Are you happy with you professional life, guys?
I am asking, because I was not happy at all with neither my professional career nor with my job.
I worked successfully in the International Commerce for several years already when I suddenly realised one day that I was just not happy.
That frustration, OMG, dreadful feeling that my work was taking time that I could put to better use, time that I was not even spending, but loosing. Revelations of that kind are not easy to deal with, I dare say, because after all you have only two options: to act or to keep it the way it is.
I sincerely suppose the 12th of April 2016 to be my lucky day. Because exactly that day my life took a sharp turn as I left stable but completely depressive job and turned to unknown and therefore adventurous future. I still remember that feeling I had, that excitement that was flooding my veins, as I knew that I was leaving all that professional sadness behind. Even all the risks did not stop me from feeling that joy and sense of freedom.
I was 29 when I stepped on the searching-for-yourself path, and from that day I am still moving on in this direction.
It will be a lie if I tell you that it was a spontaneous decision of me. Not at all. I adore adventures, that's true but I was taught to get ready for coming too. So I found a sort of a balance for myself:
I did not know exactly what I would do in the future, okey, but I secured a period of several months of more or less financial stability for myself - I knew that this is the time I can live on my own even if I have no income at all.
And I had not.
Of course with my passion for moving it was difficult to stick to office everyday job again, thus I wanted to do something that would pay my bills and would not limit me in my adventures. Photography was a logical answer, after all I was already photographing a lot, so of course I had a plan to start owning my life with it.
Ha!
It did not work that easy as I wanted, I realised that the moment I would be able to gain real money with my camera was a moment in the future and not in the nearest one. Why? Because I was absolute zero in human portrait or event photography - two genres that actually pay.
Retraining was complicated, asked for strength and constant search of motivation because these two genres were definitely not the ones I dreamt to work in.
It took time to fill the gaps in experience, to learn what people like and to train eyes to see the particularities all of us have. After several months I realised that the idea to photograph humans was a lost cause, I just did not like it, it was the photography that I did not want to do.
I dropped it, changed the direction and moved on.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring
To be continued