the big breakup

We have this polarizing relationship with our photography business. We love it. It's crazy exciting, it's natural, and it's super easy to imagine it becoming a career for both of us together. At the same time, we often feel pretty overwhelmed too. We've had so many conversations about what it would take to have Jon taper out of his day job and make photography work as a full-time job. We've asked every question, played over every possibility, dreamed every photographer's dream, and mixed and matched all the pieces so many times to make it fit.

About six weeks ago, when we were on the verge of making serious changes to move forward with Operation Full-Time Photography, one statement of concern and frustration led to an entire evening of discussion and a DTR with photography. There were tears, we laughed at ourselves, and we went home that night having decided to make a clean break. We broke up. There were thousands of reasons for this and believe me, we went over ALL our options. We needed to be able to focus on what is most important to us in life, and for whatever reason, photography was keeping us from those things.

We finally finished tying up all the loose ends just a couple days ago, ending with getting photos out for the beautiful wedding of a beautiful couple and leaving me feeling all warm and fuzzy about our experience with photography.

Since we decided to quit it's been strange and a little surreal, like it's all just been a wild dream. Strange because it was only 10 months but we feel like we've aged a decade. Strange because we loved it—and invested SO MUCH of ourselves into it—and left it. Strange because when we started the business we only saw two possible outcomes: it flops and we chalk it up to our 'life experiences' pile, or it flies and we move forward to make it a full-time job. Never did we foresee the third option: it's miraculously successful and we quit. Strange because I think we'll always miss it and be a little sad to not have it be such a big part of our lives anymore (we joke that we'll always be recovering professional photography addicts). Strange because I feel like there's so much more that went into this decision than I could ever say. It's so personal to us and so contingent upon our personal needs as a family that it doesn't even make sense when our reasoning comes out of our mouths trying to explain it to someone else. Especially because for some families, going forward with their big idea is completely right and what their family needs. We had to make the choice for what our family needs, and let everything else go.

It's been just as crazy of a year as we'd expected it to be, but we feel really good about it.
We threw ourselves into it one hundred percent, and even if it did mean a lot of sleep deprivation, late dinners, ridiculously large dirty dish pile-ups for days and laundry bins overflowing for weeks, we wouldn't undo anything we've done. We learned so much about photography and business, so much about our camera and extra equipment, so much about people and their real beauty, and so much about our limits, our priorities, and ourselves. That said, we will welcome the change to live life more wholeheartedly at home again and not spread ourselves so thin to so many people and responsibilities.

One thing's for sure, Jon and I are happy to focus more fully our two little crazies. We'll still be taking lots of photos, they'll just be at home of our family again, which is what we got our camera for in the first place. Maybe we'll even blog the photos (gasp!). No promises, but either way, I've got a feeling 2011's gonna be a breath of fresh air for the Smith family.

(the photos are a very small taste of catching up. They're long overdue since according to our blog photos Lila is 3 weeks old. She's actually 5 months...not a bad case of the second child syndrome, just a child born to parents with a crazy side business.)