A great question, self! Or not so much, geographically speaking. My next-to-last post was written on a window seat in the eastern aisle at the Victoria & Albert Museum; I told my friend to go walk around as I already have plenty of photos of the outside of the Natural History Museum, and sat down to try and make some cash. A few days later I went home and that was that.

In late December, I got my room back. In January, I adapted to it, which took longer than expected due to a bout of depression. And while I’m always open to photography gigs anywhere, provided travel expenses are paid, other than that I’m staying put for at least nine months, one of which has passed, another one of which is passing terribly quickly, goddamn, February, why are you this way, and I’m trying to get a goddamn grip.

It’s clearly not the easiest.

There’s a lot of photos — some edited, some not. Last year I traveled a lot, trying to get away from sharing a room with my sister. I visited three times as many countries in six months as I had in the previous 26 years. I turned 27 on a flight from Lisbon to London. I had some more duck. I had avocado. I had pheasant. I did a boudoir shoot. In July, in one week, I did five portrait shoots. In September, I real-life-met a friend I’d met online ten years ago, and did her engagement shoot at Zwarte Haan. I went to Paris because it was the cheapest way to get home.

I’ve alienated a lot of people, too. I’m learning to learn what I can and move on.

I designed a resume and had it adapted — loosely — to Word for an agency; it was interesting trying to get it to look good in an application I very rarely use, and a good experience really working with a team there and letting them interpret. I like what they came up with.

I updated my media kit, and I’m finishing up a client’s from a long time ago. I have a few other things I owe. A lot of things. My parents are off unemployment benefits and that’s one of the reasons I went into a deep depression last month. I’m 27 but I’m not ready. I’m not good enough. I do good work but — I do it so sporadically, I take so long, I’m so unreliable. Of course I know these things. Of course I’m working on them. Of course they hurt all along.

But I’ve always loved this blog. I love showing off my work; I love the opportunities; I love the design and the honesty I’m able to promote. I’ve long wanted to be consistent and failed but maybe I just need to restructure my schedule a little bit, not do more but do better.

Not do more but do better all around.

It’s another way of protecting myself, and I made that my phrase of the year for a reason.

Since my last life post, my grandma moved in with us and my sister moved into my room. This was at the beginning of June, and has been better and worse than I expected. I’ve barely had to fight for time alone since my parents rearranged the furniture in the living room and fixed the armchairs, but nights… oh, nights. I don’t want to hash it all out again, as I rant about it every morning because it happens every night, so let’s sum it up by saying that my sister won’t let me sleep at night — sometimes literally, to the point that I can’t manage to fall asleep until sunrise — and it’s taken a massive toll on me. I am a zombie, if a zombie couldn’t even gather the strength to eat brains and relied on wine for short bursts of energy to get the bare minimum done.

I always intended to get the hell out of here as soon as my sister moved in because we do not get along as roommates at all; I’m always compromising and I need too much alone time; she wants things however she likes and doesn’t care for the needs of others. I get frustrated easily, and she gets mad and cruel easily. It’s a recipe for disaster, however well we were getting along back in May before we had to share a room. Long story short, my grandma only stays with us six months, then six months with my aunt, then three-six with my other aunt, then back here for six months. So I wanted to be out of here for as much of the six months as possible.

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You read that right: I’m giving you words AND pictures! Get pumped.

March so far:

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One of my goals for the new year was to take a picture every day. If you have a fancy camera you may be familiar with the situation — when you travel or do something fun it gets a ton of use, but then you’re home and you go transfer the photos and you realize you’ve shot two days in three months. I wanted to challenge myself to get better photos of everyday things, as well as find beauty in the common.

I did a fairly good job for sixteen days; on the sixteenth day, my camera made a whirring sound and said, “Error 99!” And that was that. I have now borrowed a Nikon camera from a friend, which should hold me over until I figure out what to do with my Canon. I’m waiting to hear whether it can be repaired at all, and how much it will cost me to do so. If all else fails, I can probably afford a 700D body. I’m telling myself it’s not the same as spending on a laptop that won’t last; it’s always good to have multiple camera bodies, so the 700D won’t be left in the dust whenever I have enough money to buy my dream 5D Mark — but it’s still money I wasn’t planning to spend.

What this means on a practical, blog-front level — I will hopefully have another fortnight in pictures for the middle of February, but I skipped three weeks. I still kept up with many other habits, so it’s all a work in progress and I’m not too fussed about it. I take plenty of photos — I’m a bit compulsive as a shooter — so there’s never much of an obvious gap. And here’s a summary of my January — at least the first half.

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