[magkelly]

It's the end of the year and I'm better off in some ways, worse in others. I've seemingly lost half my income lately. Doing craft shows and selling stuff on CL and out at the flea market is just not making me any real money this year. Neither did the two online stores which I finally pulled to save myself the fees. I'm working on a site of my own but it's now geared far more towards my photography and my jewelry design than anything else. I hope to launch that soon but I still don't have enough of a portfolio yet to make a really good site. Not for what I want to do with it anyway.

I am getting more portrait sessions but 90% of it has been barter work and actually getting some of the women I've done locally to give their consent to actually show off some of the best boudoir work I've done has been really challenging. They want me to do it but they generally don't pay cash for it and even if they barter for it they don't want anyone but their partners to see it. Same thing with the kid shoots. I've done some really nice work with kids this year but getting my clients to sign off on a model release for web display has been very hard indeed. Nobody wants their kids pics online unless it's on their Facebook page.

I make it pretty clear in my advertisement for my barter work that what I am looking for is people who will sign one and who won't mind their pics being on my portfolio site. But 9 times out of 10 when it gets down to it they'd rather barter me other stuff but keep their photos private or for their own use. Their attitude is all just take the photos, give me a CD and forget about it and I find it rather annoying. I can't afford to pay models as yet though so I just have to deal for now I suppose. I do show potential clients the shots as a way to get them to sign up so I do have a portfolio that way but so far my online portfolio site just doesn't have enough work on it for me to go live. That's been very frustrating.

I really do have to take whatever clients I can even the barter ones if they have something I can use. I can't afford to turn the work down yet. I do turn down weddings because I'm just not into them nor do I consider myself experienced enough or physically up to doing them. I also turn down anything too seedy because there are some things I won't do to make the rent and doing photo books of things like senior orgies is one of them. I still cannot believe my neighbor asked me to do that. Creepy old coot, I laugh every time I think about that request but I do have to draw the line when it comes to photographing actual porn, sorry. I'm no prude but I just am not interested in doing that for a living particularly when it involves watching old people my parent's age going at it in the community pool. I have not been able to use that pool since. Every time I walk by it I think about that incident and UGH...

Health-wise I wish I could say I was better off than I am but it's been a bad year that way for me. I've battling sinus infections and bad allergies all year. I've had stomach issues and auto immune flares all year. No break from that at all. I've had to almost completely quit working for several weeks at a time a few times this year and that's been really tough on my income. When I can't pick up the difference by selling stuff it starts to hurt the bank account quite a lot. But that's just how it is. Got to work around all that and keep doing as much as I can, shrug.

I could be worse off though so while it seems like I'm bitching I'm not really. I'm just calling it like it is but I'm counting my blessings too. I have a roof which is more than a lot of people in this town can say. I make my rent and my utilities most every month doing something I like, and that despite being sick half the time. I could definitely use having a real bank account and some health insurance but I'm not capable of working a normal job now and I do know that so I'm very grateful I've managed to find something that I can do since getting SSD/SSI just wasn't happening.

I'm really hoping thought that 2013 treats me better. I'm going on a health kick come January. Trying to get back into doing yoga and walking more. I'm going to try to eat more nutritiously and make some better choices that way. I'm working uphill when it comes to my health and my weight I know but I could be doing better. If I am going to make it as a photographer I need to be in far better shape than I am now. That's my my main goal for 2013 to lose some more weight and to try get myself in better shape so I can expand my business a bit more and actually manage to make a decent living at this.

You?

[Biro]

2012 could have been a lot worse for me. Like everybody else, my discretionary income is taking a major hit. Then we had Hurricane Sandy at the end of October, some minor damage to the home and no power for 10 days. But the upside is the damage was, in fact, minor and no one was hurt. More inconvenience and discomfort than anything else. In terms of reduced spendable income, I am far from alone and far from the worst-off among Americans. I'm still working in the news business but, now that I'm in my mid-50s, long commutes into New York City and long hours on the job are taking a toll they didn't only five years ago. But I am still working... which is good because I'll probably have to keep working far longer than I expected a decade or two ago. This, despite doing all of the "right things," i.e saving for retirement and living within one's means. Again, I am not alone. Life, taken broadly, seems to be reasonably okay but involves a lot of diminishing expectations these days.

[magkelly]

I think that's true for a lot of us. When I used to make more I used to think I needed more than I've found I can get by on now. I still wish I made more but I can make do...

[reeftool]

All in all, it's been a good year for me. I try not to gauge things on money made but on overall quality of life. Work was steady. It's always the same but I am thankful that I have a steady and fairly secure job. My wife and I celebrate our 40th anniversary this week. We took a couple of long vacations for the first time in years. I'm a year away from retiring from full time work as I found I have stenosis in 3 vertebrae in my neck so I've had to adjust to the idea that I'm not going to work another 3 years, at least doing what I'm currently doing. I suppose I should be bummed out but I'm really not. I take each day as it comes and try to avoid worrying about the future. As I've grown older, I find I have little if any control of what's ahead.

[magkelly]

After today I can't wait for 2012 to be over. Just 4 more freakin days....

[RichardS]

It hasn't been the best year for me. My mother died in February aged 88. She collapsed on my parents' 65th wedding anniversary and was rushed to hospital. She'd been running on one lung for around 55 years and doing the draining-the-lung business every day since then. Tough old bird I had this theory that if I let my passport lapse so that I couldn't fly to England in a hurry, she would live for ever. It didn't work. My mother and father had been together for 70 years. They met when she sat next to him in a lecture theatre at Birmingham University (UK) in 1942. He was doing physics and she was doing maths. I got a passport in a hurry and flew to England for the funeral. It was a good funeral and my father and I kept each other vertical. It was great to catch up with family including cousins that I hadn't seen for many years.

A couple of weeks after getting back to Oz, we did the 10 hour drive (each way) to visit my 97 year old mother-in-law. She was getting frail and needed a wheelchair. We did another 3-monthly trip in June and she was really sweet and funny talking about her first bike and sneaking out of the house to visit a boyfriend She was also a little more frail, but she was keen on prawns and a couple of glasses of white wine for lunch.

Got back to Melbourne to hear that my cousin was very ill. He went to the doc in June feeling under the weather and died of cancer in July. Very aggressive cancer. He was a really lovely guy. One of the good guys.

Then the phone calls started from my sister-in-law who lives 10 minutes away from my mother-in-law's aged care facility. She has pneumonia. Not good when you're 97. Be prepared to be in at the death at any moment. So we booked the cats into a cattery and arranged accommodation, etc. A couple of days later she's getting better, then she's going downhill. We visited in early August and the phone calls while we were on the road to say that she'd be dead in a couple of hours were probably not enough to get me off any speeding tickets I might have incurred. When we got there she was still alive, but not doing well. So we watched her dying for 10 days and then she perked up. She wanted a glass of wine and to watch "Inspector Rex" on the TV. We went back to Melbourne. A few days later we got the phone call that she'd died. Very, very sad.

So it's not been the best of years from a personal point of view.

It hasn't been good business-wise either. My #1 client decided to change from SQL Server to a Unix strategy using PostgreSQL. And my #2 client, a government dept, told me that they had zero budget for IT development.

Next year can only get better

Richard.

[lammie200]

...So it's not been the best of years from a personal point of view...

Richard.

Sorry to hear about your difficulties. Hope that 2013 has some bright spots for you.

[LeDave]

2012 is the year for me, got all A's on all four of my classes for the Fall semester. I also picked up the K-5 and got both the DA* 16-50 and 50-135 this year alone. I also stayed out of the hospital for this whole year which is awesome. It's also been a full year that I've lived with my parents, I've lived in a mental health group home for the past few years. I also improved a lot in my photography in both digital darkroom and composition wise. Again, awesome year for me. It's a bummer that some haven't the year I had, may my condolences go out to them.

[Jools]

Sorry to hear for the bad 2012 for some. Here is hoping 2013 is better.
And good to hear that 2012 was a plus for some. Here is hoping the next year continues the trend.

As for me, it was not bad but not good. C+ in the final grade. My family remains healthy, unsteady with work, taking pix lesser than other years but creatively growing. (I think)

Anyways, Feliz Navidad to the PentaxForums community. Always a great place to find shelter on a daily basis, learn and expand in the process. Thanks!

[RichardS]

Sorry to hear about your difficulties. Hope that 2013 has some bright spots for you.

Thanks. I survived with my health and sense of humour intact, so it wasn't all bad.

[cardinal43]

2012 was a pretty good one for me. In April, I returned to the workplace full time after being "retired" for 2 years. I wasn't even contemplating returning to work, but a guy I used to work with called and made me an offer I simply couldn't refuse. Terrific $$$ and I work from home 90% of the time -- gotta luv working in jeans and t-shirts. My wife finally retired 2 months after I went back to work. Hmmm....wonder if that was all planned. My wife got to spend July, August, & November with our older son and 6-year old grandson (they're in WA & we're in VA), and we found out that the younger son and his wife (terrific DIL), are expecting their first (a girl) in a couple of months. They live about 5 miles from us, and my wife will be the day care provider - she is so looking forward to that.

Sorry for everyone that had/is having a bad 2012. I hope things look up for you in 2013.

[Tom S.]

Daughter was in and out of the hospital 20+ times. Otherwise, not bad.

[monochrome]

Well, let's review:

I didn't endure a storm surge or a lunatic with a Bushmaster (4 employees of my company lost family in Sandy Hook).

• February 23 I had cataract lens replacement surgery, which caused me to have 20/120 vision for a month before things cleared up
• May 7th my company's new owner installed their system over a weekend. It didn't work (and still doesn't), reducing my group's productivity dramatically (a ten-year backward technology step).
• July 7 I had a heart attack
• September 15th my boss was fired
• December 10 a second eye surgery to correct the first eye surgery was delayed due to the heart attack.
• December 27th my youngest daughter had 2 ear surgeries. She is now 30% hearing impaired.
• For the year my revenue declined 12%

If I had a dog I'm quite certain it would have died some time in 2012.

However, every vertical day is a good day. The above is only a few days out of the 365.

I'll just need to sell some cameras and lenses this year - and so what? I've had the pleasure to own them for a while. Now some other nutty Pentaxian gets to use them.

[Clicker]

Same as previous years, "The Force" isn't with me the "Yoda mind control" doesn't seem to work on the mailman, bills were still found in the mailbox.


HAPPY 2013 everyone

[lammie200]

Daughter was in and out of the hospital 20+ times. Otherwise, not bad.

Wow, I hope that she is better in 2013.

About a year ago I posted that a 10 year old niece of mine was suffering from severe aplastic anemia and needed a bone marrow transplant to survive. The odds were not in her favor, but she did find a match. The last that I heard her immune system has been completely taken over by the donor's system and she is showing signs of a complete recovery.