reasons. Most people (not artists!) hate having to go to work and having to be at work for something like 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. And they dislike (intensely) having to spend (USA #s) between 40 minutes to an hour each day commuting in their own cars. And not being compensated for that time. Or the gas used. Or the purchase of the vehicle required to commute.
Being polite and empathetic Anne got around to asking me how retirement is going. And here's the disconnection between the self-employed and everyone else; we can choose to be selectively retired if we want to.
When you work for the "man" and you would like to stop working you really don't have the option of going into the corner office and saying that you'd like to cut down to 10 hours a week. Or maybe 10 hours a month. Resigning from a job or retiring from a job is a pretty binary thing. On or off. You decide it's over and then...it's over.
But if you are self-employed and in an arts oriented business like photography you can choose to "retire" clients you don't like and, bonus, you can pass on the jobs that don't sound fun. You can decide that next week would be a great time to go on vacation. And you go. You can decide that some clients are actually fun and gracious and you can keep working with them on projects that you've always enjoyed. There's no public forum, like the classified ads in a newspaper, in which you are required to state with conviction that you've ceased to do business or that you have retired from the field altogether.
In the go-go years of our business (1980-2002) we averaged between 150 and 200 projects per year. After the collapse of the economy in 2008-2009 that number dropped to between 100 and 125 projects per year. As individual relevance and the bite of digital democratization dug in we were down, by 2020 to about 80 projects a year. Covid dropped the numbers much further. We started experiencing a comeback last year but it came at a time when the Covid rest break revealed to me that having free time, spare time, personal time and general screw around with your own hobbies time was a good thing. A calming way to live. A less stressful existence by far.
In 2022 we undertook about 35 projects. And in the middle of the year I started having a conversation with myself centered around "how to retire." How to back out of stuff I no longer wanted to do. I felt like I should discontinue "cattle call" portrait shoots. I should stop doing jobs for anything less than premium paydays. I should stop working for clients with sky high expectations and insanely short time frames. And I should stop working for any company that felt like we were walking into a dystopian scene from a movie like "Blade Runner." Or any company that badly exploited its workers. Or any company that mandated an 8 a.m. start time on projects. Or any company that didn't pay their bills in less than 30 days. Or any company that required me to sign a contract with an indemnification clause. Or any company that even broached the idea that I'd sign over to them my copyright for less than a king's ransom. That brought my project workload down to about 20 projects this year. And it was wonderful.
I only "got" to work with people I've worked with for a long time. People I enjoy working with and who value what I do. People who have good ideas and an understanding of what it takes to execute good ideas.
So, to answer the question my friends often ask, which is: "Are you retired?" I can honestly answer that I am only selectively retired. Working on selected projects and then, in my spare time, writing a devastatingly good blog about art manifestos and photography.
The funny part of all this is that cutting back on commercial work has had zero effect on my lifestyle, my habits and my hobbies. It's actually been a hard lesson to learn to spend my own saved money instead of operating solely out of cash flow but it's getting easier all the time. And by intentionally driving one's income as close to zero as possible one can take money out of tax deferred accounts to spend in those years with incredibly low tax burdens. It's actually a very sweet way to shift from an earned income life to something profoundly different. Funding your own life.
Which jobs have I liked this year? I still like packing up and going downtown to my favorite law firm to make portraits of partners and associates. It's environmental portraiture at its best for me and I couldn't imagine a better client. They actually have a Sumo version of the Annie Leibovitz book on a stand in their lobby. It's huge book with an even bigger price tag. https://artwareeditions.com/products/annie-leibowitz-sumo-by-taschen To say that the lead partner values good photography is an understatement.
There's an ad agency here in Austin called, Hahn. I'll work on anything they ask for because they treat me incredibly well (waiting for my invitation to their holiday party again this year....) and they really take care to do the best work possible. Which makes me look good. In addition to photographing all the portraits for their website this year they also graciously tossed me my two most fave jobs of the year, The Texas Beef Council shoot and the Capitol Area Food Bank shoot. Wonderful stuff and very well used. Both jobs were a chance to break in the new medium format Fuji.
Work for medical technology giant, Abbott, was fun, wonderful and a continuing education in the magic of micro tech for medical outcomes. Learning during every hour of the shoot. And with good budgets, great concepts and superb art direction. And almost instantaneous pay.
I also did a couple of book covers I like. But the difference this year? Not a single job on which I caught myself thinking: "Why in God's name did I accept this train wreck of an assignment?"
And I did not accept any jobs this year that would preclude attending swim practice. You have to have priorities.
So, we're on selective retirement. Made easier with Medicare, and with the anticipation of enjoying my first regular, monthly income since I ran an ad agency many years ago.
Yes, I'm speaking of Social Security---starting at age 70. My first regularly scheduled "paycheck" in three decades. Seems like a fun thing to me. Mad money. Counting down the two years till....
The only downside of selective retirement is that it makes rationalizing the purchase of new gear more difficult. After all, why buy new cameras, lenses and lights if you have no big projects to use them on and no big clients to help fund them? I'll try to skirt that problem by having less good sense and leaning into a lifelong habit of buying what I want.
And that's the blog about how retirement is shaping up right now.
Dude!? You have a hole in your head?
11 comments:
You don't retire, exactly, you still do stuff. You just stop doing things for money that other people want you to do and that you might not care about. It's nice to be in that position, not everyone is.
A friend of mine describes corporate jobs well. He says there is a reason they call it a "job" and that they have to pay you to show up.
I don't know if this applies to professional photography, but I quit working as a newspaper reporter in 1990 and started writing novels. In 2007 or 2008, I can't remember which, and I'm too lazy to look it up, I was imbedded with the US Army (2-147 Assault Helicopter Battalion) in Iraq and guess what: I'd lost some of, and possibly most of, my reporting chops. I just wasn't seeing the things I saw when I was reporting, and felt that most of my work was pretty flat. Didn't have the zing; almost like I'd been watching it on TV. I was more interested in the photos I took than in the reporting I did. (Because how can you go wrong with a photo of a door gunner pointing his machine gun at one of the biggest mosques in creation?) Anyway...how are the chops?
Perfect and unsullied by time or experience.
Further on Texas delusions: "No monkey pushing!" --Parent to Texas Board of Education, objecting to science textbooks that teach evolution. "There is no evidence that a completely different species can come from another species."--Board member. (Per WSJ 11-18-23)
Less than a month to go until my retirement begins on December 15th. For me, personal circumstances will mean pulling the plug completely on work - at least for a while - and tapping into Social Security at “full” retirement age instead of 70.
And while my finances work out fine on paper, it’s going to take a while for me to relax on that front. Buying new cameras and lenses will be funded - at least for a while - by selling off other gear. That‘s probably a good thing because I still have too much stuff.
And I’ll still be very busy. My big mission in 2024 will be emptying our house and preparing it for sale.
My biggest challenge will be keeping my mind sharp after a lifetime in journalism. But, at the same time, I’m looking forward to “decluttering” my mind and clearing away information that is unimportant to me. Too many passwords, PINs, protocols and more.
Still… I’m pretty sure retirement will beat working for the man - even if I will miss seeing certain colleagues on a daily basis.
my high school art teacher took early retirement at 52, which they used to allow but has now stopped, half pension I think, he couldn't work it out how but he thought he was better off than when he was working, he converted part of his house into an apartment unit and rented it out and sold paintings here and there
Congratulations, sounds like you've hit the sweet spot with "selective retirement". Like anything in life, if it works keep doing it and when it no longer works, stop and do something else.
I work full-time in what you could call “digital business development and design” and enjoy that very much. So much, in fact, that my plan is that upon retirement (some 12-15 years from now) I intend to start my own business to do “fun on the side” with select clients. Hope it will work for me :-)
The amazing thing about social security is that every year there is a cost-of-living adjustment. So far that has meant an annual increase and the increases have been well beyond the increases I received as an art museum worker.
I retired from Abbott after 30 years. It was a great company then and I glad to see that they haven't changed. I used to travel to Austin IV plant on Mopac occasionally. That division was spun off as a new company and subsequently bought by Pfizer.
I planned to retire at the end of 2018 and gave plenty of notice. One month before the target date my boss asked if I would instead consider converting to part time working mostly from home. I said sure since mostly I wanted to stop commuting. It was great because I was doing things I liked and not all of the other stuff. Then COVID mothballed the projects I was working on. Oh well.
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