Living the life you want – your way
Posted on August 14, 2008
A couple of years back, I read a book called The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living, which is one of those books that have reset my way of thinking, quite enormously.
The central point of the book is that most of us live the life we feel we have to live now, in order to live the life we want to live some time in the future (normally after retirement) – this is called Deferred Life Planning.
I’ll paraphrase that, to make it sound appropriately absurd. We spend the best years of our lives doing something we’re not really interested in, so we can spend a few years at the end of our lives doing stuff we enjoy.
Deferring our lives.
I’ve come to realise, that I’ve slipped into this thought trap again.
I’m working a day job – it’s a job I’m good at, a job with good income level, and good potential for improvement, it’s continuing on along a career path the likes of which my parents would have approved (that is: it pays well, I wear a suit, work in an office, and have “Manager” in my title).
Traditionally, I’d continue working this job, and others like it for the next 30 years or so, moving slowly but surely up the management tree, increasing my salary levels, getting more and more non-salary benefits. Then I’d retire, and have time to do the things I want to do.
Wow. 30 years doing something that doesn’t really inspire me, only doing what I really care about in my ever-decreasing ’spare’ time. That’s just insane.
While I find the day to day process of doing my job to be adequately interesting, the thought of doing something like it for the next 30 years could drive me to drink (or worse).
My plan is to move away from Information Technology/Management type roles, and into professional photography. I have some experience in this field, but not enough (yet) to make potential clients feel comfortable. Also, most of the work I’ve done has been fairly candid type stuff, some weddings, some portraits, while the area I’m targeting is more commercial or fashion photography, working with models.
What I struggle with, is meeting the immediate and short term requirements of life without having my current income stream or something to adequately replace it. My photography career has income potential, but there’s a fairly hefty gap between where I am right now, and that life being able to pay the bills (let along facilitate my target lifestyle).
The modern model of life change seems to be “Just do it. Make it happen”, but that really doesn’t work for me. I have commitments I’m not prepared to let slide, some debts to clear, a certain level of lifestyle I’m not prepared to sacrifice. I’m simply not prepared to quit my day job and leave myself with no way to meet those commitments.
I want to have my cake and eat it too. Security cake, that is.
Short of winning some form of lottery (very hard for me to do, considering I never buy tickets), I need to grow my photography career while maintaining my current one.
Here are a few of the steps I’m taking along that path (in no particular order).
1. Limit the amount of time spent on my current job. My job is such that it’s quite easy for me to spend 10-12 hours (or more) on it a day. While an 8 hour day is all I’m contractually obliged to do, I can’t really justify only doing that every day, but there are things I can do to limit the amount of time I spend there.
2. Take one step a day in the right direction. Every day. One step, in the direction of my goal. This includes reading, researching, planning, practicing – anything that moves me in the right direction. It’s important to make this a commitment, like exercising, or brushing my teeth.
3. Declare a target, and a resulting action. I’ve declared that when I have, in no more than 6 months, earned enough to pay the rent for 6 months, then I can take a significant step towards moving towards this full time. The step I have in mind is that I’ll let myself hand in my notice at my current role.
4. Change your label. For years, I’ve called myself a geek. It’s been my mental label for who I am, what I do. Now, I’m changing my internal language to call myself a photographer. While a label seems to be a very superficial thing, it’s the sort of thing that goes right to the root of how I perceive myself. For years, I’ve been a geek who occasionally took photos. That’s something that needs to change.
5. Journal your changes. This is a new one for me, I’ve never really been a diary writer. Basically, as part of the second step, above, I record what I did, along with my thoughts, ideas and plans for the future. This will grow over time, and will (I hope) serve as motivation when things get tough – I’ll have a tangible log of my ’sunk costs’.
6. Target spending. In order to progress in my new career, I need to increase my supplies of certain tools, and increase my ability to use these tools in a variety of circumstances. I also need to evaluate the work of other photographers, dissect it, try and understand how an effect works, what was done to cause it, so I buy fashion magazines (as much for the ads as for the fashion shoots). I’m growing a budget for new gear, and self-instruction materials.
(Sidenote: I’ve fallen into Trap 1. In a pleasing example of synchronicity, I stumbled across this link while in the process of writing this post)
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