What has been the most interesting experience of your life?
Going back to this question for a few minutes ...
I have put up the answer that everyone with kids expects, but it's true. Even though it seems like a cop-out, pat response to an evocative question, I can't state it any more strongly. My kids are IT!
I have done some fun stuff in my life, starting in music at fifteen, hiding my age, playing country music in a bar and, eventually moving into the sound reinforcement end of concerts shows. Taking long tour contracts with stars, living like I was on vacation the whole time, traveling all over the USA and Canada making music, some studio work, celebrity charity events, building my own KICK ASS sound system, and carrying a camera around my neck the whole time was "interesting", but none of it compares to the creation of life.
When the music business gobbled me up and spit me out, leaving me without any interest in continuing, I took a long vacation and switched to my camera for a way to make a living. I started learning more about people portraits at a job taking pics of families and that lead to a 'permanent studio' job, instead of a traveling job for the first time in my life. It was a large company and I had to take lots of pics, but there were moments were I got a little reminder of why I put up with all the asshole customers and evil bosses, often enough to keep going. The parent's faces ...
The look on a proud Mom's face when she sees what I've done with her kids pics is priceless. I enjoyed that reaction so much that I stayed with that company for many years. I worked damned hard for myself, outside the company also, but I kept coming back to the gravy job.
phobia.