jenniferhawke.com

[Originally written January 26th. There are a lot more "drafts" from the last couple of months coming up.]

Ever have someone tell you not to think about a pink elephant?

Ever have a pink (or blue) elephant actually standing in your room? And not only are you not supposed to think about it, you’re not supposed to talk about it for at least 12 weeks.

So, you’re fighting the urge to think or talk about it and try to write a blog post with your thoughts without including the elephant.

I’m sorry I haven’t been writing much. There’s an elephant standing on my foot.

They have been driving me nuts since I redesigned the site and though tossing them in might generate a few extra bucks each month.

Yes, they’ve generated a few (very few) extra bucks each month. But I honestly can’t say the eyesore annoyance is worth it.

I’m also not sure I can go through with the project to start selling my photography online. I’ve spent almost 3 months flipping through thousands and thousands of photos I’ve taken around the world over the last few years and have come to a couple of conclusions:

1) I’m not stock worthy. My style is snapshots and artsy-fartsy. Definitely not marketable to a corporate climate.

2) I’m afraid it won’t be successful. I have to start studying (hard) for Step 2 in March and am worried that investing time in this project just won’t pay off. Maybe sometime in the future.

In the meantime, I’m still writing search engine articles at $9-a-pop and piling up student loan money, generous donations from my parents, and spare change from between the couch cushions to pay my next $10,000 tuition installment by March 31st. After that, only TWO MORE TO GO. I absolutely know the day I pay off all of this debt will be heart-soaring thrilling, but a close second will be the day I make that last bank-account-sucking-giant-investment toward the piece-of-paper-that-is-the-magic-carpet-of-my-wildest-dreams.

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photo: From the entertaining and educational Underground Tour in Seattle.

Disclaimer: We are not worried about money. Brandon has a job. Our families love us and support us. We are paying all bills on time and can indulge in fast-food or $3.75 matinees occasionally. Life is good. We are not worried about money. But…

I found something I really, really want to buy Brandon for his birthday. It’s only 9 months away and I need to sell my soul a few photos to help pay for it.

A little bit of random research into photo printing and publishing options led me to a few conclusions:

1) There are a lot of bad photos for sale online.

2) I really don’t want to add to that cyber landfill.

3) I have a sneaking suspicion every professional photographer out there dies a little inside when someone armed with a digital camera and Flickr account decides to “go pro.”

So, I had to step back and ask myself a few questions.

Would I print and hang Photos By Me on my wall? Heck, yes! I would love to have an unlimited printing-and-framing budget to add some personality to our little home.

Does that mean other people feel the same way? I’ve learned to stop believing my intrinsic view of the world is shared by many others.

Is it worth a shot to find out? With a free service like RedBubble, I’m not really sure what I have to lose. I guess stranger things have happened.

So, where do I begin?

After spending even more time flipping through my photo archives (16,000+ images in the last 4 or 5 years), I realize I am a horrible judge of the quality of my work. I like some pieces for personal reasons. I hate others without any reason. I am not trained in art. I have no idea what the difference is between a photograph that is artistically and technically flawless that doesn’t sell and other weird crap that people love to buy.

I think the last paragraph just made any professional photographer out there throw up a little in their mouth and nearly pass out while choking on fumes of disdain.

I’ve decided to take the amateur-ness of my lack of photography (or art or marketing) training out of my decision to sell my photos online. Or rather, I’ve decided to increase the amateur-ness exponentially by including all of you in the process. Yes, that’s right. YOU are going to decide which photos I upload to sell online.

Each week I will choose a different theme. I will upload 5 photos and open the voting to ye loyal readers. You don’t actually have to say “Yes! I’m going to buy that photo! Here is my money!” but if you did buy a photo from that set, which one would it be? At the end of the week, the winner will be uploaded to my RedBubble account and we’ll see if anything sells.

And since I’m making you part of the “work” process, I have to include you in the “payoff” process. For every 10 prints I sell, I will send 1 for free to a random reader/voter.

Do we have a deal?

Website will be down and up and down again this week. My team of interweb leprechauns and I are still updating and exporting and importing and teleporting.

Things will be broken for awhile. And then they should be fixed.

i’ll try to talk more and gesture less with my hands photos.

unfortunately, updating this website is becoming a short-term sacrifice for a very important long-term goal.

i have been working hard at balancing my life and work, my hobbies and studies and my family and friends. i have sacrificed studies for friends and friends for studies. i have neglected email for weeks on end, which really means neglecting friends and family when it’s my only lifeline to them. and i have scheduled time away from the books for long phone calls with my mom and lengthy updates here. i like to think i’m learning to achieve harmony and balance. that i am able to do the the things i want to as well as the things i need to.

but i really really really don’t want to be one of those people that gets my exam grade back and says “well, i didn’t do as great as i hoped, but it’s good enough.”

i have made a lot of sacrifices along this path so far. it would seem a shame to waste them on a “good enough” Step 1 score. there are doors and opportunities i want to open up. there are big exciting things i want to do for myself and my family. and yet, there are only so many hours in a day. one of my top priorities is about to take up a lot more of those hours and the very very top priority is sitting next to me at the kitchen table. jenniferhawke.com is a little further down that list.

March
9th – Block 3 Exam
14th – Clinical Skills Assessment Practical Exam
17th – Introduction to Clinical Diagnosis NBME Subject Exam
23rd – Pathology NBME Subject Exam

April
13th – NBME Comprehensive Subject Exam
15th – to Antigua
16th – to Toronto
17th – to Regina (Moose Jaw)
20th – to Denver

May
1st – to Regina (Moose Jaw)

June
15th or 30th? – USMLE Step 1

don’t worry, i won’t disappear until July. but posting is likely to be light and whiny and filled with woe-is-me-get-me-out-of-the-library blues. i have a few pre-written posts coming up this month about our last few exams.

i will be checking email and all things interweb once a day, probably right before i go to bed or right when i get up. if your email is warning me to jump out of a burning building or some other sort of helpful, pertinent and timely information, then i might respond. otherwise, thank you for your thoughts and kind words. your encouragement keeps me going on the rough days.

seeya soon. xoxo.

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photo: First Aid and First Aid Organ Systems dissected from their proper bindings and inserted into the biggest binder i own. my trusty Merck Manual is sitting on top.

go check it out!

as a lot of you are already aware, almost all of the photos i post in my blog entries are linked to my flickr account. huge thanks to my Aunt Jean in Saskatoon for the latest extension of my pro account.

i love flickr. well, i loved flickr when i had the time to enjoy it as the addicting social network it can be. with the adventures of medical school, my online socializing has taken a drastic nosedive. along with my photographic experimenting. so, flickr sort of turned into a photo archive for me.

which i can do much more easily (and privately) from iPhoto at home.

as such, i’ve nuked the photos from my account and am managing all 8,000+ of them on my hard drive instead. this means all of the photos from previous entries will be “broken”. sorry for the inconvenience and annoyance and extra large white boxes. still figuring out how i want to handle future post photo uploads.

a tip for fellow MUA students: unplug your wireless modem when there is crazy thunder and lightning going on. or a *CRACK* right near your house is bound to travel through the phone line and burn it from the inside out, costing you a measly $475EC* to replace.

home internet back up and running. if you sent me an email in the last week, i probably received it. and will probably reply tomorrow.

probably.

still working on that study thing. the 4am’s have returned with a vengeance. pulling out the trampoline to get in training for bouncing back. but i really can’t say it was a surprise that the first block sucked. i mean, come ON. will be taking the dean’s advice and treating every day until Brandon’s birthday as if it was a block day, and every night a block night.

in other news, i walked around the surgical ward rounding on patients in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around my neck for the first time ever this morning. i took a history, i tried to ramble my way through answers to random science quiz questions from the attending, and i stepped on Brandon’s shoes. it was great!

“rounding on patients this morning” – i know there might come a day where that phrase makes me weary from the inside out. but not today. i love where i am and i am so thrilled to be doing the stuff we are doing. life is goood.

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*$185CDN – no, there is no “electrical storm” coverage in the Cable & Wireless service plan. and yes, i now own the modem and will probably try to sell it to the next person that moves in here. i might even discount it a buck or two! woo!

my home internet is broken and my Block 1 grades were disappointing.

back… soon?