New Goals, New Ideas, New Passions.
As temperatures started to get warmer, I got increasingly more excited to pick up where I left off with my photography business over the fall and the winter. Business started to die down during the colder months, which I let happen because of the rise in COVID cases and because of the colder temperatures, which was happening to photographers around the nation. This would be normal to any photographer around the area, as it is a less popular time of year to get photos taken for obvious reasons. The winters can be quite brutal (an understatement).
However, this gave me more time to explore other interests that I had, passions that I never got to explore during high school. One thing that I picked up during this time was leather craft, creating wallets, keychains, and other leather goods from scratch. I use what I knew about digital art to create designs on Adobe softwares and print them out, etch them out on leather, and score then cut them out. I would then stitch, buff, and polish them into works of useful art. I spent hours on end practicing my craft, perfecting every stitch- not with the intention of selling anything, but because I loved it. While I toyed with the idea of selling things, I ultimately decided not to because it wouldn’t be as profitable (both fiscally and emotionally) as each item takes too much time to produce.
The question of what to do next with my gap year is something I get thrown often now-a-days. I could realign myself with my photography business, but… I’ve done that already. I’ve gone hiking a ton, I’ve done the leather craft, I’ve skied, studied stocks, spent time with my friends, learned how to do taxes, make connections, paint walls, change light switches, landscape, wire lights, build patios, you name it. I’ve done it all, and I want to do more. I recently bought a new guitar to pick up again, as I learned to play when I was younger and dropped it when I got too busy in the middle of high school. Now that I have time, I plan to spend time enjoying it again. I plan to spend as much time as I can with my friends because I am home, strengthening my relationships that I am meant to have here before I have to take off. I have done so much this year, but I plan to do so much more. I question who decided to call a year off from college a “gap year”, because that is so misleading and false. “Gap” implies that it is an empty space, but that couldn’t be farther than the truth for myself.