I was corresponding with a long time friend of mine a few weeks ago seeking his advice on a professional matter.

He and I are in somewhat similar positions in that we both knew when we were fairly young that we needed a creative outlet to survive. He knew a little earlier than I did how he would go about it (he took to music well before I took to photography). He already had a singular clarity of voice and a record or two under his belt by the time I really figured out the exposure triangle. Before this our friendship was, in part, formed on a mutual understanding of the pain of a skateboard slamming into a shinbone, repeatedly, often for weeks on end, blood staining socks, until we could program our bodies to avoid it by landing with our feet back on top of the board.

But he and I both now find that our creative outlet - whether or not it is also paying work - often necessarily takes a back seat to parenting and other family matters, yet we can’t do without it. He and I have both chosen to put ourselves in this position, knowing, somewhere deep down, that this stuff would matter more to us more than our creative work, obsessed and preoccupied as we are with it anyways.

To some, that is perhaps where we may have failed (assuming a prerequisite talent, which I believe him to possess. For my part, all I can say now is that I believe in what I do). Regardless of skill, our ambition, you could say, wavered when faced with the prospect of a family. We lost our singular focus on perfecting our craft and ruthlessly pushing to do better at the expense of all else. Well, no, that’s wrong. We didn’t lose it. We saw clearly enough I think, and then decided to demote that focus and make it secondary or at least attempt to.

I say attempt because it is sometimes difficult to live out one’s professed priorities. My studio/office is in our home, and at any given moment I may feel pulled to attend to an idea in that space - something that competes for my presence of mind when I would like it to be elsewhere. Probably too often I get sucked into working on something one room over when the time isn’t right to be doing so.

So the issue I contacted him about was essentially one of balance. My professional life has never felt balanced, I don’t think that’s the nature of freelance work quite generally. In this industry, for me, it’s generally tended to feel like something along the lines of snacks or famine, but occasionally - (and fortunately I might add) - I feel like there is more on my plate than I can really handle. I have to make decisions but I still want to do all the professional things because I know they won’t last. When I interrogate this question I can’t always come up with a great reason for this feeling. What is it that won’t last, exactly?

As my friend astutely put it with regards to why I might sometimes feel the urge to work more than seems right for my family situation at a given moment - “Parenting has been the death of ego, so honestly the appeal for me would be a little boost in that regard. To remind myself that I’m good and knowledgeable at something beyond making lunches.”¹

Ah. Yes. That pesky ego thing. He couldn’t have been more right. That’s not the entirety of it - I would like to think the work we do is about much more than that - there are stories we want to tell, messages we want to convey, issues we want to shed a light on, connections we want to make. These things do matter. They matter very much. But the attempts to do this work are not absent the ego, and I think it’s right to try to evaluate what it is doing in any given situation.

I turned the opportunity down. The time just wasn’t right for it. I hope it comes around again. If it doesn’t, I believe it will matter much less than what I would have missed. I appreciate my friend’s reminder of the forces at play.

1. To be honest, as a parent, making lunches probably isn’t even my strong suit! I’m better at breakfast I think… ↩︎