The Projects

The start of 3L year has been the year of entrepreneurial projects. I just counted, I have 8 projects on the go.

Some coincide with school, some do not. I can tell you, 8 live projects with school eats up a lot of time and effort. I think what keeps me going is injections of fun in my life and that these projects serve me. The last line is important: these projects serve me.

Unlike working for, let's say my father, or for another corporation, I work for me. I've taken a novel approach to the whole series of projects. I've started up all low risk projects with very little of my own resources or use of none of my resources. One of the projects has a sponsor. I recognize that the odds are against me. There's an 80-90% failure rate for entrepreneurs. That's a higher failure rate than marriage.

But, these projects are like pawns. The world is like my chessboard, and I am my own chessmaster. Each project advances. I watch and observe. The army of pawns progress slowly across the board. Some will die. Some will be sideswiped. Some will be blocked. Certainly, some will capture the garrison forces. And the rest will advance, one step at a time. I only need one to be graduated as a queen. That's called: jackpot!

I'll give you an example of one of my fun projects. I don't really expect this one to go anywhere. But, recently I was inspired by this article. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/photo-essay-where-children-sleep-204230454.html In this article, photographer Mollison was asked to promote human rights through photography. What he decided was that he was going to take pictures of children around the world with their bedrooms. The results are powerful.

That got me thinking, I'm not a great photographer. But I do know how to tell a story. If only I could take better photographs, tell a story with them by both words and pictures. I don't have the time to be schooled in photography. I don't have the resources to afford such a school. So, what I'm going to do is do a history lesson in photography. I'm going to start with Christopher White's photographs. Then, I'll move forward in history, analyzing great photographs. I'll then pick a theme, a goal, a message, and start my project by meeting people, interviewing them, photographing the relevant message. We'll see where it takes me. I wonder if that pawn will move across the chessboard.

Who knows?