The whole "jumping without a parachute"... Well. Yeah. About three months ago I was laid off from a job which I was really enjoying and getting paid very well to do. As a senior training manager for a large outsourcing company, I had a team of 8 other managers across the United States and Canada, and had JUST started the transition process to take over our Costa Rica training operations as well. In fact, the flexibility I enjoyed was (I thought) going to give us the ability to move back to my hometown of Roswell, NM to be closer to my parents and raise the boys (James, who's two and a half and Brodie who is 16 months) in the same small town I grew up in. Well, that was not to be, as I got the call on January 25th of this year (2010) that mine was one of a few thousand jobs being eliminated.
So, the last three months have been a struggle between job hunting, finding even a little motivation to keep working on my PhD, and struggling with the ludicrous notion of starting my own photography business.
You see, this has been my dream for about 25 years. I took up photography in college, worked for a few newspapers, did some assignment work for the Associated Press, got published in a few magazines. But, I was never really more than a serious amateur, even though I got paid for my work on occasion. In 1990 I left the journalism profession, mostly for good, and went on the road with the performing group Up with People. I stayed on for about 4 years, and found myself in Denver, CO in 1994. Getting back into journalism, and especially photography, was always in the back of my mind, but I either couldn't find the job, or as they say, life happened, and it just wasn't in the cards. But, the whole time I have had my camera by my side and have sought to document my life with photos.
Back to April 22, 2010... So, after not really getting any real job leads, my mind (as it is prone to do) started to daydream -- a little at first, and then a lot, and then it became my drive (my wife would say completely unhealthy obsession) to cash it all in and give it a shot. I cashed in a pretty good chunk of my IRA, my parents have kicked in a little change, and I put in my equipment order at B&H Photo out of New York, signed a lease on a studio space, got a tax ID, business license and merchant account, and am still working on all of the little details before moving in on May 1st. I expect to take about two weeks or so to get my sets built, sign made, and collect a few interesting props from Craigslist, garage sales and Hobby Lobby, break in the new lights and equipment, and get my "shingle" hung.
Steph has reluctantly agreed (given in) to allowing me to take a shot at making this happen. And for this I am eternally grateful. She is understandably nervous about how we're going to afford for me to not have a stable income going forward. Add to that the fact that she is REALLY, REALLY ready for a change in careers, and one can only imagine that taking this step has not been a cut and dried process for us. This is all I have ever really wanted to do for nearly all of my life. I was just always either not really in the position to do it, or was too scared to take the leap, or any other number of excuses I could come up with for not following my passion.
Thank you Stephanie for not completely digging in your heels (or at least not divorcing me) and letting me do this, as nervous and reluctant as you are. I promise you won't regret it!
Giddyup!
J Kevin
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