Starting Over Again

I'm sitting in a motel room in Santa Cruz as I write this. There's a fridge in the corner with 4 bottles of Guinness in it, the bed is unmade, there are horrible pastel prints on the walls, and it's overcast outside. Doves' Lost Souls album is playing at half volume, and I'm thinking about breakfast. Not yet, though - I have news to share.

It's done. I'm officially off the rails and in unknown territory. I was free less than 24 hours after I gave my notice. I was given the choice to continue to work the two weeks that I gave in my resignation letter, or I could go RIGHT THEN and they would pay me for the two weeks anyway. Not much of a decision to be made there. I took the offer. I still haven't packed my desk - I'll have to do that after hours tomorrow when I get home, under the watchful eye of an HR manager. Just in case I try to take something that isn't mine.

I left a lot of work unfinished. The guy they hired last week to replace me isn't quite as qualified as they were hoping...he'll need a lot of training before he can start picking up the slack. He's a friend of the supervisor's, so no one checked his technical skills. Don't get me wrong, I wish them well, but it's nice to think that I'm not easily replaceable.

Now that I'm officially unemployed (or, as I like to call it, a "freelance writer and photographer"), I find myself wondering what my next step is. I came up here to look for places to live, as my need for that is more immediate than I expected just a few days ago, but I'm also wondering if this would be a good time to get some traveling done before I have to pay rent again. Maybe a few weeks in Europe, a few in Asia, maybe Australia or New Zealand? I have enough frequent flier miles saved up to get myself a free ticket to almost anywhere. And a complimentary companion ticket! Ladies?

I'm not sure what I'll end up doing, exactly. What I do know is that it feels like my whole life has been leading up to this point. I put in my time in a cube, I invested wisely, and now I find myself in complete control of my own future. It's not as terrifying as I thought it would be, and I'm genuinely excited about my prospects.

I've been thinking a lot about how to get started as a photographer (I know what I need to do to get started as a writer). I've got a catalog of about 10,000 photos so far, and I take hundreds more whenever I go somewhere new. I'm finding that landscapes are what I'm best at, and those can be pretty lucrative if sold through stock photography sites. There's still so much for me to learn about photography, but I'm submitting sample work to a few sites anyway, just to see if they think I've got the chops. We'll see what happens. I'll also be opening up a little site to sell some of my photos as prints (framed or otherwise). I'll put a link up here when it's done so you can check it out. Also, I need some new equipment! 1 new camera body and 1 new lens ought to do the trick. Anyone in the market for a used and much loved Canon 10D? Not the lens, though...I'll be taking that to the grave with me, thank you very much.

Hobo OUT!

Photo Dump: