Either my Dad is getting soft in his old age or... or well he's actually proud and impressed with some of the things I've done recently. He was at my house for a few hours last week and I showed him the most recent book that I was the technical editor on. The author of the book said some very nice things about me in the books acknowledgment page and my Dad was genuinely impressed. Later I showed my Dad a picture I had taken at his sawmill of one of his Amish employees. I can't explain how much my father like this image. Immediately I had to print it for him so he could take it home. Plans were discussed for a better print and framing to happen as well. We then spent the next hour discussing my photography, equipment I want, my work flow, what I like to shoot and a project that I want to work on next summer. Plus we had an excellent meal at my favorite Greek restaurant that even my brother and sister enjoyed. Man, it was a good afternoon. I'm 29 years old and I'm just so pleased that my Dad was impressed and proud of the creative stuff I'm doing. Instead of being pleased that I have a decent job or make X amount of dollars he was impressed with some of my creative work that means so much to me. It's a great feeling.

I've been shooting for about a year now with more commitment and intent than just making casual snapshots. In all that time no one in my family has seemed to grasp how much I've fallen in love photography and how serious I am about it. Maybe it's because I don't state clear goals like "I want to be a professional photographer" but instead say "I want to be the best photographer I can be" and "I want to learn all I can an experiment and shoot without limits." Now reading between the lines I am saying "I want to be a professional photographer" at least on some level but they don't read it that way. But last week when my Dad was so excited I told him how my new entrepreneurial vision has grown to include making a living with my freelance tech and communications stuff and photography. I explained that I'm not expecting or even trying to get rich. I just want to find a way to do work that is interesting and important to me and photography is both of those things. My Dad has always supported my entrepreneurship, though not always for the reasons I wanted him to. I wanted him to understand that I didn't want to spend 40+ hours a week being a white collar worker bee. I wanted him to understand that I wanted to be my own boss not so I could be a slacker or a bum but because I wanted to do more work that was important and interesting. Money was never the most important thing to me, professional satisfaction was always much more attractive. My Dad gets that now that he has left the company he worked at for nearly 30 years and is now becoming an entrepreneurs himself. He's seems to get what I was trying to say about how great it feels to plan, start and complete projects that you're interested in or passionate about. That getting get paid for something you enjoy and really want to be involved in is far better than getting paid to be unhappily shuffling papers or products from one place to the next for 8 hours a day. Of course the trade off is that all the responsibility is yours. The success or failure of your endeavors is totally up to you. That's scary but exhilarating and my Dad gets that now. So when I tell him that I'd like to craft a life for myself where I'm my own boss and a make a living doing work that I like he thinks that concept is cool now instead of thinking "maybe you'll come up with a million dollar idea. That pleases me.