No one wants to be without a job. Unfortunately, in these times, a job is no longer the given right it once seemed to be. If you are out of work, finding a job is a job unto itself as some of my friends and some of you will attest. But if you are one of those 14.5 million out of work, why not take advantage of the gift you've been given. Something you have that those of us with jobs may not- time.
Godin had another great post today that I found incredibly inspiring. The idea of this post was that if you are a recent college grad having trouble finding work, stop and think about all the things you could be learning about and building for yourself while you are out of work- start and run an online community, self-publish a book, write a newsletter or blog about an industry you care about, etc. You get the idea. You can find his post in it's entirety
here.
This got me thinking. If I was out of work, what would I want to work on to help create some positive momentum towards living a photographic life. Plenty of things, but off the top of my head here are a few that any of us could do if we had more time:
- Devote more time to blogging or journaling
- Develop your portfolio
- Create a new website
- Figure out how to better use social networking for self-promotion
- Join and participate in more online photographic communities
- Seek out a mentor
- Challenge yourself to complete a 100 Strangers project
- Get your work shown in a public space
- Put together a book of your work through Blurb, My Publisher, etc.
- Teach photography to kids
- Go back to shooting film to mix things up
- Shoot, shoot, shoot
I can think of plenty more but you get the point. As Seth said, treat your list like a job. Get up every morning and put a lot of effort into it. If you're out of work and would like to pursue photography as a career, now might be the perfect time to find out what lies down that path. If you do have a job but you're not real happy with it, maybe a leave of absence makes sense. How much could you accomplish if you had 6-8 weeks to work on your list. I don't know, but this struck me in such a way that I'm real tempted to find out...
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