Four weeks and two days after my hysterectomy, I am finally feeling okay enough to do some light exercise. So, today:
five minutes on the stationary bike
20 chest fly’s
15 reps of my five physical therapy stretch band arm exercises
I’m feeling pretty great about all that, if a little tired after.
Jared and I got out to the lake last night and I got a sort-of interesting shot with the help of some lens flare:
I was feeling sort of bummed last night. At the lake, I also tested some of my lenses on one of my cameras that has been fussy about its autofocus capabilities lately…..as in, sometimes the autofocus doesn’t work. I’d been planning to sell one of my cameras to help pay down some of our debt, but obviously I can’t sell a camera that might not be at its best. And I would send it to Edison, NJ for repair if I could reliably get the problem to replicate but it doesn’t always malfunction. So when I took this photo, I was sort of in a mood. The lens flare, though somewhat interesting, also captured the hazy frustration I was feeling.
But this morning, I remembered that I do have a good number of manual focus lenses: I love my Minolta and my Cinelux lenses! And, the camera works just fine in manual focus. So, it appears that moving forward I will simply have a manual focus Fuji GFX camera and a GFX camera that I use my native lenses with. Not ideal for my plan to pay down our debt, but it does make use of my current gear and is probably a pretty darn good plan moving forward.
Sometimes I have brief flickers of just selling all my photo gear and getting out of photography altogether. I know that is not likely healthy, and I know I’d likely just want to start up again probably less than a year after I got out.
I’ve been struggling with my identity lately, and I know why.
In early adulthood, I associated my identity with my profession. It was not a healthy association, I realize, but it’s what happened.
And then, I qualified for SSDI based on my mental health needs. And so all of a sudden, there was no professional life, and no prospect for one.
And then, I found photography as a mental health outlet.
But then, I took on the idea that I should be a professional photographer, that THAT should be my professional life and identity.
And for the better part of eight years on and off, I have somewhat pigeonholed myself into a part-time version of just that: professional photographer.
Except, now it’s time to do away with the photography business.
I have considered selling some of my gear and downgrading to less bulky and expensive gear in the aftermath, both to pay down some debt but also to sort of step away from the role of professional, in gear as well as identity.
But the reality is: I will always be a photographer, whether I make any money from the endeavor, or not. It’s part of who I am at this point.
And, I absolutely adore my cameras. They are big, but they are big because they are medium format and as far as medium format goes, they are not that big.
And I love the bokeh, and all my lenses– both brand and adapted.
Jared and I have taken a number of steps in the past month to be much more fiscally responsible. Closing down the photography business will help with that, as well. The best thing I can do is not acquire more gear, and continue enjoying and using the equipment I have. Offloading even a portion wouldn’t help in the ways I wish, as trading out gear is always a losing proposition – I definitely know that by now.
It’s hard to quantify and medical and pet expenses made it such that last month we still spent more than planned. But in the last month we have eliminated YouTube TV, Netflix, eight other entertainment type memberships, we spent $501.59 less in groceries between April and May, we spent $52.12 less in eating out. I made the decision this weekend to migrate the hosting of this website to another much cheaper service and that saved us another $100 a year.
We’ve made pretty immediate progress on getting our spending in order and that is much needed and promising. Our spending has long been out of control and the photography business contributed greatly to that end, unfortunately. It is no exaggeration to say that we incurred significant costs to support my business expenses, unfortunately.
It is rather astounding though: I have been shooting with my GFX 50sIIs (well, one of them anyway) for 3.5 years. That’s longer than I have stuck with any single camera ever, since the original Sony Alpha NEX 5N. So there is some progress there, at least.
This identity struggle though: it is rough. I struggle to embrace the role of housewife and mother. I’ve raised a grown son and have another teen and a tween too, and the role of mother has never really felt completely natural, truth be told.
And I do know why it is: I idolized my grandmother and my aunt and my mother, and they all worked their whole lives.
It does not feel natural that I should not do the same. Even though Jared tells me it is fine that I do not, and that my value to him and to our family is in no way tied to my income.
So anyway, that’s the core of one of my major life’s struggles. I do not know if I would struggle in the same way if money were easier for us or not. I like to think that if we didn’t struggle with money, I would worry less about working. But somehow, I suspect that isn’t as relevant an issue as I often believe.
But, at least for today, I’ve settled the issue of whether I should keep the gear, and whether or not at my core I am still a photog.
Also, as an aside: Jared had the idea (that has given him much laughter over the last several days) at the Marina a few days ago that we should make a Duck Butt Blog. It came about when I was bemoaning the fact that the ducks were all putting their heads underwater to fish the other night, making them less picturesque. So I took photos of them with their heads underwater.
So, I came home, and not an hour and a half later, https://duckbutt.blog came into being. It’s a thing and will be an ongoing project. It makes Jared exceedingly happy to have this project even though I am the one who is doing the work, and apparently there is an audience for such, judging by the reaction on WordPress.
I love YNAB! You Need a Budget is the budgeting software Jared and I have been using since early 2013.
YNAB uses a zero-based budget which means you budget every dollar you have. You can set up custom categories, and track all of your financial accounts. The software is made to link to your accounts, though I do not have it set up this way because I like to put in every transaction manually, like an old-school check register.
Our categories are pretty basic and haven’t changed much over the years, since we started. There is a Giving section, subdivided into Charitable Giving (my favorites are Atlanta Habitat and the Atlanta Ronald McDonald House) and Offerings for church. Next is a section for credit card payments, subdivided by each card. Credit cards are debt, but there is a separate Debt section subdivided into our Car Payment and Mortgage.
Next is Savings, subdivided into Emergency Savings, Home Maintenance, Auto Maintenance, Vacation, and Boy Allowance. After that is Monthly Bills, which includes Electric and Gas, Water and Trash, Insurance, Phone, Internet, Entertainment (which includes all our streaming services), and Web Hosting.
Then comes Every Day Expenses, which includes Groceries, Restaurants, Gas for the car, Medical, Clothing, Personal Grooming (Haircuts), Pet Care, Date Night, School Expenses, and Surprises. Interest on the credit cards gets lumped into Surprises.
Next is a section for Business Expenses— Jared’s work expenses,and my photography business expenses.
Finally, comes Annual Expenses. This includes Gifts, Safe Deposit Box Fee, Car Registration, Christmas, Taxes (this mostly refers to my estimated taxes), memberships (this includes the recreation center when our membership is current, along with Amazon Prime), and Family Photos.
As you put in transactions and categorize them, YNAB automatically adjusts category amounts accordingly.
You can set target amounts, both by total amount and by the monthly amount needed, which is supposed to help those who want to forecast. Sometimes I cheat and forecast a month or two anyway, though, based on anticipated income and any goals we may have.
Anyway, this is our budgeting software and how I have it set up! I love YNAB!
You can read more about why I write about what I write about here, especially when I write about my budgeting strategies.
Financial (and perspective) overhaul — I am writing today from the skate park with Oliver.
Today I said goodbye to the Fuji GW690III film camera, as well as the Fuji X30 digital camera. They got sold at KEH to pay the difference for the iPhone 15 Pro Max I traded my old iPhone 13 Mini for last week. Verizon gave me a very decent deal on the trade-in, but there was a difference and the sale of these two cameras that basically always sit unused more than made up for the deficit.
When I bought the Fuji GW690III, I thought I would take it regularly to sessions and weddings. It came along like twice, but it never found a solid place in my work flow.
And to be completely honest, the iPhone 15 Pro Max replaces the “purse camera” function that the Fuji X30 served.
The Christmas break was a time of introspection and expense assessment, along with re-assessing both current and future priorities. It has been a healthy introspection period and Jared and I (mostly me) made a lot of changes to current expense obligations that will serve us well in 2024.
I have been a domain name hoarder for a long, long time. I won’t say how many I had, but it was a lot. For no good reason. Well, I thought they were good reasons when I bought them, but those purposes no longer serve me. So the great majority of them will lapse this year. I am 100% okay with that fact. I purged over the series of several days, bit by bit. It was sort of like shedding layers of an identity that no longer serves me.
I projected our income for the year, taking all things equal as though there would be no business income to rely on, and then I projected all known expenses and obligations for 2024, both personal and business. Then, I re-assessed every expense we have had for the past couple of years. 2024 will be the year of actually consuming the online education resources I have already bought into but may or may not have already used. There will be no more gear purchases unless something is sold, and that will not happen this year as everything is very useful at this point, unless I do decide to sell the gf 35-70 but I doubt it.
I still have to do it but I have already made a list of the regular groceries we have purchased and like to have on hand on a regular basis, but I am going to go through and itemize them by price and make out a realistic grocery purchase rotation. We have to be careful because grocery budget does get out of hand for us. Our restaurant budget has been out of control the last several months, as well.
Financial (and perspective) overhaul — Part of what has helped with this finance overhaul has been the solid step toward self-acceptance of the fact that, for all purposes that matter, I am a retired person at 44 years of age and our budget should reflect that fact, and there is zero shame in it, either. This photography business is fun and I love that I can do this, but the reality is that it is likely that I will be on SSDI for the rest of my life (well, until it converts to regular Social Security when I reach traditional retirement age), and 12.5 years into this SSDI journey I am finally coming to a place of self-acceptance with it.
Next to work on is getting over the shame that it has taken me over a decade of my life to accept that I am essentially retired. But that is work for another day.
