Status Report

For the past week or so I've been focused almost exclusively on my new photography business. I launched a separate blog for it. I created a marketing piece, and slowly but surely the website is coming together.

And now I'm twitching with cabin fever. I set up Friday as my deadline for the website to be completed, and I think I'm on schedule. It's pretty plain, but the more I think about it the more I think plain is right. It's about the pictures, not about the pretty website. Still, teaching myself how to build a website is incredibly slow going. Yet, being self taught is practically a family tradition.

My father had a high-school diploma from an era when such a credential actually meant a person was basically educated. From that platform he became a graphic designer in an era when it was a tactical skill combined with art. An artists wasn't a real artist, my father told me, until he could draw a perfect circle freehand in one swipe. My father was such an artist. In my little hometown, there was no one else who painted the signs for the local businesses. Every year the city hired him to design and paint the welcoming billboard. Although he made almost no money, he was a local celebrity and a self-made man.

My mother married early, at the age of fifteen. At that time, such girls were not allowed to continue high school with the rest of the kids. That marriage ended and shortly after that she married my father. When I was five they divorced and my mother enrolled in bookkeeping classes at the local vocational college. So, somewhere in there she must have gotten her GED. At any rate, from those humble beginnings she worked herself up to controller of a major service organization in a major metropolitan area.

With those two role models, I still have some pretty high standards to meet -- even with a masters degree and computers giving me a headstart.

Tomorrow I will be officially unemployed for two months. I've interviewed for three different positions. I'm waiting to hear about two of them, but I don't think I'm the preferred candidate. This disappoints me only on the competitive level. The truth is that I don't really want the jobs. The corporate ladder is something I've climbed. With my little BFA in theater and an MA in writing I worked my way up to senior management. I've done it.

Now the focus has to turn to the next level of education and building my own business. The peaks of those two mountains are pretty steep from where I sit at the moment, but I am firmly in the foothills and progressing. The priority right now is the website. The printed material is ready to go and its just a matter of finding the most effective printer.

Then it's turning to the writing sample and the PhD applications.