2024 08 23
Chef Christian Hunter of Atelier. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I woke up early yesterday morning for an exhausting day of photography. My 5:30am call-time to location an hour away without traffic meant a 3:30am wake up and only a few hours of non-consecutive sleep. This sort of approach works once in a while but is impossible to sustain. I woke up this morning (luckily today is an off day which I will use to catch up on everything before leaving town tomorrow morning for another gig out east) and my phone showed me some interesting thoughts from Haruki Murakami on writing:
I get up early and focus solely on writing for five to six hours every single day. Thinking that hard and long about things, your brain gets overheated (with my scalp literally getting hot at times), so after that I need to give my head a rest. That's why I spend my afternoons napping, enjoying music, reading innocuous books. That kind of life, though, gets you out of shape physically, so every day I spend about an hour outdoors exercising. That sets me up for the next day's work. Day after day, without exception, I repeat this cycle.
Murakami is clearly dedicated to his craft and committed enough to stick to such a rigid routine. Comparing this to myself, I do agree that a large part of why I’ve been relatively successful as a photographer is because I’ve allocated a huge amount of my time to the craft. Day after day, year after year, relentless taking, making, editing, and looking at photos. I am not as focused as Murakami, though, and have an endless succession of new hobbies and side projects to distract me. These things likely also keep me sane and able to continue making photography my main career, but I do also wonder if they restrict me from getting to an ultimately higher place within the filed. While it’s nice to make a living from the craft, my real end goal is to achieve something more, and previously I was not on any sort of path to do this. I’m not sure I am now either but am, at least, considering this.
He went on:
I'm a very patient type of person, I think, when it comes to that kind of process. Still, at times I do get fed up with it and hate it. But as I work away, persevering day after day—like a bricklayer carefully laying one brick on top of another—I reach a certain point where I get the definite feeling that when all is said and done, a writer is exactly what I am. And I accept that feeling as something good, something to be celebrated. The slogan of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) in the US is "One day at a time," and that's exactly what this is like. Maintaining a set rhythm, steadily hauling in one day after the other and sending them on their way. Silently continue to do this and at a certain point something happens inside you. But it takes time to reach this point.
One day at a time, Clayton. One day at a time. I am a photographer. Who also wants to be a writer, and a bar owner, and a director, and a venue manager, and a youtuber, and a podcaster, and a blogger, and a journalist, and a musician, and an arborist. I am a photographer. One day at a time.
-Clayton
