July ended quietly, on purpose. After a first half of the year that ran Shanghai-Italy-Cape Town-Dubai-China-LA-the Alps, I spent weeks at home base in Riga doing something this industry pretends doesn’t exist: resting. Here’s what a reset month actually looks like, because nobody posts about this part.
Sleep First, Everything Else After
The first week home is always the same discovery: I’m more tired than I thought. Time zones extract a loan you repay all at once. So week one has a single KPI, sleeping in my own bed at the same hours, daily. Unglamorous. Transformative.
The Body Gets Its Turn
On the road, training is whatever a hotel gym allows. At home it becomes structure again: real sessions, long walks, swimming at Jūrmala in the Baltic summer. A camera bag on your shoulder 200 days a year is a physical job; the maintenance window is not optional.
The Archive Pays Its Debts
Every trip generates more footage than its deliverables use. Reset month is when the archive gets processed: drives consolidated, projects labeled, the best unused material logged for future edits. This July’s discovery: enough dormant material for months of content I’d forgotten I had. Organization is free money.
Planning the Second Half
With distance from the calendar, I plan the autumn properly, which projects deserve the remaining year, which inquiries get a yes, what the 2027 map should look like. Decisions made rested are simply better than decisions made in transit. Most of my worst yeses were sent from airports.
The Honest Part
There’s a version of this job that never stops and burns down in three years. I’ve watched it happen to talented people. The unphotogenic truth is that the sustainable version has seasons, sprint, then recover, and protecting the recovery is as professional as delivering the sprint.
August is already moving: London, the South of France, Greece. But it moves on a full battery. That was the whole point.
