“However, it's perhaps easy to offer advice when one is still active and fit. If you are really having so much physical difficulty in getting around, and making your bed, and are reluctant to even visit the beach in case you bring sand into your house, I can appreciate that photography might not be much of a priority. – Ray”
Not quite as bad as that yet, Ray, but it does take me a helluva lot of time to do domestic because I am not the most organized of people that I know… and it always keeps on building up: got a wooden shutter taken away for repair yesterday (window, not camera), and to my utter amazement, the joiner brought it back, fixed, this morning. And it started to rain. So, I have the shutter sitting in the office because I can’t hang bare wood outside; I now have to seal it and then paint several layers of nogal varnish over it in order to match thirty years of annual applications of said joy. Then, when that’s done, it needs to be further sealed with a coat or two of marine varnish. Varnish takes at least a day between coats; this simple job could easily consume more than a week! You perceive the domestic distractions?
As for the excitement of living in the Far East: didn’t you note what happened to the photographer and general in Apocalypse Now?
“How about a body of work that eventually becomes a book project.
That can give you purpose and frustration all at the same time, and as well a commercial venture. This will consume your life, in a good way. It grows at your pace, whatever that may be, at any given time. – petermfiore”
Peter, frustration is something I have by the truck-load; I don’t need any more! Yes, you are right in principle and I have often thought of this very thing, but always end up looking either too far ahead at the logistics, the cost and the likelihood of ever selling anything. Even worked out a fiendish plot a couple of years ago and pitched it to a couple of companies that played around with the idea for a month or so and then went mute. However, should that lottery thing happen, it’s part of the projected master plan, which entails a leisurely tour of the Relais & Châteaux, possibly a Canal du Midi trip on a luxo-barge, and things of that nature. I didn’t mind too much some ten years ago, but I no longer feel inclined to travel second-class. Damn, that would probably mean another car. You see the problems that come with thought?
Most of the mental things still work; the problem lies more in the infamous ‘reasons to make a snap and get paid for it’ zone: the Photographer's Triangle.
;-)
Rob C