I get asked often “How do you do it all….run your business, be a stay at home mom, Adia’s therapy, church and homeschooling activities …etc?”
This post is going to be directed mostly to being a mom, even though my life as a Christian and being a wife is extremely important and takes much thought and care to nurture as well. Also, I am speaking as a mom of two young children who we will be homeschooling. I understand some of this will not apply for mommies with older more dependent children.
Let me start off by saying, just because I do all these things, does not mean I am doing them all well at the same time. I normally am excelling in one and struggling in another or being very average at all of them. But I fight on and am constantly reevaluating my time and priorities. I want to hit on a few things that I think about a lot and constantly try to keep in check when running my business.
Priorities – to my very core, I know being a wife and mom is more important then any wealth I can attain in this world. With that said, we need to make money to pay for our house, car, food, etc. It is true that Jonathan has a full time job so photography is not our main income, but it helps us out tremendously with both necessities and liberties. This is such a neat place to be in that I know a lot of mommies are not in. Many of you HAVE to survive off your photography income. Something we always have to keep in mind (and this will look different for every mommy) is how willing are we to give up some of our liberties to be more free for our children. Are we willing to go to less movies, eat out less, purchase less pricy clothes, go down to one vehicle or even not have the newest photography gear? I know we have and might have to do some of this even more in the future so that I do not need to take more jobs to cover our expenses. So something I try to always keep in mind is if I am feeling pulled from my children in anyway, I ask myself and evaluate if I need to give up certain expenses in our life, if at all possible, that will allow me to take less work and spend more time with my children.
There but Not – This is important. We all know that taking pictures is not the only thing we do with our businesses. There is editing, e mails, follow up, album orders, phone calls, etc. These are things that may not take us physically away from our children but it can mentally. I am very capable of zoning out when keeping up on e mails with my BlackBerry and have one of my girls repeating “mommy” for the 100th time, but I am clueless because I am in another frame of mind. This can be the same with emails or editing. So, I need to try extra hard to be there…in the moments of the day….both physically and mentally engaged in my girl’s lives, thoughts, play and giggles. I try if at all possible to keep my editing to naps and bed time. If you notice most of the time you get frustrated with your children are when they are “interrupting” you and your task at the moment, pulling you away from what you are in the middle of. So, I try to make sure I keep them as my task and not my interruption. Be there, for real, in each moment.
Recognition – When you are a mom, you don’t have blog statistics to see how many people are keeping up on your awesome mommy skills, you don’t have Facebookers “liking” your play time, you don’t have “fans” complimenting your skills at training and bathing your children. In the photography business you can get a lot of recognition, encouragement & accolades for a rad picture, an exciting blog you post, a feature you get or client you land. There are rewards of a payment at the end of your job. Well, as mothers, obviously don’t receive the same recognition for our work, time, tears, efforts and chores. Not like we do with photography. It is tempting to crave it or even need that to know you are doing a good job that others appreciate and value your work. We may take unnecessary jobs to make sure we can blog frequently …to see those comments or our exposure and stats rise. But this is something we need not feed. I try hard to value every “thank you”, hug, and smile and all those ways they show you they appreciate you. I try just remembering that my goal in this life and as their mom is what I am pushing for and not the recognition. Really, that is just a bonus! I will tell you this….a joyful day to day relationship with my girls filled with valuable time and teaching is more of a reward to me then any amazing blog statistic or publication!
Sacrifice – Is too strong of a word. Letting go is more accurate. I have to let go of quit a bit. Right now, we take one wedding a month with the rare exception of two. We have pass on many wedding requests and refer them to other photographer friends, we pass on shoots and opportunities that could open up financial gain or recognition in the industry. I’m not saying we pass on them all, but we pass on ones where they would take us from our children for too long, are contrary to our values. As of now we have the ability to only take this limited amount of weddings and be fine. I know this is not the case for everyone. But, it is still something to consider……are there any jobs you could cut back on or pass so you are not away so much?
Accountability – I must say, I am one lucky girl who has been blessed with an amazing husband and good solid friends. Jonathan holds just as strongly to these ideas as I do and therefore is supportive of all we need to do to keep our children my main endeavor. I have good friends who share many of these same values and are trying to balance their other endeavors as well. I know that if I began to get caught up or begin to consistently drift in a direction that is against my value of being a mom….they would call me on it. I need that around me, I can get caught up in things just as much as the next girl. Its tough to hear or even embarrassing, but I have to stay open to hearing when I am on the computer too much or maybe took too many jobs in a month…or the most common I’m guilty of, zoning out and not being in the moment with my family. Try to keep good friends that know your values and will help hold you to them if they see you drifting.
Now, I know everyone is in their own circumstances and this will all look different for each family. I do not think I have it all down. I’m not perfect even at my own goals and I am constantly reevaluating these things with the help of my husband to make sure I am staying on the right track. I don’t ever want to look back and think I took a lot of unnecessary time away from my children that I regret. So, this is my thoughts and perspective on how I am a mommy and photographer, my common tensions and how I try to balance those roles. I hope it helped those of you who have asked me this before or has opened some ideas on how to spend more joyful time with your little ones.
