Parachute (The Writing Life)

Since I posted the previous post, and got so many interesting replies from readers, I've done more thinking about what I would do if I had resources. And as for what I would want for myself, I come down to two things.

[Warning: Bloviation alert. This post is long and possibly not interesting! Proceed according to your level of boredom. :-) ]

Firstly: a vacation. I would take a vacation. It's hilarious that this didn't even occur to me on Thursday. It's that far removed from my thinking, my consciousness, my normal state of being. The idea just doesn't enter my head. It should have been the first thing I thought of, and it wasn't, it was the last.

I haven't had a proper vacation in almost two decades. It's one thing you can't really do if you're a blogger. I've taken some time off here and there, and I've gone a few places, mainly for family or relationship stuff. But I have to keep the blog going in the interim. If I abandon the blog for days on end, I'll watch the readership dwindle. Some people complain that I don't write about photography enough, but here's the truth: everything goes on the fire. You have to keep the fire burning, and whatever burns has to be thrown on. That's the fact of it. Anything you can find the energy to write about, you write about. And are grateful for.

To take a vacation would be to let the fire go out, at least as long as the blog is how I make my living. My late friend Michael Reichmann was independently wealthy, and he could leave LuLa for a month to go to Antarctica or Iceland and let the chips fall. I never could do that, because I depend on this.

But boy, do I ever need a vacation. Don't get me wrong: I don't work very hard; and I like this work. I used to put in ten, twelve, or fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, but now I seldom reach the standard workday of eight hours, and I take days off. But I can't leave. And I'm depleted. I exist in a continual state of depletion, and have since about 2014. If a real vacation now and then can be said to be "recharging your batteries," a common cliché, then I'm an iPhone that never gets to more than about 15% charge and frequently runs down dead. I'm always in low battery mode. Three months on vacation wouldn't be enough at this point—I can feel that in my bones. It would fly by too fast. I need six. Hell, I need a sabbatical year, is what I need.

No chance of it. No. Chance.

So that would be Job One, the first thing.

Focused concentration
The second thing I'd buy for myself would be the lovely luxurious leisure to write something else.

I have a relatively low capacity for writing, I'm guessing. "Writing energy," you might call it. Anthony Trollope or Joyce Carol Oates I ain't. Hemingway wrote 600 words a day, and I can beat that; Stephen King thinks 2,000 words is one day's work, and I could do that sporadically (this post is 2,000 words) but I would have trouble sustaining it. A thousand to 1,500 words a day is about my comfort zone. The big problem I've had in recent years is that the blog soaks up most of my writing energy, and does it persistently, meaning, daily. That's fine—in fact, it's fun—if that's all I'm doing. But if I'm trying to do something else too, then the blog becomes the interruption for that other thing. That's the current crux of my dilemma, and has been for some time.

It's interesting—it's not so much that I can't spare the time or effort for another thousand words every day on a different project; it's the nature of the involvement. Maybe the analogy would be...I don't know, maybe those guys who have two wives and two families, neither of which knows about the other. (I'm only speculating about that, I hasten to assure you!) When I'm cranking on the blog, I work on it all day whether I'm actually writing or not—reading and sorting comments, keeping up correspondences, doing research, planning in my head what to write the next day. I go to bed thinking of ideas and I wake up in the morning pretty much knowing what I'm going to write about. It's a more or less continual and ongoing involvement in my head. In my thinking. I do as much work on it at the pool table or doing the dishes or driving as as I do in front of the computer.

When I'm writing, I get into this very isolated meditative state where I lose track of the world and everything else. I lose the sense of time; I have to set alarms if I want to remember a looming appointment. It's a state of focused concentration. My son is a rock climber, and I've read accounts of rock climbing that make sense to me because of what it feels like to write: climbers talk about the state of focused concentration they have to get into. They have one job and they need to be very present for it. They need to not make mistakes. They don't think about anything else. Writing is similar to those descriptions, except that you can make all the mistakes you want. When you're doing it, it's all there is. Interruptions are brutal, not because you can't break for ten minutes or half an hour, but because they break the state of mind you were in when you were there with it. And later you have to get back into it. It's like being awakened in the middle of the night: you then have the task before you of getting back to sleep. Sometimes that's easy, and sometimes not.

And when I try to do other projects, I need to do the same thing. I need to get into that same 24–7 preoccupation, with regular (uninterrupted!) stints immersed in the actual writing. That's when the blog goes from being my main project to being an interruption of the other thing. I finished a first chapter of the story of my son, but while I was doing it I was just immersed in it, thinking about it all day long. It's like you get in this flow state with it. And it's all you want to work on. I did a good job with that chapter (want to read it?), but it took a lot of false starts and a number of rewrites and reorganizations and I neglected the blog while I was working on it.

The big problem is, you can't switch from one project to the other. Or at least, I can't. I need to be working on the one project I'm working on (I think John Camp warned me about this). When I wrote "The Secret Art of the Family Photo," I got all immersed in it. Even though my editor was extraordinarily supportive and patient, I was still pretty insecure about it. It's been a very long time since I was edited...actually I never really have been. So being edited was for the most part a new experience. And (if I'm honest about it) I was cowed to be writing for such a prestigious publication. I never get stage fright writing for a big audience; not a hint of it; but I got stage fright as a writer for the first time in my life when I was writing that article. And I got preoccupied with it for several months. It wasn't the magazine's fault; it was entirely due to me following my own interest in it, and allowing myself to get preoccupied by the process and my feelings about it as we went along. But, during that time, I let the blog slide badly. A classic case of plain old neglect. My attention wasn't on it.

When I finished the article and it was published, I "looked up" from my extended reverie...and discovered that traffic on The Online Photographer had fallen off a cliff. Declined severely. I freaked out. Truly. I had a bout of panic and anxiety that lasted several weeks. I don't have a backup parachute; I don't have help in life. I have no wife whose income could help sustain the household through periods of my own unemployment. One parent is gone and the other is in year 12 of dementia. I have no savings to speak of—just a very large emergency fund and almost no debt. If I screw up, I'm screwed, and that's the end of it. Free soloing—climbing without a safety rope—I guess would be the way to extend that earlier metaphor. In the month or two after that article was published, I thought my biggest problem was going to be selling this house quickly enough to avoid losing my equity. I still feel like I'm walking the sword's edge by hanging on to the house. My savings are at a low ebb and danger is on the horizon.

I'm happy to report that TOP's readership numbers have been going up again, especially lately. No idea if that's due to the announced demise of DPR, or whether I'm writing more articles that people want to read, or what, but it's a good thing. So the dark clouds aren't getting any closer. They're receding a little. But they're out there. I'm keeping a watchful eye.

Anyway: what I haven't worked out is how to keep up TOP and also write something else. That's the problem. It's not that I'd have to let TOP die if I concentrated on something else; I'd hire several other writers to contribute (I even know who they are already), and I'd write a few things myself on a regular basis. But I'd also have an editor to moderate the comments and do all the scut work, and I'd take time off whenever I wanted to, or whenever I needed to in order to get immersed in the other writing projects.

I don't even need to win the lottery. All I need to do is write one book that succeeds, or find another gig that pays the bills. Then I'd keep TOP going on a more occasional basis and still survive.

...And that's possible. I really believe it is. I just have to figure out how to get there from here. The solution is out there. I've been working on it; I just haven't found it yet. I can picture a different situation very clearly. Making the leap from here to there seems to be the difficult thing. You might say I could shut down the blog and work for a year on a book, but that would be the equivalent of jumping out of a plane with no parachute, expecting to find a parachute somewhere on the way down. Not a smart plan!

So my answer to my question—what would I do if I had money?—actually has nothing to do with the car and the mortgage and all the other crap I wrote about the other day. If I took care of just these two things somehow, all that other stuff would fall into place. Material things are just details. They don't matter in and of themselves. They are things that fall into place when you have the important things worked out.

As for what I would do for others if I had money, one day I will write that post. It'll be far out! Very far out. I have some pretty involved and atypical daydreams along those lines.

Coda
And by the way, thanks. This has helped immensely. Writing about it has clarified my thinking in a useful way. I write most posts for you, but these last two posts were for me. I needed to think this through. Right now I feel like it worked. Thank you for listening.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Aaron: "Reading this reminds me of the difference between what I imagine the 'writing life' or the 'photographic life' of professionals to be and what they actually are (assuming one is not independently wealthy). I imagine for both a state of settled focus, light and free but dedicated. I imagine ideas and words magically turning into good writing or events or scenes magically turning into good photos. I imagine a lot of coffee and quiet afternoons at a desk in front of a big window with pen and paper or early mornings and late evenings strolling through wild places with a rugged camera and lens. I imagine myself as settled and at peace as a professional writer or photographer.

"The reality, from what I gather from you and from others is far different. Of course those moments of 'flow' or focus do happen for you. And of course the work itself means something to you and can be even joyful. But, what's invisible to the rest of us is the unending work and anxiety of trying to make a living. I've read more than once that for most professional photographers something like 10–15% of their time is photographing and the rest is the business side of it. And of course, even that doesn't capture the razors edge that I imagine many pros are constantly on. Their paycheck is only as good as the next assignment or wedding or show or blog post or whatever.

"I'm thankful that I have a day job that I enjoy and that gives me and my family some financial security (although I wouldn't say we're rich). We can pay the bills, take a vacation here and there, pay for the kids braces, all without worry as long as we plan. And there's some left over for me to play with cameras! I don't have the guts or the mental fortitude to cut it as anything else.

"So, respect to you and other creators out there producing for us work worth engaging, all while trying to scrape out a living. Seriously, respect."

Dave Millier: "I got that from my one-man-business builder/kitchen fitter. He was constantly juggling 20 balls at the same time and there were no reserves, he had to keep it all going constantly, seven days a week. All was fine as long as he kept the juggling going, but it would all come crashing down if he took his eye off the ball for a moment. Self employment is not for the faint-of-heart."

Gavin Paterson: "Mike, 75-year-old here: you’ll never win the lottery. You’ve already found what you’re good at, and it’s not writing books, or you’d have already done it. I’m lucky; I’ve travelled the world, lived overseas, have a wonderful family, and have photography as my passion and hobby, not my livelihood. What energises me is not what I could have done in the past, but what I can do now and for the foreseeable future. Dreams of painting, writing, etc., have been subsumed by the decades-long preoccupation of day to day living, which has not let up in retirement. You have a style that has me contributing to your Paetron account, and a lot of my interest in your blog is the feedback and response that you generate and develop in your online community. I believe you should foster your community, not yearn for the unobtainable."

Jeff1000: "Use AI to write your blogs. 😃👍 "

ChatGTP replies: Thank you for your comment about using AI to write blog posts. While AI technology has certainly come a long way and can be very helpful in many areas, there are certain aspects of writing that still require the human touch.

One of the primary goals of blog posts is to engage with readers and create a sense of connection. While an AI program may be able to generate content quickly and efficiently, it may not be able to capture the nuances of human emotion or create a personal connection with the reader in the same way a human writer can.

Additionally, writing is a creative process that often requires a deep understanding of the topic and a certain level of expertise. While an AI program may be able to generate content based on pre-existing data, it may not be able to provide the same level of insight or analysis as a human writer who has spent time researching and understanding the topic.

That being said, there are certainly ways in which AI technology can be integrated into the writing process to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the final product. For example, AI programs can help with tasks such as grammar and spelling checking, generating topic ideas, and even assisting with research.

In conclusion, while AI technology can be a useful tool for certain aspects of writing, it is important to remember that the human touch is still essential for creating engaging, insightful, and truly impactful blog posts.

Comments

[Robert Roaldi]

I joke with friends that it I ever had a windfall, I'd have 2 immediate priorities. First, I would only ever fly first class again because flying today is repulsive and anything you can do to make it better is worth it. We wanted cheap flights; well we got them, I hope you're happy. Second, I'd go to Hertz or Avis or one of those guys and I contract with them to bring me a new car every first of the month. I've never buy or maintain or repair my own car again. I like driving, I even sort of like cars, I've been a participant in motorsports, I just hate owning cars.

[Bruce Bordner]

It looks like the editor of nikonrumors went on vacation and look what happened: "I am currently on a plane, but you can see the leaked Nikon Z8 camera..." I can see this happening if you go on vacation. How would you resist? It's not just the writing, it's human communication that you need.
Obviously you could continue this while being elsewhere, but I don't think it would be easy for you. I don't know what you call this writing, but I look for it every day. I'm bored but extremely picky.

[Dan Khong]

Mike

You wrote: I don't work very hard; and I like this work.

This means you do not need a proper vacation. Anyway, how does one define "proper" for a vacation?

IMO, a proper vacation is usually a boring one because it's too well organsied and planned ahead. My best vacations are those free and easy ones when I don't know what I will do the next day after waking up from a nice sleep with lots of dreams.

Just sharin'

Dan K.

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

As I have said many times while posting here, TOP is really the only specific content that I read online. I basically have browser tabs open for gmail, calendar, facebook, instagram, the Boston Globe and TOP. I have not navigated to Amazon or B&H without linking through TOP in years - and I think I purchase a lot. I hope that has contributed something!

But I wish you monetized the site more. I wish you did more print sales here. More book sales. And also I think there is a market here for individualized photographic feedback. I would love to have a call with you to just look at my images together and hear your feedback. Not a portfolio review, but general impressions and feedback from your perspective. One hour session. You might spend 30 minutes prior to call looking through images and preparing some thoughts. But that's it. Maybe $250?

I would also love for you to go on vacation. But I wish you could travel and write. The travel would probably inspire the writing and some photography. Make it happen.

[MikeR]

There are things one might do that demand 100% attention, else you're badly hurt or dead. You mentioned rock climbing. My own list includes landing a plane, splitting wood with an axe, and driving Philly's Schuylkill Expressway Westbound from Spring Garden to City Avenue, when the traffic is really moving. But that's not the same as being immersed in a project and losing track of time.

Men are notoriously ill-equipped to multi-task. While my wife can pace herself to spend, say, 30 minutes in one area today, then move onto something else, then come back the next morning and spend another 30 minutes, day after day, that sort of thing makes me crazy. I need to focus on just one thing, and one thing only, until it's either done, or I get tired. You've described me exactly.

So, you should give up all hope? Not really. Somehow I managed to hold down a job for 60 or so years, and I think maybe ... maybe .... it was because I viewed random events as of a piece with "the job," whatever it happened to be at each stage of my career.

I think giving advice is like giving excuses - it satisfies only the giver. But, having had to think about this since you've described it, I wonder if somehow rethinking what constitutes "the job" might help? Dunno.

I hope you figure it out for yourself. Good luck.

[Gary Merken]

Ironic (if that's the correct use of the term) that I'm writing this as a comment. But in this and your previous post you mentioned moderating comments as taking a lot of time and energy.

Have you considered dispensing with comments? Or limiting the number of posts on which you solicit/permit comments? Do you think readership will decrease if you limit or eliminate the ability of readers to post comments?

[Christian Ahn]

Hi Mike,
very interesting read and even though you say you wrote it for you, it is still beautifully written and entertaining to read (and I see parallels to my life and thoughts). So keep doing this!
And it shows me again that I would also like to read "other" things (meaning other than photography) from you. So please let us see the first chapter of your book about your son (I am actually very curious about the story, as I follow your blog for a long time (Xander was still small at the time) and always wondered about the background story)! I would pay extra for it (I am already on Patreon)!
Best regards and have a good Sunday!
Christian

[Geoff Wittig]

A long vacation might be less helpful than you think. It's all too easy to loose focus rapidly, and find yourself watching soap operas or pointlessly wandering the Internet.
My day job is pretty intense; at age 65, the usual retirement benchmark, I'm happy to be down to a 60 hour work week. It used to be 90 hours plus. I do take vacation time, mostly visiting family, though I do attend at least one workshop with a painter I admire every year.
Perversely, 4 days into any vacation, I already miss the oddly comforting work routine. Feeling vaguely guilty about unstructured time. By the end of a week I'm glad to be back at work. There's a great quote from the actor Laurence Olivier about this. An interviewer asked him if he enjoyed acting. He found acting almost painful, but was compelled to keep working. "I wonder if the ox misses the yoke."

[Tom Burke]

Do you have any more commissions from The New Yorker? I very much enjoyed the one you mention in this post.

[Keith Cartmell]

I always found that when I was doing a lot of writing at work (software requirements, as is / to be maps, instruction manuals, whatever), my blog writing died back. Don't get me started on what that does to the complicated novel I've been working on for decades.

It sounds like comment moderation (considered as entirely separate from actually reading comments from the readers) is something that takes lots of time, and isn't something you particularly like. Maybe you need to discover how much it would actually cost for a volunteer moderator, and compare that to the value of time freed up.

[Dick Drake]

Thom Hogan takes off occasionally. In fact, he has been off for nearly a month.

[Martino Barenco]

As others have suggested, why don't you travel and write about it at the same time? I would love to read your take on the world.

[Darko Hristov]

Would love to read the story about Xander. Whatever exists - one paragraph - two - three...
Here is an idea about the vacation:
plan an Europe trip that will result in some form of a travel blog with accompanying photography - ask readers to donate for the trip - stay only at readers places around Europe (or the world). I for one would offer a room in Skopje, Macedonia on that occasion.
Such a trip would probably increase the traffic, but in any case could easily become the most fun thing you have done your entire life. Could you do such a trip if you were rich - NO, but you can, because over the years you have created a strong community of likeminded people who respect and trust you!

[Tex Andrews]

I commiserate with you! Since 2011 I have only been able to take 4, true, unforced "vacations"---I put that in quotes because there were either family obligations involved, so slightly stressful, or other issues that made them less than "recharging"; unforced because I've had some stressful non-choice time off because I'm a contractor. And I'm also someone conditioned to longer time-outs---to recharge I need 3 weeks at minimum.

I wonder whether you couldn't find a helper to hand off to for a month, with a mix of invited writers, old posts, some pieces you prepared before leaving?

As for concentration and being in that head space, I also can't just bop in and out of my studio easily. I used to decades ago, but I was in a different job then that was far more conducive to that.

[Omer]

A true vacation happens when we fall in love. Many times for me. Now at 70, it's time to cowboy up.

[Caleb Courteau]

Thanks for sharing with us the anxiety and mental calculus that are a part of running this blog. Also, I would love to read the first chapter you wrote of the story of your son.
Any chance you could write the book, and incorporate it into the blog, piece by piece? I know some readers would complain that it's off-topic. Just an idea. I'm sure it's already crossed your mind.

[Robert Roaldi]

Can you travel to anywhere interesting by train from where you live?

[Sal Santamaura]

Whether self-employed or an inmate in a cubicle farm, work gets in the way of life.

[Allan Stam]

CustomGPT.ai

Train it with all the blog posts you've written. It can respond to comments, draft blog posts, and produce a week's material.

Or, do what many columnists do, write ahead, and let the comment moderation go for a week or two.

Or, close shop for two weeks. If you've never done it, you can't know it would be a disaster (recognizing there's some risk here).

Or, line up two weeks' worth of guest posts. Your loyal readers will stick with you (again, the risk here is higher than others).

[Joel Becker]

Robert Roaldi, you can just skip the rental companies. Steve Jobs famously had such a deal with Mercedes directly, getting an identical car every few months.

Of course, he was also trying to avoid having an identifiable license plate, but you can't do that anymore: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/steve-jobs-loophole-closed-california-wants-temporary-license-plates/

[John Montgomery]

Your state of focused concentration seems to resemble what was called Flow by the psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. There is an interesting description on Wikipedia.

[Peter Barnes]

Yes, I do want to read the chapter about your son Michael.