Oh hell.
It's nearly April, and I already feel so much slipping away from me. Back in January, I vowed to take a photography class and have photo essays/submissions ready for May and...I have done none of that.
I've been stuck in a photography rut for a long, long time. Not just the "I don't want to touch my camera" burnout, but also a technique rut. In which I do the same things over and over again. My camera is perpetually in automatic mode, I use my 55mm lens constantly, and I never use my flash. It's not a "style," it's a habit, and a bad one. I recently went through the photos I took for The Scotsman during his black belt test and the photos I took for my brother of Gagarin Way and was totally disappointed with how they all came out.
Above: Two examples of my incompetence and amateur habits coming back to haunt me.
*Sigh*
I had plans to take a spring photography class with Chester County night school, which cost roughly $140, but that plan disintegrated when my finances took a nose dive.
I am feeling so frustrated with my life lately. Since we're on lockdown, I can openly bitch that a large portion of this is my job. I can't tell you how miserable I am right now. I don't mean to sound churlish, because ultimately this place has taught me a lot and I'm grateful to have a job at all in this economy, but seriously: I have had enough. I'm tired of the yo-yo-ing between having nothing to do to OHMYGODDOITALLRIGHTNOW, seriously sick of the crappy treatment my department gets, I am not getting paid nearly enough, and I am completely over the lack of competent communication here.
About two weeks ago one of my editors pulled me into a meeting because I was "on the [blog name] team." To which, I said, "Um." Because, literally, for the first ten minutes of this meeting I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. Seems my company decided to launch a new blog and I was supposed to work on the photos and images for it except no one decided to tell me. Or my manager, for that matter. The editor kept saying [blog name] over and over again and I kept giving him confused looks because to me he was just stringing three random nouns together. This would have been bad enough, but added onto that, they needed photos right away and after my initial scramble to find images I realized that I (1) had not been given the proper URL for the
site, and (2) I didn't have a login or password for the site to upload photos anyway.
Can you imagine how embarrassing all of that was for me? Can you imagine how frustrated my manager felt when I explained what was going on? When she complained about it, she was told that the reason we weren't notified about the new site or my duties, was because "so much changes with these sites and they don't want to bother [us] until things are settled." Which I called out to be the lamest fucking excuse ever. That blog has a team of, like, 6 people, all of whom were consistently kept in the loop while the site was developed. How fucking hard is it to add me or my manager to the email list? Or if not through the whole development of the site, than shooting an initial email of "Hey heads up we're launching a new blog. Site name and launch date TBD." It took me less than a minute to type that all out, and yet, they can't be buggered.
While I realize that communication problems occur at every office, shit like this has been happening nonstop for over 2 years now. It's gone from annoying to obnoxious to frustrating and now it feels blatantly disrespectful. The communication issue has been really getting my goat, because we voice our concerns and complain about it, we're assured that things will get better...and we continue to get the shaft. This is especially galling as my company publishes a couple publications dedicated to better communication with employees. Hello, irony! Nice to see you again.
Worst of all, I have the creepy feeling that I am on a sinking ship. I think we jumped on the internet bandwagon way too late (well, duh), and I am confident we are marketing a lot of our products incorrectly. The fact that we are still, in this day and age, selling our publications via telemarketing and there is no way to purchase subscriptions online, is beyond retarded.
So needless to say, I've been looking for a new job. I had thought with my master's degree I would sail into a new position, however, given the state of the economy, I might as well have gotten a master's degree in etching stone tablets. The publishing jobs are few and far between, and so many of them are beyond what I feel is my experience, either in terms of design or web requirements. If you know of a job working for either a book or magazine publisher* (university, textbook, medical, whatever) doing production, proofreading, design, layout and light web work, PLEASE, let me know about it. I am desperate. Also, anyone want to hold a résumé party? Mine needs work.
Despite all of these frustrations, I am trying to be patient. Both with myself and the universe at large. "Different frogs, different times," as Gareth Keenan would say.
I finally gave up and renegotiated my student loans, which has been the main source of my financial troubles. I had been dragging my feet about doing it because I was worried that doing so would add more interest/take me longer to pay them off, but finally I had no choice. I'm glad I did it, and it's already working out much better for me. Plus, although my payments will go up in 2 years, it will still take me the same amount of time and interest to pay them off. Woo!
Because I now have a tighter reign on finances, I can look into taking a photography class this summer perhaps. I can also start making serious moves towards Irish dancing again. Back in February at the Irish/Scottish festival, I located a school in Bridgeport that's willing to teach adults and my initial reaction was, "I'm there!" But, while the lessons are reasonably priced (for Irish dancing) I discovered that I need new soft shoes which can be anywhere from $40-$65 and need to be shipped from Ireland. So... dancing took a back seat too. Which is a shame because I've been faltering on gym attendance (exercise is so fucking boring, I hate it), and my fat is creeping back to dangerous levels. But now! I think I may be back in business!
As far as photography goes, I'm trying to give myself a break. Like, Rome wasn't built in a day. And occasionally, when I'm not paying attention and relaxing with my camera, I can accidentally take a really nice photo:
Above: Sarah Rose, giggling at our 12th Annual Chinese New Year Lunch
I've just scheduled two new photo jobs with the N Crowd in April, one of which is for their Anniversary show. $ for photos = A very good thing.
This weekend is a special Silver Stars field trip to see Silver RavenWolf at Celtic Myth and Moonlight, with stops at Bey's Rock Shop and possibly Zern's Farmer's market. I've never been to any of these places, and as I was considering the trip this morning I had the urge that I should bring my camera, for fun. FUN and my CAMERA. In the same thought process! I call this progress.
Spring is here, so I'm feeling optimistic about possibilities. I'm working on an über seekrit project with Stephanie and Melissa, which shall be grand fun. Inis Nua has a reading on Monday night, which I'm looking forward to. And then their spring show, Bedbound, opens next month and I suspect it shall be awesome. I'm getting a pedicure tonight to make my toes purty. I get to try on and purchase my bridesmaid dress for Renee's wedding so very soon. We're ditching crap-ass Verizon and getting Comcast and thus, cable again. Gary is back to doing art work so I plan to be inspired by him. Spring is a time of new beginnings, yes? Then let's get started.
*I am also open to suggestions for where to look for a job. I'm currently combing Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, BookJobs.com, HigherEdJobs.com (for University Presses and alumni/PR publications), and GraduateJobs.com Any other suggestions on where I can look?
It's nearly April, and I already feel so much slipping away from me. Back in January, I vowed to take a photography class and have photo essays/submissions ready for May and...I have done none of that.
I've been stuck in a photography rut for a long, long time. Not just the "I don't want to touch my camera" burnout, but also a technique rut. In which I do the same things over and over again. My camera is perpetually in automatic mode, I use my 55mm lens constantly, and I never use my flash. It's not a "style," it's a habit, and a bad one. I recently went through the photos I took for The Scotsman during his black belt test and the photos I took for my brother of Gagarin Way and was totally disappointed with how they all came out.
Above: Two examples of my incompetence and amateur habits coming back to haunt me.
*Sigh*
I had plans to take a spring photography class with Chester County night school, which cost roughly $140, but that plan disintegrated when my finances took a nose dive.
I am feeling so frustrated with my life lately. Since we're on lockdown, I can openly bitch that a large portion of this is my job. I can't tell you how miserable I am right now. I don't mean to sound churlish, because ultimately this place has taught me a lot and I'm grateful to have a job at all in this economy, but seriously: I have had enough. I'm tired of the yo-yo-ing between having nothing to do to OHMYGODDOITALLRIGHTNOW, seriously sick of the crappy treatment my department gets, I am not getting paid nearly enough, and I am completely over the lack of competent communication here.
About two weeks ago one of my editors pulled me into a meeting because I was "on the [blog name] team." To which, I said, "Um." Because, literally, for the first ten minutes of this meeting I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. Seems my company decided to launch a new blog and I was supposed to work on the photos and images for it except no one decided to tell me. Or my manager, for that matter. The editor kept saying [blog name] over and over again and I kept giving him confused looks because to me he was just stringing three random nouns together. This would have been bad enough, but added onto that, they needed photos right away and after my initial scramble to find images I realized that I (1) had not been given the proper URL for the
site, and (2) I didn't have a login or password for the site to upload photos anyway.
Can you imagine how embarrassing all of that was for me? Can you imagine how frustrated my manager felt when I explained what was going on? When she complained about it, she was told that the reason we weren't notified about the new site or my duties, was because "so much changes with these sites and they don't want to bother [us] until things are settled." Which I called out to be the lamest fucking excuse ever. That blog has a team of, like, 6 people, all of whom were consistently kept in the loop while the site was developed. How fucking hard is it to add me or my manager to the email list? Or if not through the whole development of the site, than shooting an initial email of "Hey heads up we're launching a new blog. Site name and launch date TBD." It took me less than a minute to type that all out, and yet, they can't be buggered.
While I realize that communication problems occur at every office, shit like this has been happening nonstop for over 2 years now. It's gone from annoying to obnoxious to frustrating and now it feels blatantly disrespectful. The communication issue has been really getting my goat, because we voice our concerns and complain about it, we're assured that things will get better...and we continue to get the shaft. This is especially galling as my company publishes a couple publications dedicated to better communication with employees. Hello, irony! Nice to see you again.
Worst of all, I have the creepy feeling that I am on a sinking ship. I think we jumped on the internet bandwagon way too late (well, duh), and I am confident we are marketing a lot of our products incorrectly. The fact that we are still, in this day and age, selling our publications via telemarketing and there is no way to purchase subscriptions online, is beyond retarded.
So needless to say, I've been looking for a new job. I had thought with my master's degree I would sail into a new position, however, given the state of the economy, I might as well have gotten a master's degree in etching stone tablets. The publishing jobs are few and far between, and so many of them are beyond what I feel is my experience, either in terms of design or web requirements. If you know of a job working for either a book or magazine publisher* (university, textbook, medical, whatever) doing production, proofreading, design, layout and light web work, PLEASE, let me know about it. I am desperate. Also, anyone want to hold a résumé party? Mine needs work.
Despite all of these frustrations, I am trying to be patient. Both with myself and the universe at large. "Different frogs, different times," as Gareth Keenan would say.
I finally gave up and renegotiated my student loans, which has been the main source of my financial troubles. I had been dragging my feet about doing it because I was worried that doing so would add more interest/take me longer to pay them off, but finally I had no choice. I'm glad I did it, and it's already working out much better for me. Plus, although my payments will go up in 2 years, it will still take me the same amount of time and interest to pay them off. Woo!
Because I now have a tighter reign on finances, I can look into taking a photography class this summer perhaps. I can also start making serious moves towards Irish dancing again. Back in February at the Irish/Scottish festival, I located a school in Bridgeport that's willing to teach adults and my initial reaction was, "I'm there!" But, while the lessons are reasonably priced (for Irish dancing) I discovered that I need new soft shoes which can be anywhere from $40-$65 and need to be shipped from Ireland. So... dancing took a back seat too. Which is a shame because I've been faltering on gym attendance (exercise is so fucking boring, I hate it), and my fat is creeping back to dangerous levels. But now! I think I may be back in business!
As far as photography goes, I'm trying to give myself a break. Like, Rome wasn't built in a day. And occasionally, when I'm not paying attention and relaxing with my camera, I can accidentally take a really nice photo:
Above: Sarah Rose, giggling at our 12th Annual Chinese New Year Lunch
I've just scheduled two new photo jobs with the N Crowd in April, one of which is for their Anniversary show. $ for photos = A very good thing.
This weekend is a special Silver Stars field trip to see Silver RavenWolf at Celtic Myth and Moonlight, with stops at Bey's Rock Shop and possibly Zern's Farmer's market. I've never been to any of these places, and as I was considering the trip this morning I had the urge that I should bring my camera, for fun. FUN and my CAMERA. In the same thought process! I call this progress.
Spring is here, so I'm feeling optimistic about possibilities. I'm working on an über seekrit project with Stephanie and Melissa, which shall be grand fun. Inis Nua has a reading on Monday night, which I'm looking forward to. And then their spring show, Bedbound, opens next month and I suspect it shall be awesome. I'm getting a pedicure tonight to make my toes purty. I get to try on and purchase my bridesmaid dress for Renee's wedding so very soon. We're ditching crap-ass Verizon and getting Comcast and thus, cable again. Gary is back to doing art work so I plan to be inspired by him. Spring is a time of new beginnings, yes? Then let's get started.
*I am also open to suggestions for where to look for a job. I'm currently combing Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, BookJobs.com, HigherEdJobs.com (for University Presses and alumni/PR publications), and GraduateJobs.com Any other suggestions on where I can look?
Labels: Catch-up, General Whining, Meh, Photography
2 Comments:
indeed.com
Have you considered looking for jobs outside of Philadelphia? It just seems like a lot of the publishing jobs in the area are the same, with the same troubles, no matter the company.
I've applied to jobs in New Jersey (...shut up) and New York so far. No dice.
I wouldn't mind working remotely, or telecommuting. I'm not finding a whole lot of listings for that either.
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