What’s your job? Do you really need to be there 12 months of the year? Why? Maybe you don’t.
When Leah first suggested that we sell our things and go all nomadic – I said no. Not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I didn’t think I could do it. We spent the last 5 years building a wedding photography business. Along with our gigantic house (well the rent was a little gigantic), I was paying rent on a 1,000 sq. ft. studio, a glass office in midtown Atlanta, our son was in preschool, and Leah was also in a lease for her meditation center space.
But wedding photography requires me to be present. I kind of have to be there that day of the wedding to photograph it.
A quick search of what ex-pats, travelers, and all of those people that ‘left their day jobs to live their dreams’ will leave you thinking that the only options are to be already rich, a writer/blogger that now has to sell their own brand of self-help-you-too-can-travel program, travel photographer, English/language teacher, or some kind of web designer/programmer. With an overwhelming majority of them hustling their way as “travel bloggers”.
As amazing as ‘travel blogger’ sounds – most of them have to be traveling All. The. Time.
That’s not how we as a family wanted to be traveling. We wanted to stay in a different place maybe a month at a time or more. Slow travel. It’s one thing to binge for a weekend or week every now and then when it’s a vacation – but changing cities every few days all the time isn’t for the three of us. So we’re slow travelers.
But back to the subject of work.
I realized that since Leah and I were not going to immediately be making money from writing/blogging, or selling our own packaged program to show people how to ‘live their dreams everyday’ – we had to come up with a different option.
Back to wedding photography. I soon realized that I only have to be present THAT DAY. Over the past five years I had booked many weddings over the phone, or Skype, without having an in person sales meeting. I just had to do that 100% of the time now. In the past I would just book any wedding, any time. My ‘wedding season’ has literally been 12 months of the year before.
This is our first year doing all of this. Things worked out so that we just naturally have a two month break in July and August. Then I photograph weddings every weekend until the end of November, and then nothing again for a few months. I know the idea of a real ‘wedding season’ is nothing new for other photographers – but for me – for someone who worked weddings all the time – it’s a revelation.
I’m a seasonal worker now. I do the exact same job but my mindset has finally changed. I know – I’m a little slow so give me a break alright?
Sure there are other things that make it more possible but I still have the same job. Things like not spending money on so many clothes to impress people at the office, or shopping to ‘entertain’ us.
And while we figure out the transition to whatever is next, income-wise, this works. This enables us to do what we’re doing. Traveling and living where we want, unencumbered by a 12 month lease, city traffic, time sucking errands, and all of the bills associated with regular city life.
And still – although ‘travel blogger’ sounds like it would be a great gig – we’ve had to figure out how to do this if that job never does work out. What if we don’t ever get famous enough on instagram/twitter/our blog to make a living just traveling. I guess we’ll keep figuring it out.
mark
Latest posts by mark (see all)
- Changing Plans is Not Failure - January 2, 2016
- Advice: DO NOT GIVE UP - August 1, 2015
- Working Hard at Not Working Hard - July 25, 2015