Proud to be a quitter

For me, proud is an interior state. I don’t do it out loud. But I was pushed to write about the thing I’m most proud of in my work recently, and figured maybe it could help someone else. So here goes.

The thing in my work that I’m most proud of is quitting my film career. I used to work as a compositor on feature films. Look me up on IMDB and you’ll see a big list of films, some of them pretty well known. It was an extremely challenging job and I was good at it. It sounded impressive at dinner parties, requiring a careful explanation that still sometimes left folks puzzled, but impressed. But it was brutal from a life-work balance perspective. It’s hard to put down roots when you know you’ll have to move to a different city—maybe even a different continent—again in a year or two. Never knowing if you’ll be home for dinner or bedtime, never knowing when weekend plans will have to be scrapped, it’s rough on the family dynamic.

So I quit. Because life and family is more important than work. My job is a bit more modest now, but I’m home every evening for dinner, and I have time for my darkroom.

I don’t regret that decision one bit. Especially when I can duck out in the middle of the day to view an eclipse with my favorite people.

Thank you to Jessica Singerman for the photo.