You, Me + Coffee | Vulnerable

Since I can’t get coffee in real life with every person who reads this blog, I’ll write about what I’d tell you if we grabbed a cup of joe together. You can join the conversation in the comments, if you feel so inclined<3

~*~

I’m copying and pasting these words right from a note on my iPad. At midnight last night I had a bit of a breakdown and quickly grabbed it to type out what I was feeling. But now I’m second guessing if I should be this honest on my biz blog, especially as this relates mostly to my business. I feel like I need to. Please know that my guard is down and I feel very vulnerable.

I hate to compare, because as small business owners know, one year can be awesome and one year can be not as much. But I’m a comparer. I can’t help comparing. I have 6 amazing weddings booked this year. Amazing couples and amazing venues and amazing love stories. I’m so thankful for them all. But, (there’s always a but), last year at this time I had twice as many weddings booked and that fact has been worrying me for months. I’ve heard from a lot of photographers that this seems to be a slow year, or maybe they are trying to make me feel better.

Because of this I’ve been in a really weird place business-wise the last couple weeks. Well, months if we’re being honest. I’ve had many rejections, which is normal in this business, but I have also had some triumphs (like enough confidence in my work to say no to working for free). With the gradual-but-promising growth of my lettering art biz, I’m becoming even more excited, confused and lost at the same time (I feel like I’m Taylor Swift writing a song). I love both things and I want to do both things, but do I take steps to streamline them together, or simply keeping thinking of LFR as a side thing? And if it does keep growing, how do I build these two seemingly different businesses at the same time without losing quality of both? Like I said, a little lost.

With all of this, I am really wondering if this (less weddings, more lettering work) is somehow a sign from God saying ‘I have something different planned for you this year. Something you can’t even imagine.’ And so my plan is to take care of my 6 amazing couples that have trusted me with their wedding photos, and pray that God will show me, in his time, what else he has in store for SRP/LFR in 2015.

I want to be honest with you, putting my ‘low for the industry’ numbers out there is really scaring me and I hope people don’t think I’m less of a wedding photographer just because, for some reason, I am not fully booked for the season. I’m crying thinking about it. I don’t want to post this. Ah. But realness is realer than fakeness, so here we go.

<3S