Being a wildfire, not a blowtorch

On juggling multiple jobs, passions, and audiences

I’ve always envied people that are true specialists at a passion of theirs: those that can loop a song or album infinitely or read a bazillion books in a year or crank out reams of thought-provoking prose. On the other hand, there are people like me who dabble in many things and (at least in my opinion) are kinda sorta good at most of them but certainly with a gap to what I would consider excellent.

My passion burns so bright, but it’s spread wide like a wildfire instead of narrow like a blowtorch. My Instagram presence is a perfect On my main Instagram account, I’m a traveling photographer who captures the world as I see it. Of course, there’s also my bookstagram account where I read, review, and showcase books. While my photography skills are transferrable to creating for bookstagram, there’s an opportunity cost (an analogy I hate to use when it comes to hobbies but it’s the only one that seems apt) involved in every moment I spend shooting for my main feed or reading/creating for Reads.

Now that I’m working two jobs (more on that in a second) and living two separate double lives on social media, the biggest commodity is time way more than the energy or effort taken to do these things.

All of this comes to a head when it comes to branding myself as a social creative (I’m definitely not calling myself an influencer lol). Between Reads and my main account, it feels like I’m attracting two separate friend groups and this newsletter is the messy Friendsgiving dinner where everyone comes together and the one commonality is me. It makes me feel weird to share bits from my personal life promote this newsletter or a photography sale particularly on Reads because I have no idea if that audience even cares about me. And vice versa, I would feel weird sharing a book review on my main feed because it just doesn’t feel relevant to an audience that I assume mainly wants to see travel photos.

I’m thinking of all of this as I’m going to have some professional photos shot this week (mainly for my online presence) and trying to decide what props I could potentially bring to showcase the true me. Let’s just say that I have options.

I would love to hear any ideas you have on any of this:  juggling all of these interests (aka making more time for reading), being different things to different groups of people, and/or soliciting a bigger box to fit all of my various passions.

Headlines

• Change seems to be the only constant in life lol, but I started a new job as a studio photographer for senior portraits! It definitely stretches a different creative muscle than shooting in my more discrete street photography style to be in a controlled studio environment and having to pose clients but I’m really excited to see where things take me. I also really appreciate how flexible they are with everything else I do; as an employee it seems like a dream partnership so far.

• Let me not promise consistency with this newsletter anymore, because I add something else to my plate anytime I do. Instead, I’m going to wish for a good helping of time management skills. Though the holiday week could be good for building some momentum going into the holidays, we’ll see.

• DC and New York were fantastic. DC truly feels like a second home to me at this point, so it was fun to have a day to unplug (as much as you can while being in the center of the free world days before a presidential election). New York was pure chaos, though it may be doubt whether I could actually live there full-time (I’ll talk about that in a future letter).

• I’m really happy to see Barnes & Noble thriving in this new era of books being cool again! As a Borders mourner, Barnes was my gateway to so many reads as a kid. Though can we agree that their new aesthetic is meh at best?

• I rebooted my Bluesky account and I’ve been loving it! It’s truly a wild concept being able to glance at a feed, see all of the updates since I’ve last checked, and be done with it. In terms of posts, I’ve basically been trying to use it for quick fire thoughts throughout the week, though I’ll definitely be live reacting to the occasional big event as time goes on.