Today is the first day of work for the last week I will be employed, at least employed at Advance Photographics. I have, as you might imagine, mixed feelings.
Interesting phrase, that. Mixed feelings. If they were truly mixed, mashed together as it were, would we be aware that there are several feelings, some conflicting? Wouldn’t it be one feeling of a particular alloy?
Be that as it may. I have mixed feelings. I have never particularly wanted to work there. As is my habit, I have tried to make the best of it. I’ve liked most of the people with whom I’ve worked there over the last 12 years. I mean no disrespect to any of them when I say that I’d rather not have worked there long enough to know them.
Not that I didn’t get a lot out of it. Advance paid off our house. I was able to continue doing photography on some level by using the place as my own lab. I’ve made my first halting steps into digital photography from there. It made possible certain things that were clearly not possible otherwise.
But it is a testament to failure on my part in many other ways. Just the fact that I have been forced to keep that job means that I have not succeeded at the thing I want to do, which is writing. For a few short years, I thought my goal was in hand. Between 2000 and 2003, I thought I was on my way. But then everything collapsed, and the sudden spurt of novels appearing between 2000 and 2005 came to an end, as did two of my publishers, and the third one did not make enough money on my last novel to entertain buying anymore. Those of you who may read this blog regularly are well aware of all that. I made a nice little piece of extra change during those years and it helpd in many ways, but until the house was paid off it was never enough to allow me to quit a job that I had come to despise.
Not for any reason other than what it symbolized to me. Oh, like any job it had good days and bad, and occasionally I was really pleased with the work I did. But the fact remained I didn’t want to be there.
But I am not a quitter. It’s not in my nature. If I accept a task, take on a responsibility, I may not perform it as well as others, but I do not quit. Sometimes to my regret. But this is part of who I am.
So I have stuck it out to the end. Digital overwhelmed the wet-process, “traditional” photofinishing industry, bringing in changes much faster than we expected. That stove in a goodly part of our business, certainly reduced my job. Till the point where what used to require six to eight people now took two, one of them part time.  Nevertheless, we were holding our own, according to the boss, until October, when the economy really went into the crapper. It was obvious to me what was happening, but I wasn’t going to quit. I was curious to see how long this could last.
When Advance opened its doors in downtown St. Louis, we had at one time 23 or 24 employees, all busy, most working overtime, with one or two part time people besides. We had a fulltime delivery driver on staff, two salesmen, three color printers, two black & white technicians, etc etc etc. Including the boss, there are now five of us, and only one of us is getting any overtime—the digital tech.
So this coming Friday is the last day. I intend drawing unemployment and writing for a year or so. I don’t know what is going to develop. I have plans, of course. For one thing, paradoxically, I’ll be putting on my very first gallery exhibit in July. Fortunately I have all the prints already. We’ll see how that goes.
I have projects mapped out, so it won’t be a question of not knowing what work on. But the question of how to sell it remains. I’ve recently had a long conversation with a close friend about that, how the concern over money can utterly sabotage what you do, what you try to do, always second-guessing yourself, thinking oh, this is crap, this won’t sell, and not finishing or even starting on something that very well may be just fine, except that you’re looking at it with the wrong lens. To a certain extent, I’ve never really had those kinds of doubts about my novels—I’m not doing anything so outre and experimental that no market exists, but that only makes it more frustrating for me, wondering why the books won’t sell. Perhaps they’re too ordinary, but I doubt that as well.
But as I said, I am not a quitter. In this regard, I may be exhibiting a profound intellectual fault, not being able to recognize the futility in something. But I doubt that, too.
I may post something this coming weekend on the Last Day. Stay Tuned.