You guys, running a business is hard.

While I wish I could spend all of my time shooting, the vast majority of my time is spent trying to decide the best way to market, researching the best products to offer to my clients, creating a social media strategy, paying bills, learning and growing my technical skills, writing emails, convincing myself (unsuccessfully) to blog, maintaining a website, editing for hours on end (which can be pretty exciting!), filing sales tax, and a bunch of other random tasks. Some sweet day I will hire an assistant to help run this, but until then, it is all me. Owning a business can be incredibly challenging and, at times, isolating, but it can also bring so much joy and fulfillment.

Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of what brought me to this point to begin with.

I'm a creative.

I create. It's what I do.

Except when I have all of that other stuff to do, too.

As a result, my creative juices have been feeling a little off lately, so I've decided to start a couple of personal projects that have no other purpose than for me to shoot just for myself. Don't get me wrong-I love, love, LOVE working with my incredible clients, and I am convinced that photographing women is my calling! But working on something, just for yourself, brings a different kind of joy. A pause from the norm, a shoot with no schedule, no deadline, no expectations. A chance to step back, breathe, and remember the wonder and curiosity that came when I got my first camera. A chance to experiment and try something completely different from what's expected.

This afternoon, I took a little time to work on one of my personal projects. And while I haven't pulled the pictures off of my memory card yet, I feel inspired. I feel that creativity start whirring back to life. And I'm realizing that in order to best create for my clients, I have to take the time to create for myself, too.

So while I sometimes feel overwhelmed with running this business, there isn't anything else I'd rather dedicate a career to. My camera lets me create magic, not only for myself, but for others, too.

And it's really hard to top that.

The moral of the story is this:

No matter how much you love what you do, make sure to take the time to do something just for yourself every now and then.