I have 112 days to turn around my whole entire life, and since that sounds entirely too dramatic, and also like the longest timeline in the whole world I’m going to break it down into more manageable chunks.

• I have 7 days to deliver 15 photo galleries – those are my big commitments that actually pay my bills, so getting those delivered is my priority
• Then I have 7 days to finish the studio

Which leaves me with 98 days to turn around my whole entire life.

Why do I need to turn around my whole entire life? Great question.

I’ve been a photographer since I was 16 – that’s literally when I photographed my first wedding. And I’ve had other jobs. I even got my undergrad degree in speech language pathology. But photography has always called me back… Until last year when I was diagnosed with seronegative rheumatoid arthritis. I shouldn’t be surprised since both my mom and Grammie have rheumatoid arthritis, but at 30 years old it felt like a shock.

I mostly ignored this diagnosis, and went on to photograph 213 sessions from September 16 – December 11th which is only 86 days. That’s when my body didn’t let me ignore the arthritis. My doctor prescribed Prednisone as a bridge therapy while we worked on finding a medication that would help manage the symptoms, but the pain was still constantly present.

I was wearing compression gloves, taking warm baths, sitting in the sauna, red light therapying. Everything for relief before I went back to another day of photographing for 2-3 hours multiple days a week.

And yet I love being a photographer. I love photographing families. And I love the chaos and the calm. I love all of it. So this Spring I once again set up for spring sessions with all the flowers in bloom. I photographed several days of mini sessions and 35 sessions total. Again it feels so incredibly amazing to be connecting with these gorgeous, fun, playful families.

But again, I was in pain and sore. Not like how I used to be in pain after a 12 hour wedding day – the next morning I would wake up dehydrated and exhausted. This pain is concentrated in my fingers and elbows. This pain is bone deep – I forgot to pack my heating pad and had to purchase one in order to ease the pain in my knuckles.

My hands don’t hurt like that after typing, and I think it has to have to do with the combination of holding my camera and utilizing very specific buttons. My camera and lens weigh 4.6 pounds, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re holding it for multiple hours it definitely is a lot.

Which leads me back to the 112 days to turn around my whole entire life. In 112 days I have to start running ads for fall photo sessions if I want to have a successful season. Fall is when I do about 75% of my photography work. For some reason it’s when the most people are pregnant (I’m guessing due to the holidays of Christmas-Valentines day), and it is also when people are thinking about holiday cards.

But by August 1st I am hoping to be making enough money from other things that I can significantly limit how many sessions I do this fall. What if I could only take on 100 sessions this fall? That would be an absolute dream for me.

Part of me rebels – I love photography, I love my families, lots of my families come back to me year after year after year. Would I really turn away a client I’ve photographed before? (honestly I don’t know the answer to that question)

Part of me sighs with relief knowing that I was in pain for several months last fall. So having a less strenuous schedule would be really nice.

When I was a kid I imagined being an English teacher. Then in middle school I imagined being an editor. In high school I actually did edit the litmus and did the yearbook. Then just after I graduated from college I was obsessed with Meghan Markle’s lifestyle blog “The Tig.” I imagined being a lifestyle blogger, but I was grinding to be a wedding photographer. That was my one driving force – be a wedding photographer. And I did it, and it was amazing. And then I transitioned to family photography, which has also been amazing. But what if it’s time to circle all the way back around to what little kid me wanted? To write and make art and teach.

So that’s what the next 112 days will be about.

This is part of my overall goal of figuring out this transitional decade. I started with trying to  figure out “who I am now.”  which you can read here!