It’s been 2017 for over 2 days now.  I rang in my new year with my new planner, a crap ton of washi tape and some erasable pens.  I purchased a StartPlanner for 2017, I already had a planner but THIS planner, this planner is set up the same way my mind works.  It’s like Kristy and Jenny could hear all of my gripes and complaints about other planners over the last few years as I tried desperately to make small organizational changes in my life.  Side note: I said small changes, I am not a big change person…small changes is where it’s at.

So there I sat, slowly putting washi tape on all the birthdays throughout the year, all of my weddings I am shooting in 2017 and all of the times my husband will be away at national guard and trainings for work.  One of the things I absolutely LOVE about the StartPlanner is the community.  There’s an entire Facebook group dedicated to users of these planners and the group is full of tips and tricks for using the planner.  Users sharing their goals, how they’ve decorated and personalized their pages and best of all, their word of 2017.

This one was a new one for me.  A “WORD” for the year, a singular idea to incorporate all of your goals for the year, an overarching theme for life for the next 12 months.  365 days dedicated to just this one word.  Talk about a daunting task, I am already bad at wording goals and ideas.  To try and think of all of my goals, my dreams for the next year and determine what fits as an overarching theme to motivate me even more to achieve these goals.  So last night I sat there with a blank page of my planner open in front of me and I looked through the comments in the group of everyone else’s words.  There were so many words.  Balance, determination, hustle, independence, freedom, organization and many many more.  I mulled over every possible option and I actually had one of those light bulb “ah ha” moments.  2017 is going to be all about the f-word.   No, not that one, I’m talking about a different f-word.

So much of life is filled with uncertainty and this FEAR.  I’m constantly fearful of failing, of not being accepted, not winning that award, not getting that publication, missing out on time with my family.   So I decided that “FEARLESS” is the word that will be the perfect theme.  It’s a balls in a jar, go big or go home and just go all out kind of year.  This is just in my business but also in my personal life.  It’s about to get real vulnerable up in here so get ready.  Over the past 3 years I have thrown myself into my business, spreading myself too thin on different smaller projects and ideas, neglecting what was really important.  While some parts of my business have thrived, other areas have not seen the same growth that I was hoping and that fueled a fire of fear in me as the year came to a close.  Was it all worth it, were the late nights and long hours worth it?  The time spent away from my kids, behind a computer and missing out, were they paying off how I had wanted?  If I spent more time with my family was my business going to suffer?  I quite literally started having anxiety over these fears I was experiencing.

I want to be a good mother, I want to have a successful business, I want to have a social life and I don’t want to feel like I have failed, at all.  But here’s something else you might not know about me.  I decided several years ago that regrets weren’t something to be afraid of.  Mistakes and regrets are learning experiences, things to help improve for the future.  But even with that mantra, I was still full of fear going into the new year.  I had experienced failure in 2016 and those failures, those moments of weakness were weighing on my mind.  In 2016 I put myself out there in some new avenues in the photography world and had been turned down, that sense of rejection, that I wasn’t good enough or popular enough it really stung, I could go on and on about why I am super sensitive to rejection and acceptance, but let’s not and say we did.  But I had a conversation with one of my favorite photog duos back in May about it.  Just because I get told NO to something doesn’t mean I suck, I need to view it as I am just not where I need to be right now and it gives me a goal to work towards.

I’m not a wordsmith and I tend to ramble so I hope you’re still with me.  2017 is all about facing my fears even more.  Planning BIGGER things and putting myself out there even more.  I’m pushing myself out there on the education side of photography, planing larger scale shoots and forcing myself out of my comfort zone with my lighting techniques.  I refuse to let fear keep me from excelling and moving forward.  I want to know, what are you doing to push yourself out of your comfort zone?  Even if it’s just ONE thing, be fearless and push out of that comfort zone.   I’ve definitely rambled with this post, but if you know me at all you know that I tend to jump from one idea to another mid sentence.   I’ll work on that 🙂

Happy New Year!