A Dream Deferred...

Sometimes it seems as if I am always setting myself up for failure. The things I want so badly always seem to be out of reach and in the moments where it looks as if I am getting closer, it slips away again, leaving me feeling as if it'll never happen. This has not always been a bad thing because for the interests that I am no longer interested in, the waiting time was helpful in me deciding that I really wouldn't have been consistent with whatever it was after some time. But now I am sure that I have found something that interests me and I would really stick to and the waiting game is in full effect like never before, and it is NOT pretty! I get really excited about my new task/interest and I set up all these high hopes and plans for it and usually find soon after that it takes either more time or money than I have to give at that point and boy is it a bummer! Since I've repeated this process many times over I have begun to recognize where I go wrong and so now I am trying revise the things that trap me up; such as being more realistic about what I am wanting and then responsible and patient enough prioritize what is more important at the time.
So now I feel I have found the hobby/activity that I am passionate about that utilizes all of the aspects of my creativity that I like to express. I have decided that I want to start my own photography business. I have always liked to take pictures and I think a big part of that came from my grandmother always being big on family portraits. We have more family photos than a little bit and it never mattered if we were looking neat and put together or not. In fact, she preferred it that way and we would often stop at Wal-Mart or Sears in the middle of running errands just to take photos. She said it was more important to look back and remember things the way things were and not where you wanted them to be and from that I had grown to love photography. I took my first photo classes in high school and enjoyed them very much. I actually ran into my high school photography teacher the other day while I was at work. She came into the Target I work at and tried on some maternity clothes and we chatted for a bit. But for a year now I had played with the idea of me starting to shoot again and maybe investing in my own DSLR and wondering what kinds of things I liked shooting better, landscapes and scenery vs portraits. After some research and thinking I had decided that I wanted to shoot people doing everyday life things, ranging from weddings and maternity photos or child photography or high school portraits and really started courting the idea of me doing this not just as a hobby but being good at it and making a name for myself and it got me so excited! Even the smaller and more tedious aspects of owning and running my own business appealed to me and I finally felt as if I found one thing that utilized many of the talents I posses. Getting to be creative with the shots and angles and effects and poses and editing the photos afterwards. Managing business finances and budgeting and inventory allows me to use my knack for numbers and calculating and my organizing skills to, well keep it all organized. Creating and updating my own website, because I have always been a bit interested in webpage design and the overall love of being around people and capturing their most precious moments is what I look forward to. Despite the hype of all my excitement though I did have to sit down and really dig deep within myself to think about whether or not this is something I would really want to do no matter the outcome and how I would go about it. I couldn't expect my friends and family to be on board with something that I myself am not fully 100% about. I realized that it would take a lot of work and research and investing and am even finding out now that it will even take work to learn where to pick up the necessary information that I need whether by taking classes or reading books. I have taken to reading about other photographers and most are pretty honest about the ups and downs of the business and gave me a reality check on what I am up against but it didn't discourage me. I am not yet at the point where I am ready to actually start my business but what I can do now is find affordable starter materials in order to master my craft and become familiar with the basics of photography all in all. Being that this is a dream of mine and will not be my main source of income I do have the advantage of having a full time career as a nurse which I am also passionate about, but it doesn't take away the time needed to maintain a business either. This isn't an either or for me. I will be equally fulfilled in both and I realized more and more about myself in this past year about what interests me and what I am good at. I have always been interested in multiple areas and felt that one day I would have to choose one that I wanted and stick with it, but I am finding that there are many people who do multiple things its just a matter of balance. My family and my job will always be whats important to me and this dream of photography is more than a dream it is a manifestation of what makes me who I am and a product of what I am capable of. My intention isn't to get rich but to be fulfilled and utilize the talents that I have in a way that pleases me. If I broke even every year it wouldn't bother me any I just want the opportunity to perform for the pure joy of it. It brings me comfort to know what I want and to know that I don't have to limit myself to one thing in life. I have an aunt that does many things and is involved in something new many times that I hear about her and it encourages me to know that I can be active in the things that I want and still have a close knit family and enjoy my life and if I decide to do something else I can stop what I am doing and move on to something else if I so chose. It is just nice to know that I can and it makes for a better story to tell and journey to live in my opinion. So, I am looking forward to investing in my fist DSLR pretty soon. It took some convincing from my husband and much pondering on my part to agree that I should start off with a good starter camera that is good on the budget but also good quality for learning. I am excited for my new found discovery and happy for the progress I have made so far since starting my blog at how much I have learned about myself. Pretty soon I'll have a new photography aspect to add to my blog archiving all of my learning endeavors! Stay tuned...

Soundtrack for Life

Have you ever had the feeling that there's a song for everything? No matter what the occasion or the feeling there always seems to be the perfect song for it either to make you happy or to accompany sadness or to make you dance or laugh or remind of you of past memories. But I just love music! There are so many different genre's and artists with different talents and strengths and ways of expressing themselves which makes it so interesting and refreshing to listen to. There are songs for makeups and breakups and loss of loved ones and births of children and life lessons and love songs, growing up songs, secret crush songs, inspirational songs, silly songs the list goes on! I have so many different playlists on my iphone, one for getting dressed and one for when I'm out driving around or blogging or walking or cooking and cleaning and even one for the shower! One of my favorite things to do is to listen to the radio with my hubby singing along to whatever song we have on at the time. We went to Florida for spring break last spring and on the way there and back we sang along together to some of our favorite songs and tortured one another with the songs the other hates and it felt so good. It didn't take money or much else other than the two of us, the open road and the radio. As I get older the style of music I like changes and I become more interested in different kinds. My senior year of high school I got into country music, mostly the contemporary and then last year I got into folk music and pop music. But the world of music is timeless and interchangeable and so much apart of my life almost like a family member that helps to motivate, inspire, encourage and reveal and makes the background music to my life story.

Life is Not a Television Show...

One of my favorite television shows is One Tree Hill. I absolutely love that show and all the artistic dynamics it has in it. I even got my husband hooked on it, and it was recently when he and I were catching up on new episodes online that I came across the topic for this post. There was one character, Alex who came on the show as an actress who was rehabbed from alcohol abuse and then became a model for another character's (Brooke) clothing line. She hit a few rough patches with drugs and relationships, tried acting and screen writing on for size and was now, according to the episode we were then watching, recording an album as a new singer! And my husband goes, "Wow! Isn't it great how you can do anything on tv?" And that got me to thinking about life on television. Everything always seems better, even the bad doesn't seem so bad when its on tv. You can go from being a crack addict to a princess all within one 24 episode season. Television seems to have no limits or boundaries on what's plausible or even possible. Sometimes it seems that you truly can do anything. But that is not at all how real life works. In reality, you do actually have to leave the coffee shop, and in real life, no college student would ever be able to afford the clothes and shoes she is, or have a perfect bounce and curl in her hair after it rains. No, what really happens, is: you fight to squeeze into the jeans you've had since high school while trying to ignore the freshman fifteen you've got going on and when you try to straighten/curl your hair it never ends up the way you want; one side always looks better. You spend more time in class than you do at parties and cannot afford to go on trips and dates the way they do on tv.  T.V. doesn't show all of the sucky parts that happen in real life and you can't just fast forward through all the hard and boring parts that happen along the way that you don't want to live through. In real life 45 min isn't nearly enough time to have a good cry, or study for an exam or makeup with a friend or have an epiphany on life that changes your entire perspective on life. The boring parts are necessary and as time happens along, you start to understand the importance of it all. Sometimes I can't wait until the parts of life I am waiting for happens but I realize that then, I'll never be happy with where I am in life if I am always looking forward to the next step. So I try and find contentment in wherever I am to avoid missing out on it when the time is passed. But I think we all struggle with it at some point especially while we are still young and it is a lesson to be learned as time goes on.