When I think of who’s reading this blog I think of my mom and of Abby’s mom and of Jack and sometimes my dad and sometimes Abby, and apparently my English teacher from highschool, Tom.  All people I not only would drink beer with, but actually have. This is a close-knit audience of people I care about, not strangers. 

I was talking with a friend today about art, and commercial art. I said that of course the moment you accept money for your art it becomes commercial, but before that even, when you produce art for an audience other than yourself and your loved ones, that too is a dipping of the toes into professionalism. And when it comes to art, professionalism is a death knell of anything I’m interested in.

I hate professionalism and you should to. 

But I also love it, and require it. 

I want to build a deck this summer and wood is expensive. I’d really quite like some more money with which to buy it. It might be more expedient to take up roofing or more freelance work or bartend on the weekends, but I wouldn’t mind trying to make this blog thing turn a profit. 

Today I thought about promoting it on Front Porch Forum, just announcing that I have a blog where I post my photographs and talk about life as a young father in Vermont, and also denim jackets and Jesus Christ. I bet it’d garner a few more readers, but I have to imagine they’d all be flummoxed by what they found here. It really is a pretty strange and personal thing I’ve been developing. 

I believe that if I really expected strangers to stumble upon it I’d want to up the ante; do a bit of audio, do actual different photography every day rather than simply fetching old photos from last year 60% of the time, interviews, a shop.

So the question is do I wait until I have my shit together and am doing all of those things before I tell other humans I don’t know directly about this thing, or tell them first and use the embarassment of being lazy and looking lazy in front of them, to motivate myself. 

Obviously the second one.