We were laying in the green grass at Camp Wandawega, practicing our yoga poses (I’m exceptionally good at the one where you lay flat on your back and close your eyes.) The instructor said these words that have stuck with me since August, “Relax, center yourself, nobody needs you in this moment of time.” As I laid there with the September sun beating down on me, I reveled in those words. They resonated through every inch of me and I thought hard about them. In this crazy connected world, it was impossible to think that nobody could need me for an hour of time. The emails pour in, the messages pile up, the comments and likes and phone calls come daily, but when was the last time that you just really centered yourself, your mind, your body? When was the last time you’ve felt free of being needed? It’s December now and as I think about the upcoming year and what I hope it to look like, I want to take this mantra with me.
I’ve been trying to think about time as my currency, each day my bank fills up and how I choose to spend each minute needs to be a conscious decision. You see, the past four years have been the best of my life. I married an amazing man, bought a house (actually two), adopted dogs, went on runs, had girl nights, but above all I built a successful business. Growing a business was my baby, it was my life. No vacation time, no time away from the computer, no time away from it. Each day, I was pouring into this business, this dream. When I think and reflect about the process of growing my business, I think about how everything always felt so urgent. No inquiry would sit longer than an hour, the day would start and end with staring at my inbox, family time was interrupted to respond to a Facebook message, clients would text me at all hours on all days, knowing that whatever they needed, I would do. I treated everything as a life or death situation and in turn, I was losing pieces of my life that could never be gotten back. Think about it, very few things about being a photographer are life or death…
The best thing I’ve learned, is that it is all about balance: work hard, play hard, but don’t let work in while you are playing. I’ve been guilty of this far too often. It’s easy to let your business run you and while I am so thankful for the “hustle” that got me to this point, it isn’t sustainable, nor should it be. This year was all about working smarter, not harder. Going into 2016, I want the year to be focused on relaxing, centering myself, and remembering that it’s okay to take moments where no one needs to reach me. We are too accessible, our phones are attached to our hands. It IS okay to let an email sit for a few hours so we can enjoy a meal without the “ping” notification telling us we are needed, it IS alright to let people know that we are only in the office during certain hours, and it IS appropriate to let clients know that texts should be saved for conversation and not work. Taking days of rest, taking time away, turning off all notifications, deleting apps, and setting boundaries are all part of staying passionate, staying excited about the work you do. While it’s nice to feel needed, it’s even nicer to feel present. Don’t let the people you are with feel inferior to the people reaching out to you on a screen, don’t miss living your moments because you’re too busy looking at others through a screen, and don’t get caught up in feeling that in order to be successful, you need to be accessible at all hours of the day.
I love everything about this blog! A great concept to take into 2016! Thank you for sharing!