2024 12 02
Baltimore Photo Space. Photo Books Inside. Baltimore, Maryland. September, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
Seems like we’re due for another Life Update Monday around here. It’s been a while. As always, I use this blog primarily as a space for me to think and practice writing. Honestly, after close to a year of doing this every day, I’m happy with the results so far! That said, this year has also been a blur. I’m clearly taking on too much and doing too many different things. While mostly by design, I’m aware it’s not sustainable and plan to scale back on my ambitions next year, while hopefully focusing on less things simultaneously.
Today, I woke up to a social media post that hit me:
Nietzsche describes 3 modern vices:
Overwork. To be constantly busy is self-negation. It betrays "a will to forget" oneself.
Curiosity. Vague curiosity about everything, without deep obsessions, goes nowhere.
Sympathy. Sympathy for all = a refusal to rank good and bad.
I’m definitely guilty of numbers one and two and generally agree with his assessment of their negative aspects. These next two weeks are going to be a whirlwind, as I have a number of studio events going on (including a holiday market I organized happening this Saturday!) and multiple photo shoots (some my own, including a large four-day shoot, along with others where I play the role of studio manager). Picking priorities and ensuring the most important tasks don’t get neglected is critical, but of course, many of the less important details are going to get put off. My printing, side projects, a holiday party, bartending, Illinois Project, reading, photo editing, website updating, blogging, film screenings, portrait sessions, all will have to wait until next year.
Bigger picture, a big takeaway I’ve had from this year’s chaos was that I love running a photo studio space, largely for reasons that don’t even involve photo shoots: hosting and planning events, collaborating with fun and interesting people, community. It’s a ton of work and exhausting, but nevertheless fills me with purpose and inspiration. The big challenge is figuring out how to make an event space sustainable financially.
Ideally, I can continue to focus my time and energy on these things, while also keeping my love for photography in the forefront. I continually look at places like Baltimore Photo Space as inspiration and plan to pursuit some hybrid entity that combines all the things See You Soon already is, while making it more focused on photography as an art form, which I continue to think is wildly underrated.
I realize this is all quite vague, and that’s because it is and will continue to be a work in progress, and there are still lots of questions to be answered. This post, I hope, will serve as a reminder to myself that I can’t neglect focusing inward and giving my own voice a space to talk. Whatever becomes of See You Soon will be best guided by following my own interests and excitement and not by attempting to copy something that exists elsewhere.
-Clayton
