Day 47 of 100, Hannover, Germany
I started writing this one almost 2 weeks ago, flashing by fields, towns, stations, borders, on our way from Denmark to Germany for the second time. Family calls, and the train journey soothes. Over the past week and a bit, I’ve been adding and adding to it, so it’s coming to you in parts.
Continued from yesterday. This is the last installment of The Path Forward posts.
It occurs to me that writing publicly about my doubts might not be the smartest thing on earth to do when I am looking for employment. Who doesn’t Google everyone these days?
But that is exactly the nature of this hundred day diary project, and why it started: to write it regardless. Responsibly, but to write it without flinching. Just over three years ago, my father died of cancer in its advanced stages. I wrote several posts about it, and then pretty much lost my ability to write anything at all. It was one of the symptoms of the odd grief that has followed me through these years, stemming from becoming hyper sensitized to words, spoken or written. It made me incredibly unsure of myself, and with that unbalancing came a massive failure to parse the meanings and intentions of others, losing grasp on my own convictions in the muddle.
It was confusing.
But the words feel like they are finally returning, and with them, maybe a gradual lifting of the fog that has followed me around for the last three years.
That’s not job related, like these posts have been so far, but it definitely feels like a way forward.
charlene winfred 
As I said at March 24th. So, keep going – we all do :-)
Starting to repeat yourself, Hans?
–It occurs to me that writing publicly about my doubts might not be the smartest thing on earth to do when I am looking for employment. Who doesn’t Google everyone these days?
Yes, maybe not the smartest if you were seeking one of those rockstar positions and wanted to portray yourself as highly ambitious…but you’ve said you’re not. Nothing wrong with stating that you’re looking for a remote position where you have the opportunity to quietly help someone and get paid decently. (I know that’s what I was looking for this January in a copy editor (a thoughtful reader), and what a lot of video editors seek in an assistant editor (someone to organize a mess).)
Honesty with yourself and potential employers will result in the kind of work that you want, and it seems this is the right time in your life for such introspection.
Loving the hundred day project. Keep going!
That’s what I figured Kevin. If I lose an opportunity to work because a potential employer is looking for a total extrovert, it probably wouldn’t have been a job that I was suited for anyway, and vice versa.
But I guess I’m overly aware of how badly things are frequently taken out of context online, which flows offline. Partly because the demands from different platforms means there’s little/no room to move around in the grey area which most of us swim in, and partly because most of us don’t want to do the actual work.
Have you considered putting your “commercial” video experience and traveling lifestyle together with online patreon funding and making a You Tube channel? I don’t know how many “travel” sites the YouTube arena has, but with Flemming’s music attachments and your street interests, it would at least likely be a unique approach, that road less traveled again. Not to mention the two of you are so terminally cute together. It’d be like video “selfies”, with friends. I wonder even if there’d be an angle from which Fuji might provide some sponsorship, or if you were to travel a lot by train, the train companies? Surely outside my area of expertise (still actually looking for that, don’t you know) but at least offered with good intentions.
I remember that wet plate photography bit you posted here some time ago and think who else but you guys would find that (in Belgrade if I remember), the train trip to Montenegro (was it?), Truth or Consequences, the large array, and the shoots at the Singapore nightclub… Things like that would, I think, make fabulously interesting videos, and good sometimes anyway also for the subject of them. There’ve been dozens of posts in that same vein. It’s kind of a “double down” on the recent past, but at least there is a proven way to “monetize” (god I hate that word) it.
And if this was all useless noodling: it was, after all, free. :-)
Greg, we both laughed reading this your comment, because we’ve often talked about doing a silly set of videos along those lines – not the docu-soaps that seem to define travel-anything presently, but something stemming from what we did with Beyond in 2013… with the bloopers included. They are really good ideas btw. We might get around to it one day, whenever we start actually traveling again, rather than just commuting hemispherically. You’ll be the first to know!