The end of an era

With the turn of the new year, the company I occasionally worked for making small business videos has upgraded the specs on the deliverables.  I have a shoot in a couple of days and while I thought I was already in compliance with the new specs, it turns out I'm not.  It would take some equipment upgrades to be able to produce what they now require.

Oh sure, it would probably only take about $300 to get the part necessary to patch my old system so I could keep going, but it's not worth it.  My schedule is so full now that fitting in video gigs has been difficult.  It's also been rare that they've offered a gig within 50 miles of me.

Looking at the tax forms they sent me, it turns out I made more selling pottery than I did working in video last year.  Considering how little I make selling pottery, well that says a lot.

I'll call the company that I've been working for since 2007, let them know what's up and have them reassign my shoot this week.  Then I guess I'll have them drop me from their database unless they tell me they've got 10x as many gigs lined up this year as they did last year, but I doubt they're going to tell me that.  Maybe I'll just stay in the database and have their emails forward to trash so I don't have to feel all horrible about not being able to accept the jobs and then if the equipment I need magically falls into my lap, I can pick back up, but again, I'm not holding my breath.

I have two outdated professional grade cameras, one that only shoots SD and one that shoots HD (but I don't have a means of transferring the footage to my computer for editing).  I'm considering selling them both before they lose even more trade in value.  Not sure I can emotionally handle that kind of finality on the subject so I'll probably stupidly let them sit in the closet gathering dust until they start going up in antique value.

So there you have it, videographer is officially dropping from my career identity.  I guess I'm now a Twin Mom, Part Time Office Manager, and Part Time Potter.  I suppose that list will have to be long enough.