The View from the Cheap Seats

Let’s just call that the image that leads to the shaving of the mustache. It was a nice vacation, but it’s over. Images are currently in post-production as that is what happens when you run a photography studio as part of your living, you can’t just shoot a Jpeg and be done, nope, all shot in raw, all need to be adjusted and processed. 

It’s also one of those things where our intention to just take one camera and two lenses turned into a full-on assortment of gear to handle a full professional shoot if needed. As it turned out, we did just that. 

There are a lot of things going on right now with the Mouse Island Creatives studios. Rowena has 4 new art commissions lined up in her artist studio, Mouse Island Design is busy laying out a University Viewbook for end of July publication, Mouse Island Photography is steady with portraits and new wedding bookings. That is the nature of running a creative studio, it’s feast or famine. Right now it’s feast so the days are long and the desire to just run outside and soak up the sun is strong.

It is an ever-evolving monster that takes on new shapes and forms on almost a daily basis. We’re almost ready to convert everything into an LLC, which we should have done some time ago, but we haven’t carved off the time to finish the process up. Technically we run everything under our two separate EIN numbers, one for Rowena and one for Shawn. Once it was a benefit, now it’s more of a hassle to keep everything separate on the back end. 

With all of that going on, we are also juggling time with our teen and pre-teen boys and the long-neglected story studio is now getting spun back up. That is what is bringing me here today. 

Seven years ago I spun up the pseudonym Liam Kingman to keep a public face to my writing while I worked other pennames and did some ghostwriting in secret. It gave me the ability to separate myself, real life, from my world of fiction. It eventually wore thin as I wasn’t publishing under Liam and in truth was in a place where the hustle of everything else, lead to sacrifices and delays on getting back to writing.

I feel like there has been a series of years that have passed where I looked for a creative outlet in every other way possible other than wordslinging. There is a need deep in my heart to create, but it is also balanced against the weight of never feeling anything that I create is good enough to be shared with the world.

I’m not going to wax philosophical or make excuses for the delay in creating new written works, I made choices on how my time was to be filled and I have no regrets on the time that has passed. I constantly struggle and always will with grasping at a shimmering illusion, a hope of balance. There may never be a balance for me. I may always be a binger. I hate and love that about myself. There are so many things that I want to do and accomplish in the limited time that we have in this world. I realize that more and more as the years pass by. To accomplish something to the level I want my preferred method is to go all in, but that is not a luxury that I can indulge in when there is responsibilities that need to be spread across a menagerie of different businesses that we operate in. The creative life is a great one, but it is not without burdens. 

Time is always the enemy. The professional business side of me is always conscious of this. The creative side of me wants to just give it the finger and let that speak with the intent that it is given. This post right here is me shirking what I should be doing right now, but it is something that needs to be done, even if it should be a lower priority.

This post is a divergence from the normal blog. Or I should say it is the next evolution in the Wicked Good Life. Things are evolving and morphing. Liamkingman.com and shawnleemcpherson.com have both been redirected here to this site for a good reason. Part of it is simplifying the chaos, but it is also because of the Wicked Good Life being our personal behind the scenes. One or both of those sites will come back in time as I start to publish again.

This story studio section is where I will be talking about the day to day workings of the story studio. I’ll be open and honest about how much I’m writing, what I’m writing, what my process is. Sneak peeks of things to come will follow. 

Right now I have to get going on things I should have started hours ago, but I needed to clear the queue. Transitioning to here takes some online redirection. More to come soon here at the WGL, but for now, Mouse Island Design work needs to be done.