Being There

The Eng­lish work­ing class

Some­how, this turned into a crazy week. My life has been one big long crazy week lately, it feels like. Here goes, in reverse order, what went down:

- Met with two cou­ples for wed­dings this sum­mer (fin­gers crossed, they are all awe­some and would be great to work with).

- A photo shoot at the Brook­street Hotel in Kanata. Lamb tagine and the oppor­tu­nity to shoot video made this one extra-fun.
– Pitched a photo show for Fes­ti­val X Ottawa in the fall. Early stages still, but I am optimistic.

- A photo shoot at the Car­leton Uni­ver­sity Art Gallery, which is always inter­est­ing.

- Signed up to play hockey this sum­mer, yay!

Oh, and I went to school some­where in there!  Tomor­row I have an eco­nom­ics pre­sen­ta­tion on the role of immi­grant artists in Canada, and the sit­u­a­tion in Ottawa in particular.

the view from the day bed

It’s hard to keep things in bal­ance, and to be hon­est, a lot of times this year they haven’t been bal­anced. Jug­gling my edu­ca­tion and employ­ment has been the most chal­leng­ing. Although some­times it feels like I am doing nei­ther prop­erly, ulti­mately I’ve been doing a pretty alright job. I’ve learned, from being busy, that a big part of bal­ance is set­ting bound­aries and ask­ing for what you need. This applies in pro­fes­sional cir­cum­stances just as well as it does in the rest of life.

Some things slipped a lit­tle along the way. My house was a mess (I am lucky to live with an under­stand­ing and ridicu­lously tol­er­ant room-mate). The gro­cery sit­u­a­tion was, well, a sit­u­a­tion. My bike wheel was stolen, my land­lord is insane, and I put my foot through a board on the porch. Things were start­ing to fall apart, literally.

At the same time, they are com­ing back together. I am late on two papers, but they will be done, and they will be good ones. I am a bet­ter, more con­fi­dent pho­tog­ra­pher . I have ideas. I know that sounds funny, but the expe­ri­ence of the last year has gal­va­nized my com­mit­ment to pho­tog­ra­phy, and given me insight into what I care about.

I thought, going back to school, that I would have to even­tu­ally choose one or the other, work or school, pho­tog­ra­phy or soci­ol­ogy. They are actu­ally the same thing. I look at pho­tog­ra­phy as soci­ol­ogy, and I look at school as research for pho­tog­ra­phy. The chal­lenge isn’t to choose one thing that I love over the other, it’s to inte­grate the two. The chal­lenge is to find a balance.