Luxury Problems and Time Management

I remember when Lisa and I were working with Molly of Rabbit Foot Fern to design our logo and I felt super strong about the tagline and message behind this blog, but up until last week I was really frustrated with how much I could share online about my life because you see, I still had a full time day job. And every single time I did a side gig with photography, I felt guilty, like cheating on my day job guilty. I'd found a new love, photography, and it was slowly tearing me away from the non-profit I worked at for five years. But I started to slowly break up with the non-profit and photography took more and more of a hold on me and it hurt so good to be doing it often and doing it well and so this long drawn out backstory is to tell you that I feel free for the first time in a LONG time because I can tell you the truth about my life and running this small business. My photography business has all of me and now I have to craft a life to support this creative endeavor and you know what? I'm having a hard time!

Lisa talks a lot about how she likes the feeling of just keeping her head above water and right now I feel like I have leg weights on and I'm hovering just below the surface. I can still see the top, but I'm about 5 feet under and there's no sign of me coming up for air soon. Some people call a ton of new business a 'luxury' problem and I totally get that! I'm lucky that I've had so many inquiries since leaving my day job and as you can imagine, the Daily Candy feature throttled me up to a whole new level. I'm super grateful and pretty ready, but it is taking a bit to let it sink in that I used to get 1 inquiry a day through my website and since Friday I can't even believe how my website stats have gone through the roof!

My confessional moment of the blog is that - I have NO idea how to structure my days anymore. All of this freedom is almost paralyzing and I'm easily distracted, so what now? My wife and I talked this morning and we've come up with a point system and I'm curious to see if it will work. I'm a double Aquarius and I don't love structure, but here goes, I'll give you a report back in a week or so.

• We've established a point system based on how much money I need to bring in a month
• We are establishing minimums for job bookings based on each week
• After I've booked those gigs and paid those bills, then we will allocate my time/money the following ways:
• Business promotion - not sure what this will look like yet, but maybe hiring a PR person to help me land a magazine gig or to do some pitch letters for me
• Enrichment - I love taking classes, so I will try to continue to learn how to shoot on film and maybe do a long exposure/night photography class through Skillshare
• Fun - going for a drive up the coast or seeing a movie - I can't always be either on the go photographing people or at my computer editing
• Errands - sad but true, I have laundry and groceries to get
• Quality time with my beloved - we're both super busy people, so we're being more intentional with our time together, even though we both work from home

Isn't it weird that when working the day job and blogging and doing photography on the side I felt like I had more control of things? Lisa and I can both stick a crap ton of things into small incremental segments of time, but give me 10 free hours and I'm useless. Any articles or advice are always greatly appreciated in the blog comments.

xo

Sarah