Based on my current situation and employment and my need to get away from both I have set goals, and dates for my exit from “normalcy” once again. You see, I’ve taken two extended road trips for my photography and for my sanity. Both were about four months long and massive learning experiences that resulted in a form of wanderlust I can not shake. I need to be outdoors, I need to be traveling, shooting….constantly. I need to be using my camera daily so that it again feels like the natural appendage it has in the past. I can’t do that from this cubicle.
The only reason I haven’t left yet is financial debt. …okay and a little bit of fear, fear that I’m delusional and walking away from a “job” that I need to survive. But I’m better than this, and I will succeed. Once out of debt I feel I can live extremely minimally, a sacrifice I’m willing to make for my art while I build it into an actual living. My exit date is July 31, 2015. It’s do or die time. I need my version of a traveling creative life much like Trey Ratcliff or Peter Lik. Sure, I know I have lots of room to grow and improve and I know that the road to that kind of success is long and hard but I also have ideas, determination and the simple stone cold fact within my very being that, I can’t come back to this life. It’s not that it’s horrible, I’ve been blessed and I do not take my current situation for granted. It simply is not me.
So for the next 17 months it’s all about paying off debt, saving and prep work for the next trip. Work that needs to be done to launch myself into the next chapter head first. The next chapter that has to stick. So hopefully as they say, third time is a charm. See you on the other side.
