The Pizza model of living.
Posted on August 16, 2008
When I was a kid, I’d make “pizza” for myself for meals on weekend.
Well, it was pizza in that is was a bready-base, with a pile of stuff on top of it, with cheese on top of that - but the similarities between that and real pizza ended about there.
I’d combine whatever flavours I could dig out of the (well stocked) fridge, with no discernible theme or target in mind, just get a pile of stuff on top of the base, add cheese and cook.
These days, pizza is more about what to not put on it. 2 or 3 flavours at most. Make the theme bold and strong, an select flavours that go together well, that complement each other. The overall is a lot less jumbled, easier to eat, and much, much better tasting.
Doing it with pizza is easy.
Why not apply that model to life?
All my adult life, I’ve been something of a dilettante, a dabbler. I’ve read widely, and broadly, but when I focus down to particular areas, I get more pleasure from my reading. The only thing I’ve truly focussed on has been IT related stuff, and this had the net effect of causing my career in IT to be as successful as it was.
I’ll be as successful, if not more so, in photography if I focus on it (pun not intended) as much as I did with computer stuff 15 years ago.
What does this mean for how I live? While I still have a day job, I’m not working on photography related stuff for those 8+ hours a day - but I can look at things with the constant question “how would I shoot this scene?” I can make more of an effort to notice light, and the way it falls, the colour of it, and what’s causing it to be that colour. I can pay attention to photos that I see on the web, pick the good ones, and analyse what makes them good, what emotions they’re inviting.
Outside of work, I’ve unsubscribed from most of my geek-related RSS feeds and podcasts, and picked up a host more photography and fashion podcasts. Most nights, I spend a block of time on something photography related - either passively, like familiarising myself with the fashion world, or actively - shooting, or post-processing photos already shot. My weekends are increasingly full with TFP model shoots, and about to become more full with volunteer photography work.
Instead of having a life that’s filled with whatever I can find to fill it, I’m carefully selecting what I want in my life, then making sure I can be busy working on that. Right now my toppings are Photography, IT (day-job) and personal development/personal growth stuff (writing here, and trying to grow myself), on a solid (yet not-so-bready) base of my relationship with my wife and other people close to me, with a constantly cheesy layer of music over the top of it all (along with the occasionally mozzarella-like stretched metaphor).
[Image is Pepperoni Pizza by callme_crotchet]
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*goes to tweak his RSS feeds & think about time-allocation*