A YEAR IN REVIEW

Birthday  | Bye Bye 27, Hello 28

First of all, it was weird to think of “turning 28” as already having completed it. Technically, I’m starting my 29th year now, right? Not that the numbers really matter anymore anyway. Seriously, it was even a feat to remember that it was my birthday in the first place (just ask my close friends), and hence why this post is a little late. There’s been a lot going on for me personally, and thinking of my birthday as another reason to set aside more time to not be working (I know that sounds pretty bad, but stay with me…) was making me more stressed out. The end of being 27 was getting more chaotic by the day and all I wanted was for life to be ordinary and “boring” again. We always want what we don’t have, huh?

So, it made me stop for a second amidst the emails, phone calls, coordinating, commitments, etc. and realize that I am always going to be “stressed out” and disappointed by life if I don’t start just accepting what it’s offering me in the moment and making the best of it – good or not.

Ironically, this is a lesson that 27 has taught me over and over again. I guess I’m not the greatest student in some cases, but it’s all about continuous self-improvement, though… that’s the goal, people.

Maybe it’s just that accepting my state in life is one of the bedrock themes of the many lessons that I’ve learned. Whatever the case, t felt like it was something that came up a lot this past year, and I’m sure it will continue to. Because we are believers, right? And we’re ambitious, driven and excited for the accomplishments and impact we can have on the world.  Today I’m sharing some of the defining moments of 27, what I’ve learned, how I’ve coped and what I’m hoping for at 28.

1. Stop Waiting, Start Living.

There will come a point, if your haven’t experienced it already, when you say to yourself “what am I DOing?” The question will be out of mild exasperation because you thought you made certain decisions for a particular reason, yet that reason has failed to manifest itself and it seems that everything up until this point has been somewhat in vain. It hasn’t. Trust me.

If only to instill a deeper dignity and discipline in yourself, the decisions and discipline has been very much worth it. Those decisions you have been making to stay the course over and over again show that you are committed, and that you can do it again for another goal in the future. But here is the crux of it all; if you find that you’ve reached a point where your original goal has outlived its urgency and has yet to be accomplished, not that it has become less of a priority, just that it isn’t the barometer by which you need to assess all your future decisions, then it is time to readjust. If you allow yourself to get too comfortable working towards a goal, you will find you become complacent … waiting … waiting for “things” to happen. Things that don’t need to define your life.

Joe and I found ourselves in this position over the last year waiting for changes to happen with his job. We somehow got this idea that this change would have a domino effect on our life and we were excited and peaceful with that. We thought a move would happen quicker than it has been and it finally got to a point where we had to ask ourselves, ”What are we DOing??” Our original goal was to wait out the interim time before buying a house incase we had to relocate, then have the baby, get the new car and work on settling into a comfy cozy ten years of home making and business building. But now, a year and a half later, we are still waiting for this goal to manifest itself in some way and sometimes we feel like we have barely made progress.

portrait at Mt. Vesuvius across the mediterranean sea

It can be pretty depressing when you find that you have been waiting for something for a while and feel like life has gotten nowhere. We put so much hope in these dreams that we have and we do our best to work towards them and around them until one day you’re just like, “What the heck?” We hit that wall after almost a year. That’s a long time to stay hopeful for something that isn’t budging, I think. At that point we started having conversations about how to “keep living” instead of “waiting” until perfect could happen. So we decided instead of looking for our ten-year home, we would start with an investment home, something smaller that we could easily afford and then rent indefinitely in the future, and start growing our family while we still wait for our other goals to become reality.

2. People matter more than profit.

As a small business owner the demands are high. There is no denying this. Its super easily to slide into a rut of focusing on business needs before friends and family and stuffing your life into a deep hole of admin, editing and shooting. What I’ve come to learn is that taking time for a coffee date, bible study or Tuesday Together meeting will pay dividends in your personal and professional life. I’m far from an expert in managing this part of my life right now, but I do see the affects it has on me when things are out of balance. I am more irritable, less motivated and grow more selfish since my life encroaches on me because of me. It’s just a downward spiral you don’t want to get started on.

a girl and her dog driving with the windows open

You may not know the ways that spending some quality time with friends or family will impact your future, just know that it is worth it. Try to build in a chunk of time during the week that you can spend with people not to-do lists.

3. Accept Your State In Life.

This sort of relates to the first point above because it took Joe and I accepting that our goal wasn’t happening as quickly as we planned for us to make adjustments. I’m talking about recognizing the reality of the situation here, friends – not saying that you should throw up your hands and stop trying at life. I’m all about improving, setting goals and being ambitious, but those are things we have control over and are edifying challenges that we can take baby steps in achieving over time. What I am saying by this is not to get hung up on the things that we don’t have control over at the moment and need to simply accept so that we can live healthier, happier lives.

I’ve had to accept several things in my life this past year.

  1. That my desk consist of a three-foot counter space in the corner of the room in a basement… not a peachy room with white molding, gold accents and a linen parson chair on a faux fur rug. (Thank God there is at least a large window next to me.)
  2. That it hasn’t been the right time to start our family. Planning around work is a very real thing and getting older is also. Finding the happy medium requires patience, fortitude and some solid NFP methods or ovulation tests.
  3. Running your own business is like PMSing 24/7. It’s just a roller coaster.
  4. Being your own boss is good bad and ugly (but in the end it’s satisfying).
  5. That your first year in business is never going to look like your fifth, no matter how much you try
  6. My body is not going to work itself out; I have to make the time.

4. The world is always going to keep you running (and guessing, and downright confused)

This is a big one for me because starting a business had plunged me deeper into “the world” and it’s antics, particularly through social media, more that I probably would prefer. But it’s a necessary evil and something I am trying to learn, to love, and bend to my own will. The more exposed you are to media and education and the general world of “information,” you begin to find the same themes and similar goals and perspectives such as;

  1. The world’s definition of success.
  2. The road to get there.
  3. What you do when you’ve “made it”

Everyone’s dream is to get to “the top.” But what happens when you get there? And what if my idea of success is actually not the picture that they are selling? Where am I left then? Maybe this is the case for you, too. You’re just not enthused by the constant, high powered, business oriented life. You want a family, you want a profitable business that you can give some of your time to, but not all of it.

With so many people influencing and accessing the world of digital media, it’s kind of scary to think about how many random people are putting their own views out there and how, by default, that is intrinsically affecting the core beliefs of all of us around who are listening. This IS affecting you whether you think so or not, directly or indirectly and I think that we need to guard ourselves against consuming and accepting information as the “truth.” This may sounds obvious, but maybe it is not when you are listening to the fifth of your favorite photographers talking about the same business strategy that is starting to shape the way you are viewing your next five years. We need to examine the motives and the outcomes of certain ideas and take a moment to decide for ourselves if it is right for us or not.

Our culture has become extremely self-oriented. I don’t say this is a negative way, just matter-of-factly. Everyone has a blog or YouTube channel. Everyone wants to share their ideas and be validated for them. Everyone is starting their own businesses and wants to make money freelancing. There is no denying the new generation professional industry is evolving into something virtual, individualized and viral. There is an appeal to this life for sure, but let’s not forget the real reason of why we are here, our purpose and how we are going to live it.

5. You Can Only Control Yourself

This is a big one, and a tough one for some (like me), and also relates to the third bullet about accepting life for what it is. So often we get worked up about all the “what if’s” and “maybes.” the problem with this is that those circumstances are out of our hands. No matter how hard we try, we will never have full control over them or be 100% sure of an outcome. The only control we have is what we think and how we act. We don’t even have control over our emotions! We simply choose if we are going to let them affect our decisions or not.

Remember this the next time you are anxious, curious or hopeful about something. What is in your power is the ability to research, learn, think and act. You have the control to set everything up in your favor and do your best, but don’t expect that it will always go your way. Joe and I experienced this over and over again this past year. It really became one of the defining points of our life – we don’t have any control over how things will turn out, just how we will handle it.

6. God’s Timing Is Perfect

Another one that might seem obvious or like a really annoying cliche because this key point is all about TRUST. And it relates to the last point about control, too, because we can’t make something happen that isn’t supposed to; we just have to believe that God knows our hearts, knows our needs and knows how to take care of it for us.

Here are a couple things that happened in the last year or so for us where we really had to trust God.

    1. We miscarried our first baby. We found out we were pregnant shortly into our first year of marriage and by the end of the first trimester things went very wrong. Our baby developed a fatal condition that the doctors could not explain the origin of to us. We were brought to our knees in doubt, fear and sadness. How could this be our story? We found grace in the many prayers that friends and family around the world were offering for us and our baby. We were brought closer together spiritually within our relationship. We made it to five months before we found out that his heart stopped beating and although it was a sad day, we were able to get through it. The following weeks were the most challenging for me preparing to have a D&E. I was so angry. After the surgery my milk came in about 48 hours later. I didn’t really know what was going on but the physical pain was intense and I needed relief. I started pumping out of necessity until I could get a handle on how to deal with it. I remembered a thought I had about milk donation when we originally heard the bad news, but I didn’t prepare for it because I didn’t think I’d make it that far. I still thought I was too late, but I decided to start the process anyway. Over the course of the next few months, I pumped and donated about 15 gallons of milk for The Mother’s Milk Bank to give to NICU babies.

night portrait in Amalfi Italy

  1. We didn’t get the house. Not nearly on the scale of losing a child, but losing out on buying two houses back to back that we were very excited about was a big let down. This was after the “we need to accept life and keep living” phase, and made efforts to buy our investment property. It was almost felt like a punch in the face that we had decided this was the best next move for us, we did the research, spent hours talking about the plan and getting things in order for it not work work out, not once, but twice. “What gives?”

Both of these situations felt like God seriously intervening in what we thought was the plan for our life. We were doing everything we could to BE and DO our best in these situations and both fell through. To say we were let down was an understatement. We were just mad. We put ourselves out there, thought we were doing the right thing and just got burned. But did we?

My late grandfather once told me something about “God’s plan” that’s stuck with me since. In trying to understand and rationalize the course of events of a situation and when we find ourselves in those moments where we think we know better than God, he said, “You know what Anne, if we knew everything that God knew, we do everything exactly the same way he has done it.”

It really stuck with me because it made God’s plan clear and simple. He is working with the end in mind, and what do we have no idea about … the end. We have to trust him because he already knows our whole entire story. Although we might think that something perfect is about to happen, or should happen right now, God knows how each piece fits together and how to make the whole picture absolutely beautiful. Don’t try to jam pieces together that don’t fit quite right. Let go and let Him take care of you.

What I’ll be working on this year:

  1. Gratitude and sharing it with others.
  2. Greater self-awareness and overcoming fears
  3. Starting a family with Joe
  4. Becoming a better business woman and further accomplishing my entrepreneurial aspirations
  5. Letting go, trusting God and always taking the next right step