ChrisHeathcote wrote in post #18781069
Back to a previous post about finding the time. I have to admit to being one who struggles. I consider myself fairly young (well 40 in a few months), married with a young disabled son. Both myself and my wife working full time (40ish hours) as Regional Managers for large companies, this means that Mon-Fri we are more like ships passing as we are regularly away from home overnight. All these things combined means that when it comes to weekends, family time is important so most of my outings are with family, with me hanging back to take photos and running to catch up.
On a separate note, having read many of the posts, I have admit to being rather un-educated, left school at 16 straight into work and have worked my way up from the bottom in my industry. I have finally realised my career and employment goal. So I am looking forward to 2019. I guess my only regret now is not getting a degree of some sort as this will hinder me progressing much further. I’ve looked into fixing this, however at the moment I can’t see this happening due to the reasons in the first paragraph.
I give you a lot of credit for not allowing education to hold you back. Much too often you see people that are complacent and don’t look to advance their careers, often saying that they won’t be able to make moves because of lack of education or lack of experience. It’s true though that education shouldn’t stop when you get that degree and that you can always find the time to continue. When my wife was going through nursing school at her community college, it was not uncommon to see many of her classmates in their 40’s or even 50’s.
I’ve found that you also have to take time to make sure you’re engaged in the process and not just taking pictures. Last summer I remember taking my family, my nephew who had come for the year from Korea, and my mom up to Newport, RI. Drove th family car up there 3 hours. Played on the beach, ate a good lunch, and did some sightseeing. I was running around like a madman trying to take pictures of the kids playing, them running around, etc, that by the time I got home that night after a 3 hour drive back I felt exhausted. But I couldn’t really remember what we did, what I had eaten for lunch, or even that we had stopped to eat ice cream. I ended up taking maybe 200-300 shots, of which 10-20 were really worthwhile, but I didn’t enjoy the trip. Now I try to tell myself to take the camera out, take a dozen or so pictures, then put it away and enjoy, repeat when needed, instead of walking around with it holstered and ready to shoot.