It doesn’t happen all the time but I do partly remember what I was dreaming about about an hour ago when I woke up. I saw all my colleagues in my last consulting company becoming managers and partners and being happy about it. I on the other hand, was well still trying to figure out what was to become of me. It didn’t feel great. I know what I lost when I left my job. But I don’t know what I am going to get now in life. I didn’t like the certainty of the future that my corporate life offered. But I also don’t like the uncertainty of the future that the now jobless life offers.
The business that I am in at present – wedding photography – is wildly competitive. That doesn’t mean I doubt my survival. But the moment you start working towards surviving, what you do becomes ‘yet another job’. 🙂 And I definitely don’t want myself to turn into a wedding photographer for life. Or even photographer for life. That never was the idea. Wedding photography was a simple means to buy myself more time than my corporate life offered. Without significantly losing up on money. And it has served the purpose so far. I might be good at photography (and since a while, cinematography), but photography is definitely not my sole passion in life. In fact, I am not a ‘passionate’ photographer as some tend to believe.
The idea behind buying more time for myself was to use that time to discover that one thing about which I could care more about, than I cared for consulting. And as far as photography goes, well, I am not very sure if I care more about it than I did about consulting. I mean only if consulting could pay me as much as photography does with just a week’s work every month, I would happily go back to it. But that will never happen. Not even if I become a partner. And that’s why I will never go back to consulting. Or any other full time corporate job. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep doing photography. And that means, my quest to settle down with something I really care about, is a long long road. Full of uncertainties. And these fearful dreams. And I guess it’s still worth it.
So is there anything at all, that I think I would settle down with? Where I don’t feel what I am doing is just for the money (consulting) or time (wedding photography)? I guess, making movies sounds pretty cool at the moment. Pretty inspiring. And very very challenging. I have no clue how to get started in that direction and it is this vagueness that makes some of my nights sleepless. I want to make movies and yet I have not idea how to do that. I am glad that I have at least started to work on short documentaries. But it has its own challenge. No, the problem is not in finding people to make documentary movies on (thanks to the IIT network – I know a bunch of pretty cool people with interesting stories / ideas and companies). The real challenge is in creating anything that is as “interesting” as I would like it to be. Something which you simply can’t stop once you hit that play button. Creating a non-boring story does not come naturally to me, that I have realized. And so I wonder sometimes, will I ever succeed as a documentary film-maker and then as a movie-maker (when I am able to do that)? At this point of time, I only hope that the story-telling skill is something that one can develop over the period of time. And that is the only plan I have for my immediate future. Crazy life! What’s up with you guys? Your jobs keeping you happy? 🙂