Stuff that sucks about becoming a photographer (and what you can do about it)
Photography is a hyper-saturated field. Everyone and their cat can become a photographer. All you need is an entry level body with a kit lens, and a business name.
BUT THIS CAN BE A GOOD THING!! Hear me out…
I'm not a quitter, but I quit.
Two years ago, I walked away from academia. After pursuing it relentlessly and devotedly for some seventeen years (if you count my undergraduate degree), I walked away.
It wasn’t a dramatic, flailing arms and hair-pulling act...
no pain, no frills, no bullshit: a bunch of disclosures on a rainy day
I was always hoping. I was taking the "fake it till you make it" adage for a decades-long test-drive. Maybe if I spent enough years, published enough papers, made enough friends in the field, took on enough students... maybe then I'd begin to be truly into it. To dream up grant ideas in my spare time. To write papers just for fun. For the love of it.
That day never happened.
I gave up studying families and ended up... studying families.
Maybe it's ironic that toward the end of my academic career, I was fighting tooth and nail to dismiss with subjective rating scales of parenting quality, and focus on the moment-to-moment behaviours, without judgments or messages. Or maybe it's telling.