For a bit there I felt like things were going well. Shoutout to this time of year for always keeping it real.
There's normally a good amount of work and stock footage sales coming in the last of the year and 2021 was no different. Then January hits and it's basically crickets while everyone with real jobs is sleeping off their year-end work hangovers. It's not too bad though because January is also normally when those end of year jobs get paid for so there's plenty of cash coming in and no complaints.
But then freakin' February... It's basically Winter's July when no one is working and us freelancers are once again questioning our life choices. My backup plan du jour this time of year is normally wanting to go back to school for an MBA instead of just being alone with my dog all day and doing laundry, taxes, and spiraling into this year's version of seasonal depression.
Things will pick back up like they normally do this time of year. Until then, I'll just be over here freakin' out. I'll also be reading a lot, pretending to take still photos, and procrastinating on the rubber stamp doc I have no excuse to not finish.
Each weekday morning you'll most likely find me at my regular coffee shop scribbling out a daily journal entry followed by a good amount of reading. Lately I've been obsessed with Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" and I'm nearly 200 pages into this 750+ page economic textbook. I'd seen the 2019 documentary based on Piketty's book a while back and wanted to read it myself ever since.
There's also that medium format camera that's been keeping my attention more than I'd like to admit. I do appreciate a change every now and then to remind me how much I enjoy what I get to do for a living. This time last year I was avoiding how slow my paid work was by learning my way around a drone. This year it's this film camera from the early 1970s.
The beginning of February brought a decent amount of snow for here in Oklahoma City. I knew from last year's February snow to head out to Lake Hefner to try and find some magic. There's a story too about me nearly getting Saint Anne the Wife's car stuck in a snowy ditch for a single photo if you're up for that kind of thing. Also, I went out to shoot a major real estate investment that literally went up in flames (thankfully no one was physically hurt).
In rubber stamp doc news: not much... Late last week I connected with a grad student writing her thesis about a narrow slice of of rubber stamp history I've been drowning in. Kinda wild being able to share notes and contacts over such an obscure topic. Not gonna lie: I'm crazy envious of her being seemingly laser focused on her specific topic while I'm over here trying to grow a crop of wheat and raise turkeys so I can make lunch.