The worthiest award-winners?

“It was a privilege”. Words often used in a fairly casual way. But I can think of none better to describe my contribution to the programme for the 2021 Royal College of Nursing Wales awards. 

In reading and editing the text of nominees, category by humbling category, I was wowed by the efforts of nursing professionals at the height of the pandemic. 

I was wowed by their dedication, skills, expertise, motivation, compassion, innovation and plain humanity.

Helping critically ill COVID-19 patients experience a more dignified death. Helping children with complex care needs die at home with their loved-ones. Encouraging more participants in groundbreaking haematology research trials. The award nominees all delivered awe-inspiring work at an incredibly pressured time.

It’s easy to forget the bigger picture when it comes to the NHS. You can be blinkered by statistics around waiting times, the glamorous drama of A&E often represented in film and television, or maybe your own personal experience. But there is an astonishing breadth of expertise within every single health board across Wales and the UK.

They share the same values of compassion and care which reflect the very best of people. They give hope when it might feel easier to be pessimistic and jaded.

Forget the glitz and glamour of award-winners in film, music, books, or virtually any other industry. These people are truly the heroes of the pandemic, and writing about their achievements was, yes, a privilege. Congratulations to everyone nominated, and to the event organisers for coordinating this important recognition.

I am very grateful for my partnership with Weltch Media in delivering this work.

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Making progress and keeping going

Making progress is a problem when everything feels frozen. As it does right now in lockdown. We are all running our own personal marathons and cheering each other on. Keep going! You can do it! Not much further now!(?)

Progress is a basic human need. It is implicit at the tip of Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, allied with both self-actualisation needs and esteem needs.

Most of us need to feel like we are making progress in life, personally and professionally. We want to feel like we are advancing and moving forward, developing skills, improving relationships, expanding networks.

But such a sense of progress may be difficult to achieve in the time of Lockdown Three, mid January 2021, the most testing lockdown yet.

Of course progress is possible. Online learning has necessarily exploded with options. Solutions like Zoom and Microsoft Teams can help team-working and collaboration up to a point. But nothing can replace the in-person physicality of previously normal life, the immediate, positively infectious synapse-sparking energy it provides.

Frozen progress

For many, professional life and a sense of career might currently feel frozen.

If you are struggling to find work, if you are jobless and have been for a while, everything can feel futile. It might even feel like things are regressing, you are going backwards and entertaining much lower paid and less stimulating jobs than you would like. This can feel like a backwards step and the total opposite of progress.

Some might suggest it is all in the mindset. You sometimes need to go back in order to go forward. You simply have to feel positive and hopeful, as hard as it can be.

Interpreting progress

Progress means different things to different people. We are all allowed our own interpretations, no matter how prescriptive it can appear in self-help books or social media updates.

Interpretations of progress can vary wildly depending on self-awareness or self-esteem.

As a relatively unambitious freelancer I achieve a sense of progress and take some small pride in simply keeping going.

It’s not always easy and there are likely to be challenging periods. In those periods you grapple with huge self-doubt and wonder if you’re doing the right thing. You think about searching for proper ‘grown-up’ full time jobs instead of tolerating the sometimes crippling insecurity.

For others with more structured careers in larger organisations and perhaps more ambition, progress means something different. It might equate to greater responsibility and a higher salary.

There is the accepted rule of steadily rising pay in employed roles, offering a boost in status and esteem. (Another nod to Maslow). Leaving aside issues around the gender pay gap, there is an accepted white collar rule that you should make more money the older you get, that your experience and years on the earth should roughly correspond with your income.

Progress in perseverance

For freelancers it is slightly different as you have to adjust and adapt to your chosen market, billing accordingly. So you build pride in keeping going, probably these days also in developing a respected profile online, rather than working up a hierarchical ladder. This arguably doesn’t feel as much like real progress.

But it is. We see it reflected in independent businesses, in shopfronts and brands that show off the year they were established. It can be prominently positioned alongside a logo to exhibit heritage, experience and authenticity. It reflects the value of keeping going, of sticking in there through difficult times. Which is also progress.

There is value in the most obvious sense of progression, in professionally growing and developing. But there is also value in the less obvious sense of keeping going, adapting and adjusting along the way if needed.

At a time where we need to draw on reserves of mental stamina to address the stultifying boredom of day-to-day lockdown life, this is worth remembering.

Keep going! You can do it! Not much further now!(?)

___________

Writing about photography, creativity, sport and current affairs can be found on the more frequently updated Composed Images blog. 

Ten Years Composed

Ten years as a freelancer is a milestone worth marking. Employed members of staff might earn some small recognition from their bosses and colleagues, but freelancers often just have to slap their own backs. So here is an honest, slightly indulgent account of the last decade.

Ten years ago this month I was made redundant from my last full time employed role as communications manager of a telecoms firm in West London. One Friday afternoon I was taken to a meeting room by a slightly over-casual HR manager and told a ‘structural review’ was happening. My job was under discussion and redundancy was possible.

Cycling home that day I stopped around the halfway point, a short distance from Chiswick Bridge. Here I pondered the river as sweat trickled down my spine and endorphins fizzed, dramatising my urgent self-pity, worry, rejection, failure, panic.

This seminal career moment came in April 2009. I was 28 and had no idea what the future would hold. The next ten years were impossible to foresee, both professionally and personally, as I suppose the next ten years always is. Nonetheless, if I were to go back and tell 28 year-old me what this next decade would hold, it would seem unbelievable.

Early freelance life

Boiled down, my 2009 options were: try to get another similar communications job with a similar telecoms firm in London or try to go freelance. For a time I tried to do both, job-seeking and interviewing for positions I wasn’t sure I wanted.

There was encouragement down the freelance line, which probably isn’t unusual when people first go freelance. You are dangled hope by a contact who promises work, like a parent holding the reins when a toddler takes their first uncertain steps. You may be over-dependent on a small number of clients for a while. As I was. Mine came from external contacts developed in my communications role at the telecoms firm.

But after a few years, as in full time employment, if there is no real sense of progress or development you can grow frustrated. Our modern enslavement to devices and reacting instantly to every single email, whatever the hour of the day, can leave you feeling anything but ‘free’. Home life can easily be confused and infected with work life if there is too little division.

Personal development

On the personal front, after a year more in London I would return to Cardiff in mid 2010 and eventually meet someone (2012) who would become my wife (2015) and the mother to our child (2018). By getting a mortgage I was finally able to accomplish a lifetime dream of getting a dog (2016).

Becoming a photographer

From around 2012 I would slowly self-train as a photographer, integrating those services alongside communications services. I would make plenty of mistakes and take thousands of weak photographs. But I would learn.

From 2014 I would regularly shoot professional football: Premier League and International football matches in Wales – something 12-year old me would be incredibly excited about, something 28 year-old me would be incredibly excited about, and something 33 year-old me actually was incredibly excited about.

In 2017 I would shoot the UEFA Champions League Final in Cardiff between Real Madrid and Juventus, and one of the last Premier League matches to be played at my beloved White Hart Lane in Tottenham, London. I would shoot various sports including rugby, cricket, athletics, darts, speedway, extreme sailing, boxing and cycling.

But my heart would stay with football, despite its many rotten issues as a sport and industry. I would shoot for several photography agencies and for myself, and see images published in all the major UK newspapers.

Staying a comms person

From 2014 to 2016 there were periods of communications contract work for different Cardiff based recruiters, as well as consultancy with another PR agency. This involved generating content and blogs, briefing and training staff, organising events, monitoring social media noise around a political issue, all while generating funds for photography equipment.

Careers these days have pivots and deviations. The internet allows people to have side projects and rebrand, building new identities and diverse ‘portfolio careers’. It’s unwise to rule anything out, at any stage, particularly given the broader Britain-wide uncertainty of our times. That is, unless you are on the verge of retirement and / or extremely wealthy.

You never know when old contacts from your network will surface, as they have on a few occasions. This has led to substantial writing projects for a couple of big universities extended over several months. The unpredictably stop-start, piecemeal nature of photography work means such writing and communications work is always welcome. It also helps to engage and exercise a different part of the brain.

Photographing events and streets

A primary business area today is photographing events, conferences, essentially people talking. While it’s not obviously too dynamic as a photographic subject, there is something about it that appeals to my voyeuristic, outsidery and wordy nature.

Whatever the subject matter, you get a personal sense of individuals: their character, their way of talking, their vocabulary and language choices, their confidence and humour. Sometimes the subject flies way over my head, if it is deeply technical or specialist. Sometimes it can be insightful and educational. There is always life, energy and something interesting happening in a room full of people.

One of my personal favourites last year was a conference on children’s literacy. As an avid modern fiction reader, an English Literature graduate and as a then expectant father, photographing these imaginative and witty people was brilliant fun. Also, the people involved were remarkably warm and friendly. You can often feel like a blank automaton, standing in rooms taking picture after picture. On that occasion I didn’t.

Cardiff streets were where I slowly learned photography, and it’s a branch that would remain attractive to me. In 2018 a publisher would ask me to produce a book of street photography on two districts of the city. It sort of fell into my lap and I have no idea how it is selling further than my mum and a handful of contacts, but it sounds good.

(It is mindblowingly amazing and you should buy a copy immediately).

I would continue to shoot conferences and events, editorial portraits, corporate headshots, a light sprinkling of weddings, student city guides in Cardiff and Swansea and other special commissions, as well as sport and local news.

Coping with quiet

Freelance life can be bumpy and I take nothing for granted. A particularly low point came in late 2013 after almost draining a savings account. I forced myself into a few weeks of Christmas-time work at a research call centre where I previously worked as an undergraduate. Soon after I secured communications consultancy work with a tech recruiter and was able to financially breathe again.

As a freelancer you must carefully manage finances, squirrelling away funds when business is going well, in anticipation of quiet periods and of necessary investment in equipment.

You are sort of obliged to say you are busy at all times for fear of looking unbusy, which is never a good look and often seems the most shameful thing in the world. But of course it is not good, being unbusy. Being unbusy and underemployed shares much with being unemployed. Esteem is forever fragile. Everyone has a mental health landscape.

You must try to hold your nerve, trust in your network, experiment, try out proactive business ideas, pitch for work, accept rejection, accept periods of bad luck, be open to new opportunities. Do not become gloomy and bitter about your peers online who appear to be doing so much better. Be careful with the amount of time you spend on social media, thinking it sacred, or ‘The Solution’. Do not invest too much meaning in the giddying metrics of likes and followers. Do not beat yourself up too badly.

But knowing the best things to do and actually doing them are extremely different things. Freelance life can be charted in fluctuating levels of self-belief and optimism. There is a key requirement for mental toughness, reserves of resilience and perseverance.

Swings and roundabouts

Never knowing what lies ahead, or even just around the corner, is always a worry.

This can be a good thing and a bad thing. You can always feed yourself blind hope that something brilliant might suddenly happen along. But the truth is that work rarely feels secure and you have to live with it. As a freelancer you may have reduced capacity to financially forecast, budget and plan. That is, compared with someone who knows the precise sum of money that will land in their account each month: people I still look at with envy from time to time.

Having done it for ten years, having battled through, survived and grown: that offers me some blurry sort of blind faith and self-belief.

When begrudgingly speaking about my work, feeling self-conscious about not being more grown up, having a ‘proper job’ or grander ambition, I find myself rambling about ‘swings and roundabouts’. I have absolute independence, I am my own boss and my own harshest critic. My life offers fantastic freedom but comes with serious insecurities.

Such insecurities feel weightier as a new father. You have a sudden enormous incentive to provide as much as possible for this strange small being you love more than life itself.

What you receive from freelance life in one way, you sacrifice in another. I have a constant necessary obligation towards my inboxes, towards reading twitter, towards knowing what is happening on my doorstep. The concept of weekends, annual leave or time off is hazy and difficult and laden with guilt. Work-life balance is about compromise and what you choose to value, consciously or not. This can evolve or adapt throughout the course of a career but ultimately, we all do the best we can. Swings and roundabouts.

Here’s to the next ten.

MH
201904

Please get in touch if you think we can work together, or if you just want to catch-up.

Social media slowdown – your smartphone is not God

I’m making a deliberate effort to reduce the amount of time I spend on social media. Sometimes it feels like it’s working. Other times it doesn’t.

I imagine it’s a bit like trying to give up cigarettes, that sort of ephemeral, temporarily distracting fix. That numb and mindless addiction. Social media seems a necessary evil that’s hard to entirely avoid if it’s linked to your work, and if it’s a deeply embedded behaviour you’ve had for a decade.

Smartphones aren’t for phoning

Today’s broadly covered OFCOM report shows the dominance of the smartphone on our lives has never been greater. The headline for many is that the number of mobile calls we make has fallen for the first time. Our primary use for smartphones is no longer to make telephone calls. Perhaps it hasn’t been for some time. (You might also suggest this is also a symptom of clogged up mobile networks, poor signals and a dwindling faith in telecoms providers).

As explored in a previous post about a digital detoxing, my relationship with my phone is a regular wrestle.

Certainly it can become too much, too controlling, too instictive and ingrained. You have a spare nanosecond so you take out your phone and open an app. And how do you feel afterwards? Invariably worse. This is the case for me at least.

Twitter makes me sad

After a scrolling binge on Twitter, and to a slightly lesser extent Instagram, I usually either feel a bit sad and inadequate: how I am so woefully unsuccessful compared to that other person who I admire or envy, how they are doing much sexier, more interesting, more important work.

Or I would feel more generally glum about the world and all its super dumb people, in that toxic aggressive sense, the mass popularisation of unfathomable stupidity – Donald Trump. And / or glum about its pallid anaemic weakness, its volume of empty bland forgettable messages commanding unfathomably large audiences. (How is this guy such an important ‘influencer’ when he spouts such utter drivel?)

So I have started using it less, which is actually easier than I imagined. I feel more free of noise and don’t miss it at all. Sure, I dip in and out now and then but less instinctively and not when just faintly bored, to fill a moment or two.

Facebook bores me

It’s been several months since I deleted the Facebook app from my phone, which felt liberating, somehow eliminated an obligation. I still look in on the desktop, usually to manage a page or take a look at a group, and still look at my personal feed.But there are no regrets about not having it on my phone. Those urgent needy red flag notifications grew bizarre and infuriatingly irrelevant: Friends I May Know (who I certainly don’t know), a casual acquaintance has posted yet another photograph of their child. That’s great Facebook, thanks, bye.

Facebook is like a boringly repetitive loudmouth in the pub who keeps a terrifying photo shrine of you and all your family in his basement. I have no interest in going to that pub anymore. Its user numbers stock market value indicates I am not alone.

Social media increasingly leaves me feeling flat. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to depress yourself like that – unless you are a social media manager for British Telecom or something.

Care Less. Leave Your Phone Alone (Sometimes Off).

If it’s not your job though, why would you? Just put your phone down. Or you have a second thought about picking it up in the first place. You control yourself, reach for a book. Maybe give yourself a certain strict period of time (there are lots of apps for this), perhaps read only one fairly neutral platform for news, if possible.

You can reprogram and rewire, at the very least taper and develop an awareness of your usage. Decide not to care how many likes you get because it is all fairly meaningless. Dare to post without a hashtag.

Otherwise, you risk investing a disproportionate amount of meaning amongst the frighteningly lost hours lost staring into that screen. The link between rising mental health issues and excessive use of smartphones and social media is blindingly obvious.

These devices and their applications are engineered to tap into our insecurities and neuroses, to hammer us with notifications and never leave us alone. We are forgetting how to communicate, or never learning how in the first place.

It is not easy but we can choose to resist. We can look back to go forward. I find continued comfort in books, glossy paper, print. The old school hard versions and the Kindle versions. They don’t usually distract you with links and send you scurrying away down another rabbit hole of information. Also ebooks or podcasts. Take a walk and a listen and look at the world around you, instead of that screen.

Remember you can and probably should turn off that thing altogether from time to time. There’s lots of other stuff out there. It is not your God, it’s a phone.

Vero – a new social media truth?

Vero keeps popping up in my social media feeds at the moment, specifically Instagram. It seems a large volume of users have started using the new social media app and are encouraging others to give it a try.

Seductively slick and stylish in design, it appears that Vero has a key feature of allowing you to arrange your contacts by your genuine figurative proximity to users. That is, whether they are a close friend or family, or a loose acquaintance. Then you can broadcast or narrowcast updates accordingly.