It's a clips episode.

I just scanned through some of my recent posts and I realized I have gotten WAY too serious, not to mention long winded (oh wait, I've always been that). So I'm going to just shoot the breeze with you a little and give you an update on my life recently...

• We finished off our commitment to Apartment Life and we are no longer an official "Cares Team" for our community, but we still are caring people who live in the same community.
• We considered buying a house... then we were considered the value of eating and being able to afford to have clothing on our backs so we decided we are quite content in our apartment for another year.
• We almost died putting together a booth for the January bridal show. But we lived to tell the tale... and to book several weddings from it so far (see photos of the booth here).
• We've officially become "international photographers" since we just booked a wedding in Playa Del Carmen (near Cancun in Mexico) for this October.
• We recently made some new friendships with people who we click with AMAZINGLY well (shout out to the Schmidts and the Julians, we love you guys!).
• I took a full day off this month!
• In 2009, we paid off all of our debt to become a debt free company (you can read the blog about that here).
• Scottie and I both just started an online fitness program with Simply Fit where we receive a diet plan and workout plan for the week. I have a love/hate relationship with it because I love the nutrition plan but I just hate working out in general, while Scottie has discovered that working out is his new purpose in life. We are both feeling great doing it though, and we love the program!
  

I should've just put a stamp on that and called it a Christmas letter! Since most of our life is business and we've pretty much thrown the "personal life" out the window, you can read our abridged year in review of Radiant Photography if you want to know what's really been going on with us lately.

There is one more thing I have to talk about, the biggest news... we finally got a dog! No, not the boxer Scottie's always wanted, not the bull mastiff he's always secretly dreamed about, but a freaking Chihuahua!! Everyone who knows Scottie laughs when they hear this. In fact, when I first called my mom to tell her, she seriously could not stop laughing hysterically for even a minute, and she was STILL laughing after I told her the story about how we got the dog, and I could STILL hear her laughing as I hung up the phone! If you don't know Scottie well, I guess you could say he's not the little dog type of guy. Not to mention he's a really really big guy so they're kind of an odd pair (which is why mom was laughing until she cried).Her name's Jasmine (aka Jazzercise, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jazzmanian Devil, and Snoop Doggy Dog to name a few) and we got her from some kids we love who used to live in our apartment complex. She used to follow these kids around everywhere, including up into our apartment. So we spent a lot of time with her and we LOVED her. She was one of Scottie's favorite dogs ever. So much so that when we went to the pound to find a dog, he said grimaced at all the chihuahuas but said, "man if Jasmine was available I'd take her in a second". Needless to say when her owners called us exactly 3 days after he said that (no joke) and told us she was available, we jumped at the chance!
We loved her a ton for that first week... and then she got her period. Ever since I found out that actually happens to dogs (like a year ago) I had hoped in vain that was an experience I'd never live to have. Bummer. I'll spare you all the gory details except to say that I have learned more about the sex lives of canines than I ever wanted to know.
(This is her being all ashamed the first time we put her diaper on her! So sad... and weird).

I'm happy we ended up with such a tiny dog (no, not so I can dress her up, that's only because she gets really cold). Since the house thing is a no go, we get the awesome job of following her around and picking up her poop by hand in a bag, so her size is a definite plus in that department. Not to mention, she's the perfect size for people like us who work our lives away because she just sits in our laps all day so we still get to pet her and pay attention to her. (By the way, Scottie thinks she has some weenie dog in her, which would make her a chiweenie or a weenie-wahwah and I'll accept that theory just so I get to say those fun words!)
But I still haven't told you the best part about this dog, not only is she a super sweet little cuddler who is very loving, cute, and tiny, but... she sleeps until noon everyday! We definitely could not have found a more perfect dog for us.

Why I am where I am.

So I'm back. I'm not totally sure about the reasons for my absence. For one, I spend several hours a day writing now. Whether I'm writing a lengthy important email to a client or a little story about the wedding we just shot... it seems I'm always writing. However, I've found that I am never writing for myself or for my friends. I'm definitely starting to feel stifled as I find my self reading and re-reading (and making Scottie read and re-read) every single word I write as a result of my caution in how I present myself in public/business persona and as a result of my basic flaw as a people pleaser.

The reason I'm back on this blog is because I'm taking my first day off in over a month. I actually didn't want to take this day off, but after yet another stress break down last night, my kind and loving husband put his foot down. No checking email, no updating our business Facebook page (though I have already cheated on both accounts when he took the dog for a walk), no processing photos, etc., etc.

So basically I'm totally lost on what to do with my day now. When I say I haven't taken a day off in over a month, I mean that I took Christmas day off and before that I have no idea how long it was since I had a break. I know, this is ridiculous and unhealthy and I don't know how long it will last. I keep thinking "this will be a tough year because of ____ but the next will be better and we can step back from our business a little bit" but when my friend recently asked me how much longer I was going to continue working 12 hour days every day of the week, I had to admit to myself that I didn't see much of an end in site. Sure, our business is supporting us. Sure, we're enjoying (almost) every minute of it. Sure, now that it's going well we could just maintain. But that's not us, that's not our goal, and that's not going to get us to where we want to be. Every year I think we'll finally "be there" and we can back off. But every year my dreamer/genius of a husband concocts some new scheme for us to dive into and these schemes are the things that are taking us the direction we want to go.

If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought we were wrong to live such an unbalanced, unhealthy lifestyle I would have answered with a resounding yes. But I'm starting to change my tune. I now believe there are seasons in life and I also believe that there are certain sacrifices required in life that are well worth making (for a season). We have decided to live for freedom, rather than for security. That is a huge risk and it's a difficult goal. We've decided we want to get to a place where we are in charge of our lives, where we're not controlled by a job, a mortgage, or a rigid schedule. We want to live a very unique life and that means living different from everyone else now to get to that place later. As Dave Ramsey (the financial guru that helped us get out of debt) says, "You have to live like no one else so later you can live like no one else". He is speaking of the financial sacrifices you make now to be debt/financially free later on in life. I agree with that statement on more than just a financial level. I agree with it on a life philosophy level.
Although I feel I have to make a certain clarification here... I would definitely not be making these sacrifices if I did not work with my husband or if I had children. Right now, yes, Scottie and I lack a certain amount of QUALITY time together but that fact that we do have quite a large QUANTITY of time together does help make up for that (somewhat) more than if we just didn't have any time together at all and we were working the same amount as we are now, but separately. Our business does bond us together in a big way and it does allow us to have a relationship that is actually better than it was before we had this much time together (despite our known need for more quality time). So while there are certain, temporary sacrifices we are making, I want to be clear that the sacrifices that are hitting our marriage are more minimal than those happening in other areas (and we are doing our best to cut them out completely) and I do believe in putting family first. I know that even temporary sacrifices that hit a family can have long lasting, detrimental side effects.

That said, a big reason we are making these sacrifices now is because we believe they will be beneficial to our family later in life. We want our family to experience the freedom that we are working so hard to build as well. We want our kids to be able to stay home with and be raised by BOTH of their parents. We want to get to take extended family vacations with our kids in the summers, maybe even moving to San Diego every summer to shoot weddings there. We want to be able to have the ability to be creative in how we educate our kids about everything in life rather than just being forced to hope that schools will teach all that is necessary. We want to be able to say, "forget it, we're taking a break today" on those days that one of our kids really needs us to be there for them, rather than being forced to put them off and just hope it won't be too late to help them later.

I'm not talking about financial freedom only (although that would be a nice benefit), like I said earlier, I'm talking about a lifestyle of freedom. No, I don't mean anarchy either, I mean having the time, ability, and energy to make choices that we think are best for our family rather than being forced to assume that the norms in our society are what's best for us. I already tried this assumption for myself and it didn't work. I tried for years to work a 5 day week from 8:30-5 and I felt like I was dying the entire time (even though I had a excellent job and loved the place I worked at and the people I worked with). Now I work more than twice as many hours a week and I am personally thriving (with the exception of the few sacrifices) and my marriage is thriving. I used to think I was lazy or there was something wrong with me. Now I realize that not everyone is made to be the same, think the same, or do the same things on the same schedule. I pray that I never again have to be forced into a mold I don't fit into and I never want my family to be forced into that mold either. Again, clarification, I'm all about rules. I just think rules should be there to help everyone thrive, not to stifle uniqueness or giftedness, but to allow everyone to grow in those things together. Rules are very, very valuable, but once I'm a parent I want to have the freedom to determine what rules for life are best for my family, rather than allowing my overly busy, consumer driven, dependent on professionals, over-worked society to decide them for me.

I know I'm young and idealistic. I know things don't always work out as planned. But I also don't think I should give up BEFORE things actually happen that ruin my plans. I still think it's important to make conscious decisions about the course of your life and about your values before just letting any force (society norms included) push you around so you just end up God knows where. Ever seen that movie "P.S. I Love You"? The scene in the beginning where they're arguing about her job, was an exact conversation between me and Scottie at least twice a week during this time period that I was working my full time regular schedule job. I was crying at least 3 times a week with hardly any prompting (I started counting because someone mentioned they thought it sounded like I cried too much), my frustration and anger was overwhelming, and my relationships were falling apart. I was not living, I was surviving. I'll never forget that during that time period someone said to me "that's just life, you have to have a full time job and it's just going to suck". In my head I was screaming in response "NO, I refuse to live the rest of my life like this!" At that time, my husband was already in business for himself so my out loud response was "Scottie doesn't have to live this life, so why should I assume that I do?" Of course I did have to live that life for awhile for many good reasons and that was a season in my life. I know many people right now would give anything to find a full time job and they're probably pissed off that I'm complaining so much about having a job. This doesn't really have to do with what kind of job you do or do not have (that just happened to be a particularly big issue for me). It has to do with the difference between settling for just surviving or barely making it through life and really LIVING, growing, and experiencing joy in life. I don't expect to get to experience the latter during every season in life, I know I won't. But I don't want to ever arrive at a place where I stop seeking it, where I'm OK with a mundane life. I want to live an extraordinary life (read my earlier blog about that) and that means working hard to find the life I am meant to live. It means making certain sacrifices, whether that's comfort, security, or a few days off, to achieve a place in life where I am freed up to have my place in the world where I can do the most good. This place is different for everyone. For some, that means working for someone else 9-5, 5 days a week. For others that means, leaving your secure 5 day a week job to find your purpose. For some it has nothing to do with what job you have, it has to do with how you decide to raise your kids or how you decide you want to help others.

If you made it this far in this blog, congratulations, you are a patient person. I spend all my days trying to be mindful about not being too wordy or trying to figure out ways to make sure people don't stop reading. But ahh, I am SO tired of analyzing while I write! Thanks for going on this journey with me as I finally got the freedom to just let my thoughts explode.

I think the purpose of this blog (other than to just feel free while I write) was to explain to others... and mostly to myself... why we're doing what we're doing. I know more than ever that I am right where I need to be in my life. I don't know WHY I'm supposed to be here... it may be for the reasons I just described, or it may be for something totally different. But I constantly thank God that I'm here. I just need to remind myself this on the few days like yesterday where I freak out and debate whether or not it's worth it. But deep down, on a daily basis, I know it is.