Tag: motivation

There’s Too Much On My Plate!

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If you follow me at all, you know that I’m a busy lady. I’ve been taking photos as a side hustle since 2017. I launched a podcast, then re-launched it, in 2019. This blog is now a year old. I also make money through a survival, service industry job and freelance my PR to start my dream profession! It’s a lot. I love being busy. My “To Do” list is almost never empty – it would drive some people crazy, but it reminds me that I’m becoming successful! However, there’s a fine line between workaholic and breakdown because of stress, right? These days, there are moments where I have to remind myself to slow down and repeat “there’s too much on my plate,” when other things to agree to come up.

A Helping of Work

This weekend was one of the busiest in a while. For my business, the couple days surrounding the end and the beginning of each month are absolutely insane. It’s about getting insights done, contracts written for the upcoming month, and being diligent about the Public Relations changes that we’ve made throughout the month. The transition from September to October of this year was one of the busiest for my business. For that, I am unbelievably blessed. However, I’m also taking on challenges like I don’t have the clientele and following that I do. Sometimes I need to slow down!

Slowing down, however, means pumping the brakes on something that I’ve been working on for so many months now. It also means finding priorities in my days. Some things have to wait until tomorrow. Other things, like the needs of my clients, need to be done quickly and successfully. Yes, it’s a lot. However, it’s something that I’ve been working on for so long. I’m blessed to be busy with my work. Rather than thinking, “Ugh, I wish I wasn’t so busy,” I am going to reframe it as “I’m blessed to call what I love work & if I wasn’t supposed to be doing this, I wouldn’t be.”

A Helping of Birthday

This weekend was my beautiful roommate, Shelby’s, birthday! We celebrated her on Friday with a small group of friends at our house. The pandemic always adds a layer of stress to things that would otherwise go off without a second thought. This year, we hosted the event at our apartment, since we’re not going to go to bars! I’ll say it – I’m an AWESOME hostess. I was happy to put out food, grab a little cake, and clean the house.

It was an amazing day to celebrate a great friend! Entertaining is always high maintenance, but even more so in a pandemic. I wanted to make sure that all of our surfaces were not only clean, but completely disinfected. It was important that everyone had somewhere to sit. By no means was this party imperative, however, my friends mean the world to me. If we can have a night of normalcy to celebrate our girl, that’s a priority to me! I was happy to take it on my plate. So, instead of “I have to clean the house,” it was “I get to see my friends.”

A Helping of Marriage

I had the absolute honor of photographing the wedding of some of my favorite clients. Photography has absolutely taken the back burner to the other aspects of EmyD. I’ve had amazing success with EmyD Photography, but it’s not what I want to do as my full-time job. However, having big shoots like this always lights a fire under my butt to get more creative and inspired with my content.

Someone’s wedding day is the Big Kahuna of photography. As much as I love senior shots, you can always get another beautiful day to retake if necessary. You can’t redo the elements of a wedding that the couple wants to capture forever. There’s moments like the first look, the kiss, and the dances that are so “in the moment” that they become high pressure.

Maybe the reason that I don’t want to be a full-time photographer is because I’m so tense and perfectionistic when it comes to my work. I’ve had lists and Pinterest boards preparing for this wedding for weeks. Emily, the bride, is also a planner which made me feel a little more sane. She was so organized and amazing. Honestly, her preparedness calmed everyone around her down, but I like to walk into my shoots with that same level of confidence and organization! Though it was a mentally exhausting day, it was amazing. I’m so happy to have been a part of it. So, instead of “I have to prepare for this long day of shooting,” it became, “I am blessed to get paid for doing things that make me feel creative, inspired, and motivated.”

Reframing a Full Plate

Yes, I put a lot on my plate. I always have and truthfully, I don’t see that changing any time soon. The way that I look at it, there’s a couple ways to go about being busy in life. You can be resentful that your life is busy or that you didn’t have to get up to go to meetings with clients. You can wish that you didn’t have to post consistently, but that would mean that your following would decrease. 

Or, you can do what I do. I choose to run with it. There are some days where I absolutely just need like 12 hours of sleep which came to me at 8:30pm this Saturday night. However, I wouldn’t trade being busy for being bored. If I didn’t feel pressure to post, it would mean that I was still hustling for a following. If I didn’t feel like I had to prepare content, it would mean that I wasn’t signing clients. photoshoots like weddings are a lot to prepare for, but without them I wouldn’t be able to get creative for a job!

Sometimes, I have to ask for help in carrying my plate. I’ve asked Sullivan to help me at shoots. There’s been moments when my lovely clients are patient with me so that they get the best product. But agreeing to the things that you want to do, loading only what you want onto your agenda, and being your true self will make being busy so much more enjoyable. Yes, there’s too much on my plate… but I wouldn’t have it any other way.


What have you been really busy with? Let me know in my socials below!

Rejection From My Dream School was my Saving Grace

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At the spunky young age of 19, I applied to the Journalism school of my first college. Having previously gotten every job I interviewed for, accepted into every college I applied to, and received a slew of different awards and scholarships, I was in for a rude awakening when it came to rejection.

Here’s that spunky 19 year old I was talking about circa 2016.

At the time, I was writing remotely for an online company based out of New York City. I had some pretty good contacts that were ready to write a letter of recommendation. There was published content that was doing well across all of social media. The cherry on top of the cake was that two of my best friends were already in the J-School, and they had both put their seal of approval on my application.

I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. Being one of the twenty percent of admitted students wasn’t something I really worried about or lost sleep over because, in my mind, it was already a done deal. Well, I didn’t get in. I got a big fat rejection email.

Sure, it gave me encouragement to apply next semester, but it felt like a hard slap in the face. Rejection feels like that, ya know? It feels like the reality that you’ve bought into about yourself or your life is just crumbling around you. At the time, there was no brightside. While other friends got to pursue classes within the school and take steps forward, I felt like I was stuck in quicksand. 

I’ve come to accept that everything in my life has happened for a reason. You can read a little more about this in my blog “Purpose From Pain.” Part of that is understanding that rejection also has its place among my life lessons. Getting a big, fat rejection from the school that I thought was my dream was a lesson I needed.

Right about the time when I felt like I was going to make something of myself, even though I didn’t get into the J-School a couple years before.

First, it forced me to give a shit about my writing. If you read a couple of my blogs, you’ll find that they’re very much written in a conversational tone. Most of the time, I’m speaking out loud when I’m writing. It’s always just made me connect to what I was saying more. That might have been what the media company in New York was looking for and what the audience of my first BlogSpot blog was looking for, but it wasn’t for everything. 

Having a highly regarded school tell me that I needed some time to keep working made me realize that I didn’t know everything. I wasn’t the perfect writer that I had originally thought and just because my mom was sharing all my stuff on Facebook does NOT mean I’m ready to write a novel. 

Second, being rejected made me start to rethink my plans. Whether or not it was supposed to, the rejection definitely made me question whether or not I was destined to be a writer. I walked into my first college class thinking that I wanted to write for The New York Times. This rejection is what made me start to consider communication. It made me start to realize that people could make money doing the thing that I was skipping class for; social media. 

I had always wanted to minor in Political Science, but being rejected from the Journalism school made me want to pursue that even more. I declared dual-degree student the semester after with majors in Political Science and Communications. A transfer of schools would just turn into two Bachelor of Arts in those fields. I got more education than I ever thought I would because of that initial rejection. 

The time that I proved that I did make something of myself, without the school I once dreamed of. Reject me and beat me down, but don’t ever expect me to stay there. Rejection was the match that lit my fire.

Lastly, rejection eventually made me find the beauty in the imperfections of my work. Like I said before, the lack of admittance might have made me realize that I was not the all-knowing writing prophecy. It also made me take my writing for face value. There are things that I am ridiculously good at when I write – connecting to people, telling a story, and painting a picture for my audience. It made me realize that I was writing to speak, which is definitely something I want my future career to involve. It made me realize that even though I can write 5-paragraph essays and research papers, I don’t think I want to do that for a living. 

The best friends that I talked about earlier are writing in the perfect way for them. My beautiful editor, Vanessa, writes so eloquently and I won’t be surprised in the least when her first book hits the shelves. She saves all of my blogs from having mistakes up the wazoo and offers so many amazing ideas. We’re two VERY different writers, but that rejection made me see the beauty of the craft again. It made me recognize that we’re artists painting  what we find beautiful. 

So, maybe you’re going through a terrible break up, you’ve lost your only source of income, or you’ve just got the rejection email from your dream school, and you’re questioning everything about you. Rejection hurts. Sometimes, it’s life’s way of putting a yield sign right in front of you so you learn to enjoy the drive. Other times, it’s a stop sign that you desperately needed to realize that your navigation was WAY off. 

Being rejected from my dream school was my saving grace in finding my path and my true self. Maybe, just maybe, the pain you’re going through has a purpose too?

Has anything happened in your life that hurt but you’re thankful for now? Tell me your story by getting into the DMs on any of my socials below! I want to hear from you!

Edited by Vanessa Reza. Contact info can be found on the ‘Contact Me’ page.