Keeping the Dream in Sight

Well, I did it! 2024 was spent well with lots of growth, living below my means to live life to the fullest. I traveled the world, joined a pickleball club, finally took that pottery class, and lived in the homes of many other people's lives so I didn't have to pay rent. It was amazing, I never had to wake up to an alarm, drag myself to a job I was doing out of necessity, and most of all, I got to spend my time doing what I love: Photographing and filming weddings.

We have now stumbled into a new year, and I am already not where I want to be with my business. Yes, I had growth from the year prior, but I am still in the position that although I love it and it can someday be successful and sustainable, I can not live off of what I make doing it!

I am walking into 2025 with new dreams, but most of all, fear of the unknown. In this last year, I have found how I crave a life I have not yet explored. I dream of being a city girl living in a studio apartment where the people are alive and downtown. While I was solo traveling through Australia and Southeast Asia, people would message me on Instagram and tell me how brave I was. I never saw traveling as being brave, honestly, if you have the money to do it, the rest is pretty easy with the right mindset. However, the hidden message behind the words they never said was " how brave it was to leave behind society and try a different course of life".

My goal coming into 2025 is to find a job, find a place to live, and find a boyfriend, in that order. Well, while scrolling through the Facebook marketplace, I stumbled on what I would consider my dream apartment. A 500-square-foot studio with a lot of character in the perfect location. I had to jump on it, because I knew it wouldn't last long. One problem, I don't have a steady income source to balance on. I have the money, just not the consistent income that looks so good on paper. Thankfully, between my savings and my dad having my back as a co-signer, I can purchase the dream before I have the rest figured out.

See, here is the thing about me, I want my business to be successful, but I can't live the life of how am I going to pay rent?! Thus, I will need to find a job in this. Everyone is hiring, but no one is hiring in the market, and somehow, I hope they will give me a living wage with flexibility for my already booked weddings.

I am stressed, and it's only the second week of January. So my project this year is to find the fun behind why I started my business and try to remember the fun in everything I spent that last year fostering! What is it that they say - Your business is all fun and games until you make it your full-time job? Well, here I am, trying to balance finding a job while prioritizing my dream, while finding community and hopefully a successful date here and there. Talking about it all makes me tired.

Well, it's been another 3 months since I started writing this, we sit here in May with a few things more to say.

I found a job, cutting lettuce, lots and lots of romaine lettuce. Well, not exactly just that, but I got a job at a grocery store. The exact thing I said would be the perfect well-balanced life to live my dream.

No matter what you fall into, there will be stipulations to achieving your happiness. Is it stable? Yes, do I make above minimum wage? Also, yes. They have been working with my schedule restraints and always have a stable number of full-time hours to give. Now for the downside, it's a grocery store. I am not trying to sound above the people that I work with, but the mundane is not for me, even though it's exactly what I need. It is so corporate that I feel like I have traveled back to the education system of reaching for the stars over an equation that doesn't even matter in life. Reaching for perfection, just to be humbled and not respected. I go from being admired at my dream job to being a person who is expendable at any moment. But, it is what it is for the time being.

It is not lost on me the dream I am living in, the city I pass on my way home, my affordable parking spot in a place with no parking. I am not lost on the events I am socially attending and the friends I am actively making. I got the apartment, I got the job, I am totally lost on the boyfriend part, but I can be a lot, and the year is still young.

You see, I haven't figured anything out, most days I have nothing figured out as I am trying to manage waking up at 5 am to go to a job at 6 am when I am absolutely a night person. But it is what I have to do to live the dream I have. I get off of work at the grocery store in time to go play pickleball at night, or take a 2-hour nap and still have time to do the other things that both my business and life need, to sustain.

I am finding the balance where consistency meets making plans on more than just the weekends, and where life can be experienced in a bigger way than just paying rent. I appreciate the sunrise view over the restaurant sign outside my building every morning, even though you know I am running out that door because I prioritized the extra five minutes of sleep over being on time for my shift. Every day I am requesting off is the day I clock off to do the dream. To photograph an engagement, film a wedding and encapsulate the most important days in other people's lives. Working at a grocery store is hard. Not because of the mundane and repetitive workflow, but because there, I am nothing to anyone, but it's a brick in the path I am building. I also get a lot of steps in every day, and I am back to being very physically fit, which is a plus.

When I tell people what I do for a living, I tell them I am a photographer; Even though what pays most of my bills is the grocery store. I do this because I would not be working at a grocery store if I weren't pursuing my dream. I wouldn't be dragging myself before the sun rises to be aimless in my goals. And lastly, because working there is not my career, it's more a means for affordable health care, which I think anyone in America can understand and empathize with.

I am so grateful for the life I am currently living, the woes of dating or crushing on someone older than me, who probably has zero interest. I am so grateful for the place I live, even though my parking spot gets taken up more than I would like. I am so grateful for this apartment and it being mine, even when the dishes pile up and I stare at them with stress for the next week instead of just doing them. The option to be alone and read this out loud without anyone else around me, a space is truly mine.

And I am grateful for the job that currently makes keeping my dream in sight and a working reality, possible.

So, if you were to take anything away from this piece, it is to dream and acknowledge the dreams you are experiencing, even if there are sacrifices and steps you have to take to get where you want to be. But mostly, this piece is for the future me to look back on.