Things that strike me

This is a brain dump.

I was talking to a friend last week about the possibility of working as a photographer. Full time. Make money out of the hobby. I know one person who did it. He does stuff that I personally could not hack. I had to consider how you might make a career out of being a photographer that in Ireland, did not include being a wedding photographer. I couldn’t face being a wedding photographer, you see. I’ve done some family photographs – you have to be really, really special for me to say yes to any request of this nature – but in truth, it’s not where my talent lies and it’s not in me to charge 3000E for a wedding shot weekend. But to get me to do it, you’d have to pay me that much.

I was also talking to a friend about the possibility of a career change. This is something that might, in fact, be shoved on me at some point in the next few years, given the economic reality in this country, so there have been discussions of the nature that go “but I don’t really know what I’d want to do.”

It was much easier when I was 22 years old, you know. There were all these things I wanted to try, and try them all I did. None of them are the career I now practice, which is IT related. I never thought I’d work with computers, although ironically, if the world swung around and I was 18 years old again, facing into CAO and college applications, it is probably at computers I’d be directed. The opinion has been voiced that I should perhaps have done that up front. I am not sure. I have this languages degree and fluency in a few languages that I probably would never acquire had I done computers at the time.

So I was talking to another friend because I voiced an interest in maths at some point lately and she asked if I’d looked into it and I had and was somewhat disheartened by the lack of part time options. I also added that I found that doing stuff for the future rarely turned out as planned. In fact, I couldn’t think of one thing I had planned that had worked out as planned. Ever.

Then, bad things happened. Then I started reading blogs by photographers who did stuff that interested me. National Geographic staffers, for example. And I started thinking, well, you know, there are photographers out there who make a living from photography without actually having to deal with psycho-brides. The local term here is Bridezilla, as it happens.

Anyway. I have started thinking about the fact that I got to this stage in my life and absolutely nothing has turned out the way I expected. Admittedly, it is not my fault we had a property bubble for the past 10 years or so thus ruling out nesting in a house. But I didn’t plan on discovering that I had a weird attraction to people with alcohol issues either. Or that I had a tendency to get dumped by people who wanted to go back to their ex-girlfriends. No, I’ll rephrase that – it’s not that I planned beign attractive to the wrong people – ie – people with whom “happy ever after” was not going to happen. I certainly didn’t plan to be still living in Dublin and I’m sure I didn’t intend to own all the junk I’ve accumulated. Do you know how many dictionaries I own now?

No, I was going to be living in Brittany with a very attractive fisherman type, teaching English at the local secondary school and no longer speaking French with a slight German accent. As I say, life did not go quite according to plan.

But then, I may have this opportunity to career change at some point in the next two years and although the idea terrifies me – like I said, all this was supposed to be sorted out 10 years ago -  but it might also be an opportunity.

The thing is I’m not absolutely sure where I’d go with that opportunity. Put simply, I don’t know what my dreams are any more and that makes working out a way to live them kinda difficult. Mostly I get by on earning enough money to pay for the crazy hobbies I have.

There’s a part of me wondering about making it possible to move back to Cork or Brittany. Or possibly Fuerteventura in Spain. The absolute fact of the matter is that if I change jobs from what I do now, I will be changing careers again. Unlikely to wind up back in system administration anyway. So I am sort of thinking that one of the key points would be to not think about the job I want to do [this time] but where I want to live. And then see what options are there.

Obviously the one fly that could appear in the ointment is if I find someone who doesn’t turn out to be a bad choice as significant other. But then, that will change the dream.

I’d like to be free to do stuff and then I wonder what’s giving me the feeling that I get stopped doing stuff. Apart from the wind getting in the way for kitesurfing, that is.

Someone asked me lately if I were having a midlife crisis. I pointed out I’d been through this at the age of 22 and that just because I was going through this at the age of 36 didn’t make it a midlife crisis.

The only decision I have made lately is that any opportunities coming my way to work in media, freelance writing, photography etc should be exploited and see where that takes me. If planning takes me down a road with no signposts, then maybe worth not planning either.