You may have noticed some big changes here at Nomadderwhere.com.
A website with an evolving purpose
What once was a travel blog for my round-the-world journeys has evolved over the last fourteen years to reflect my own growth as a person and a professional creator.
This website doesn’t map a linear nor a transparent evolution. There are many gaps in coverage over that time, during which I’ve toiled with what I think, what to say, and how to say it.
Many of those gaps also reflect the times I’ve fully thrown myself into other pursuits: changing careers, writing books, finishing degrees, moving cities, making films, tutoring adults, building baking businesses or curricula, teaching students, and taking photographs.
I’ve made many promises to myself to post more over the years. What I found out was, when those promises juxtaposed with other work and quickly felt hollow or less productive by comparison, it was clear that a platform to post frequent writings was not what I needed to maintain. This kind of writing was no longer burning from within.
Searching for work
Ever since I left THINK Global School in 2018, I’ve been searching for work. At first, it was a nonchalant glance around Denver for opportunities while I focused on editing my book, followed by a steady hunt with spreadsheets tracking my applications, a momentary slow-down after receiving a tutoring job at the Community College of Denver, and a search reignited when that job lost funding and a pandemic descended.
I tried to use my new graduate degree to get work in writing. I tried to use my experience in education to get a job for which I had the credentials. I thought about going back to my media roots, to dabble in marketing again. Whatever made me the most money so I could keep writing on the side.
It became clear to me that new jobs are often the product of luck and/or politics. There were some replies, some interviews, and a lot of unanswered emails.
Throughout that search, an idea activated and propelled me away from more reflective, insular practices of creation. That idea was the belief that I could make my own living and not have to wait for someone else to deem me worthy of pay. This idea pushed against the rejections and radio silence from prospective employers.
Entrepreneurship.
My grandfather did it. My dad did it. My brother did it. I felt like my work ethic, holistic mindset, and eye for detail could enable me to be an entrepreneur as well, perhaps in the realm of retail or service.
What began well before the pandemic became my lifeline, my informal business school, my trade during lockdown: Pangea’s Oven. Even when it became the hobby of many to make sourdough bread at home, my sales boomed 300% when everyone learned how much time and effort it took to make one loaf. Baking was creative, challenging, ever-evolving, and lucrative… to an extent.
It didn’t take long to learn that baking in my home oven was never going to sustain me professionally. I had to make loads of loaves to make a profit, and hand-mixing was a pain on the body. Using a commercial kitchen for a 24-hour process wasn’t feasible. I found the limits of my production and took stock of the equipment, the space, the licensing, the passion that I needed to take it any further. By last winter, there were no more baby steps left to take.
I needed to come up with a new outlet for that entrepreneurial spirit and creative energy. Something that wouldn’t break my body over time. Something that could offer a sustainable career.
A new venture: Nomaddermedia LLC
While making the decision to have my own wedding photographed, I realized something: I still like making media. I thought I had burned out a while back, and the fact that I didn’t own a good camera stopped me from testing that idea.
That process showed me I still have a lot of opinions. I have visions of what I want to capture. I have a knee-jerk reaction to manage and plan and produce. To wrangle time. I still care.
Before my days at TGS, I was afraid to accept certain documentary jobs. I said no to photographing my friend’s wedding. It felt too daunting a task, too high of stakes to rest assured that I could meet them.
In 2020, it dawned on me that I tackled task after task at TGS that would have scared the bejesus out of the old me. I filmed and swam with sea lions one term, then tackled a multi-camera lecture of an educational big wig without advance notice the next. The most extravagant graduations you’ve ever seen? I photographed them three years in a row. They were like weddings with fifteen simultaneous brides each!
The job search reversed some of the confidence I had when I left TGS. Even if you are aware of the politics of job-getting, it’s so easy to let rejections erode your knowledge of your own capacity. I needed a reminder that my media training equipped me handsomely for working as a one-woman production crew from start to finish.
The media landscape outside of a globe-traveling school looked highly specialized to me: wedding photographers, cameramen on huge crews, newborn portrait artists, editors for companies focused on promotional work. I wanted to penetrate the market, but I couldn’t choose my focus. I prefer the variety and challenge of different creative tasks. I like working a mile wide and an inch deep, learning the whole way, under-promising and over-delivering.
This is how Nomaddermedia LLC came to be.
I resurrected the name from my pre-TGS days when I wanted to be a media producer and didn’t know what my skills were. I spent the early spring restructuring my website to reflect galleries upon galleries of content accumulated over the years that represent that range I enjoy.
From senior portraits to educational documentaries, wildlife photography to family highlight reels, there’s a lot to take in. My goal is to show prospective media clients that I don’t have a formula for making media. Instead, I have a desire to understand each unique project and what it needs first, what it might require of me to learn, what I can use from my art and culture knowledge to lend a new perspective to it.
An extension of my learning
My motivations for media creation weren’t always pure.
I saw it as a status builder. Making media was a way of showing people without telling them that I’ve been places, done things, and earned the “requisite” clout for both, what I ascribed to others who were able to break out of their geographic bubbles.
It was a reaction to being from an insular, rural community and wanting to experience the opposite; a reaction to feeling comparatively unintelligent and trying to find fields so thick with (sometimes pseudo-) intellectuality and exclusivity (in cost and access) with which I could associate myself: art and travel.
It was an extension of my manifestation of colonial travel norms, before I knew I was problematically manifesting colonial travel norms.
How one views the world often comes through in what they photograph, how they frame a scene, who they capture, what they choose to publish or highlight of those choices. There’s also so much to reflect upon when viewing one’s captures and noticing what they notice (and what they don’t).
I think about this a lot when I’m surrounded by visible inequities, especially when I’m outside my own culture. I’ve fumbled in this choice plenty of times, I’m sure to the detriment of bystanders around the world. These moments leave a lasting sour taste I’d eagerly reverse if I could.
In retrospect, I notice that my gut instinct to shoot or not to shoot is often right. If it feels wrong, it probably is. If the goal is a fast snap and quick exit, it probably wasn’t fair for all involved.
As I’ve grown these last fourteen years, I’ve got a clearer sense of what I think, what I need to say, and how I need to say it. I’ve also seen the world grow more polarized and split in its views on media: wholly skeptical or wholly trusting. Media makers, world framers, storytellers have an increased responsibility, even as the camera grows more and more ubiquitous.
I have a better understanding of what it means to be that person behind the lens or the editing suite. At every juncture, one’s humanity, one’s integrity, one’s impact on others awaits reevaluation.
This awareness should hold all media creators to the highest standard of work and accountable to rectifying mistakes. Even on jobs that appear quotidian or unassuming, the chance to say a lot with a little is always there.
The goal is to stand by whatever that “lot” is.
Sustaining the natural resource of the self
I’m realizing now that so many of my passions and interests take me to a breaking point physically and leave a nasty memory in place of all the joy that thing once gave me. I made media until my back started spasming, my shoulder knots felt unbreakable, and my neck lost its curvature. I submitted my final book edit for grad school, and within minutes my neck wouldn’t move and my arms went numb. Now, baking is causing my forearms to learn their limits and yearn for a Theragun.
I hope to be able to do what I love and do it without burnout. I think that only comes with an approach of self-preservation, for which physicality is only one consideration.
Creatively, I plan to develop holistically by making Nomaddermedia encompass the creation of words, photos, and video.
Intellectually, I plan to enrich my mind by researching the work of others in all forms and remaining in that zone of slight discomfort—the fertile soil for growth.
Mentally, I plan to tackle only what is feasibly for continued balance in my life. For that reason, I believe this means phasing out one business to accommodate another, in due time. The baking will fade away when it needs to.
Emotionally, I am intimate with the extremes of life these days. I make space for those feelings and for none of the trivial ones. I’m not interested in working beyond my capacity, working for those who don’t align with me, and working when I should be showing up for myself and others. Perhaps I have the pandemic to thank for some improved emotional intelligence. Silver linings.
Practically, I have the freedom to weigh all my ventures against each other because I finally secured a full time job. I filled the role of my old boss at Community College of Denver and regained some financial certainty. It helps me navigate all these choices around passion and purpose without the threat of a depleting bank account, and I’m grateful for that.
Maybe one day I will have all these realms in balance, a camera in hand, and a schedule sculpted to my liking with the bank account to justify it. Maybe one day I will sustain myself with a media business that operates with passion and purpose. Until then, I will continue to grow and learn and produce and sustain the self in all realms. Until then, I’ll share my work and remain open to opportunities for media making that give me something real and good to say to the world.
Maybe one day I’ll get to capture something special for you.