I've been facing a certain problem for a while: everything is running low on storage. My phone has no space left and daily seethes at me to delete things, although I can't at this point. No idea where that 128GB has gone, though I assume on bloated apps. My laptop despite the cost has a stupidly embarrassing 500GB of space thanks to Apple's nonsensical ways and pricing. My camera SD cards are also running low, leading to me having to format them and start again. I recently subscribed to Amazon Prime again the other day having noticed it offers unlimited photo storage to Prime subs with no compression; this was incredibly important to me since all of my images are RAW files and around 23MB each. All other options seemed overpriced, with limits, and had heavy compression. For the cost, it isn't so bad, but I still suffer at the hands of storage limitations. I formatted the SD card to which it's back to normal, though my drone's SD card is filling up quickly, 4k MP4 files are taking up stupid amounts of space fast, several GB per day is easy for me. It's a stressful experience trying to juggle it all with no physical storage for the MP4s as Amazon's storage is perfect for RAW files of stills, but terrible for videos. Not really an option. Another thing is time and internet speeds in attempting to upload the RAWs each day, massive folder sizes, removing the ones that aren't needed on the laptop and ensuring they're backed up on Amazon's side nicely. A great challenge I just don't have that much time for. Words can't describe how much I hate the forced reliance on cloud storage. Though physical storage is quite affordable these days, I'm just not in a position to be throwing out a few hundred on a few TBs of storage to dump everything on.
Building a portfolio that actually makes money to justify such payments in the first place is the priority here. And it's a great challenge with all else going on: low market prices, terrible price action across the board, lower income and more bills and expenses to cover. Things suck a lot at the moment, and that's pretty much why the motivation side of things remains at its peak. I want and need to break above this and escape the way the world currently is. Everything, to say the least, is fucked. Running around the world is not something that's insanely expensive, but it does require quite a lot of independence.
I wouldn't say I'm someone that spends a lot of money. In fact, I'm incredibly frugal. But the way things are at the moment, moving between countries with no intent to stay long-term, it's a great challenge to find the best ways to make a decent living. To adapt to the expenses. Though I don't spend a lot of money on things I don't need, those things are incredibly rare. It's the last few months or so that has kept things low and it's a difficulty to break above from, primarily with so much focus on the portfolio. Though it's the best option for doing so at the moment given it'll give me more leverage over the nomadic lifestyle later on. Back in Armenia I considered starting a company, I had my documents translated and approved by a specific organisation, and I looked extensively into the process. Though Armenia's struggling ways kept me from going forward with that. Eventually I saw the limitations of living there, not necessarily from a growth perspective, but from the perspective of every day life: poor infrastructure, the bad internet speeds which would've made transferring data to clients near impossible in great sizes, the struggles of power cuts which meant working at all was insanely challenging sometimes. Having to keep things plugged in at all times or running out into the city to find a place with internet or power.
The more I thought about it, despite loving Armenia so much, the more I felt Tbilisi could serve as a better option for now. In those regards I wouldn't say it's as disappointing, but moving into a new place and trying to afford things on next to no salary is like trying to print money out of thin air. Storage problems just have to wait, essentially. I have to find a way to adapt to it all rather than burn even more cash that would be better saved up and rebuilt after all the insanity of the last few months. And with a bit more time, the portfolio will grow to a point in which the momentum can decrease a little, and the other areas of income can be considered: teaching English, doing direct client work and pursuing portraits for clients in person.
Trying to juggle it all sounds like to total chaos that absolutely will lead to burnout, and I don't want that. Especially when attempting to pursue a larger presence in a field that I know speaks to me the most. The one I know I want to do regardless of where I end up. Photography and videography is just my thing, the thing I was meant to do. I wouldn't say I'm massively stressed at the moment. I wouldn't say I'm remotely close to burnout, but I do feel the pressure a little. The need to get moving and work hard for once, not giving myself excuses and allowing myself to stagnate. Basically: not even a lack of space to store my photographs and videos will be enough to stop me from taking them.