Yup! It's Late by Gord Barker

    Okay, I know it's late! For some reason, I thought that I had an extra Saturday to get this post done. Yeah, some day I'll learn how to read a calendar! In addition to that, I discarded the original idea that I was going to use. This resulted in a state of writer's block. After that the demands of the day job interfered and...   Enough excuses! I'm late to the deadline and I apologize profusely.

    That being said, the writer's block is still there and I've got readers who want me to produce something! Okay. Here goes!

............Long pause...............................Very long pause.....................................................

    Perhaps the toughest part of being a photographer and blogger is meeting deadlines. Back when I was a commercial photographer in the dinosaur days of film, I worked under one very strict adage, "Clients don't pay for excuses!" They want high quality work and they want it delivered on time. Period!                                                                                                                      

      A while back I had a conversation with a photographer who operates a local studio. I remember her saying to me, "You're lucky. You get to shoot whatever you want whenever you want." In a way, she was right. I don't rely solely on photography or writing to pay the bills so, to that extent, I guess that I'm a freelancer in the truest sense of the word. 

     But to achieve any success in the creative world, I have to be my own toughest critic. Ultimately, I'm working for the most critical client  of all. Me! 

     Strangely enough, not having a paying client can actually make meeting deadlines more difficult. I mean my deadlines are self imposed. Financially, I'm not paying a penalty for not meeting them. It can be far too easy to tell myself that no one really cares if I'm a little late or if I don't publish at all. I mean, no one is paying me for this stuff. 

    But the reality is that I'm being paid with something far more valuable than money. What I'm getting is real appreciation and loyalty. My readership may be a small one, but they look forward to the blog posts and photos that I put out. I try to consistently publish on the last Saturday of each month. I once wrote and published a blog post on a friend's coffee table when I was out of town for the weekend. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea and enough photos stashed on my cell phone to pull off that little stunt!

     I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've got to try a little harder to consistently get the work out on time. I owe it to my readers. And, as someone who enjoys creating this stuff as much as I do, I also owe it to myself.

...more later