The Dream

I am thankful for my job.  I get paid well for what I do. I have an excellent benefits package, too.  But... I know I am capable of more.  There is little about my job I find truly satisfying.  I used to adore interacting with my photographer clientele, but corporate has pulled the purse strings so tight now there there is no payroll budget to have any form of leisure time to glad-hand our pros.  I am a 100% balls-to-the-walls one-man-band style production when I'm in the lab.  Juggling the needs of the 3 or 4 people using our kiosks to place orders, filling ink, keeping the printer churning and burning, doing maintenance, calling old orders, cleaning up messes and general dirt and dust. We can't afford any overlapping shifts any longer. There is not actually time to tell someone I like there work and have a discussion about it. Since Nick left my lab, it's been a slow downward slide. None of the litany that have been in to take his place really care about photography. Some care about the lab, and the business, but not the art. Some of my pros quit feeling special, and left to go find more personalized treatment elsewhere. Others have just moved away. We're not attracting new artists. But the long and the short of it is that I am still damn good at my job, my job is easy for me, but the part of my job I was passionate about has been taken away from me.  Now it's just what I do to earn money.

When I had applied for a different position some time back, the interviewing manager asked if I thought my new position would be as fulfilling creatively for me. I don't remember if I actually laughed out loud, but I know my soul burst into a guffaw.  I don't find my work creatively fulfilling, my avocation is my creative outlet, my job is how I afford my avocation.

In the same interview she asked me to describe my ideal, dream job. I laid out a situation in which a rich patron decides they love my photography and offers to fund my experimentation into the medium - I simply shoot and edit and create the art I want, and get a steady, generous stipend for doing so.

Is that too much to ask?

In the intervening years, I've considered how I would prefer to make money.

The "dream" right now would be to have a fine art photography studio, with lots of space and spaces devoted to shooting everything from Micro- and Macro- photography through large scale studio shoots. There would be darkroom and a light-room editing suite. Attached to the studio would be a gallery where my artwork, and perhaps the artwork of my photo associates, is on display and for sale. and of course an office where the paperwork gets handled.

In the dreamiest versions,  my closest photog friends and I use the studio, and go out on shoots, develop our art, and our gallery becomes a destination. Like Studio 291.  I hire my buddy Jake to be the manager and maintain the staff and paperwork and stuff, and he and my photogs make good bank doing this.

But...
instead...
I'd better go find my namebadge...
I will need it to punch the clock tomorrow so I can go earn some money doing the daily grind, utilizing a skillset most highschoolers could develop, only doing it at a masterclass level that comes with 15 years of spinning your wheels in the same profession.