So, my camera is having more and more problems. Sometimes it won’t turn on. Other times, after a bit of shooting, it gives me an error 20 which is a shutter related error. I’ve taken more than 40,000 shots with my little Rebel, and it has been to Cuba and back, so I can’t be too surprised it is failing, but it brings up an interesting problem: I can’t really afford a replacement.

I would really love to move onto a more professional body, but I can’t even afford to purchase the new Rebel that replaced my current one. It isn’t that my expenses are too high, but instead that I haven’t been very smart with my money, and need to change that. There are things I would like to have to make my job easier or better, and I still haven’t really furnished my apartment.

Money is one of the biggest stresses in life, and stress is something I am still learning how to handle. I haven’t been feeling very energetic lately, and stress definitely is a contributing factor to that. Now that I’m “working for myself” again, I need to make sure to set aside a large percentage of my pay each month to pay towards income tax and GST. I haven’t been doing as much saving as I should, which means I’ll have to change my budgeting over the next few months to make up for earlier spending.

I will have to figure some stuff out if I am going to want to continue to pursue photography as a hobby. It can be hard to justify when I don’t yet have a laptop that would allow me to work outside my apartment from time to time (yes, I know I can borrow your other one Tom, and I appreciate that). I also could use some new clothes, a lamp, some bedding, pots and pans, a microwave, as well as some other normal life stuff.

It doesn’t help that buying a new camera body is more expensive than two one-week trips to Cuba.

Hopefully, over the coming months, I’ll figure everything out, but I definitely don’t enjoy the stress. Thank goodness for having a platform to write things out so I can off-load them from my mind a bit.