Breaking

A few weeks ago, Jonathan Canlas posed a question on Twitter: Tell me what you’re doing to refine your vision.

My answer: I’m taking a break – stepping away & prioritizing. Making sure my vision matches what I need & who I am.

As I write this, I’m midway through editing my last wedding.

Perhaps the last wedding of the year.  Or, perhaps, my last wedding ever.

When I booked a wedding over Labor Day weekend, I decided it would be my last shoot for a while.  I knew I’d be reaching that stage in pregnancy where I’d be big, less mobile and tired and that life with a newborn on top of a job, and a traveling husband, and a preschooler… well, I’d need a bit of time to adjust.  Plus, if I’m being totally honest, I wanted a break.

Last month, somewhere between my last session and my last wedding of the year, I turned 37 and spent the day in a bit of a funk.

I’m over scheduled. I’m trying too hard to push myself in directions in which I’m not so sure I want to go.  So, on the first day of what a friend dubs my “Personal New Year”, I made a list of what I want out of the next week, next month and next year and thought hard about what I wanted.  I’m talking really, really hard.

I’ve spent what feels like a lifetime making lists of things I want to do in my life, boxes I want to check, without asking myself how badly I want them. And, I’m finally in a place in my life where I need to make some choices about those boxes – if I keep trying to check boxes, it’s going to be at the expense of other areas of my life – other, previously-checked boxes. So, as I made my new list, I knew that each thing on that list had to be so important that I’d be willing to sacrifice something else.

A resounding component of each item on my new list was to spend more time with family, stop trying to hard, stop trying to prove I can do it all.

Honestly, photography wasn’t anywhere on the list.

When faced with the question of whether I’d like to push my photography career further at the expense of time with family, time relaxing on Saturday with a glass of wine – after having worked a 60 hour week at my legal job, or to spend my weeknights – the only time I get to see my husband – in front of the computer editing, the answer was easy: no. It wasn’t even a hard call.

I’m tired of not having the time to carry out the great ideas I have for my business.  I’m tired from the constant pressure from not doing enough:  enough shooting, enough business development, enough marketing. I’m tired of beating myself up for not wanting to all of my weekends shooting.  I’m tired of spending all day in front of the computer reading contracts and all night in front of the computer editing.  And, really, I’m just plain tired.

It’s scary admitting that I need a break - as though it will close some door that I can never reopen.  But it’s also freeing.  I love photography – it’s a love I’ve had for as long as I can remember.  But that love has been a bit tarnished from the crap this industry puts out there – the facade of perpetual happiness and the belief that all photographers love their jobs all the time.  This business is tough – chew you up and spit you out tough.  It’s physically grueling and emotionally taxing.  Made even tougher by a saturated market and a crappy economy, and sometimes?  That makes some of us want to take a little break.

I look forward to completing the last wedding I shot – a celebration of everything a wedding should be and the perfect high on which to bow out of the industry for a bit.

I write this for a host of reasons: to let people know it’s acceptable to need a break, to do my part to stop the incessant rainbows and unicorns talk that surrounds the photography industry and, most of all, to keep myself honest – to ensure that I give myself the break I need. 

I still love capturing life with a camera and I still love to write so I think it’s fair to say that I’ll still blather here, oftentimes with photos.  And, I suspect that when I come back to my business – if I come back – I’ll have a pretty darn clear vision of what I want and, more importantly, what I need.

Until then…