Tag: stressmanagement

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!

Slowly but Surely, You’re On Your Way

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The last month or so has been utter chaos. Some days, I’ve been thriving in it. Others, all I’ve wanted to do is shut down. No one likes that icky feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. In moments when time does not seem to be on my side, I think of what my used to say when I was pressuring her about getting me to school faster in the busy morning hours of middle and high school.

Imagine this 8th grade face trying to hustle you drive them to school every morning. God bless my mother, for real. She’s a saint.

“Emily, the car is currently moving forward. I’m in the process of getting you there. I can only go the speed limit & I have to stop at all the stop signs. You will get there. I promise.”

In those moments, it pissed me off. Usually being late was my fault because I still sleep to the last possible minute of time. Honestly, that’s still why I’m late to this day. About ten years later, though, my mom’s words mean something a little different.

Time isn’t always on our side. Sometimes, we’re expected to do 100000000 things in time that doesn’t even seem like enough to breathe or think. It happens in our workplace, at home, and at school. When you have a hard time saying no, this problem only gets worse. Not only do you have all the responsibilities that come with just being you, but then you’ve added on some new ones that you resentfully said yes to completing.

Lately, I’ve been trying to get used to a new place and new schedule in which a big portion of my time isn’t taken up by school. In a perfect world, I should be able to deal with chaos MORE gracefully than before. I mean, I have the time and the energy that I could turn my focus to it. Without a set schedule or syllabus to keep me in line, I’m feeling a lot of chaos that I wasn’t necessarily prepared for in entering this chapter of my life.

In my head, I thought I’d have all this time to plan out the blog, social media posts, and the podcasts. Since I’m not dragging around a backpack full of textbooks on public policy or astrology, I thought I’d have the opportunity to really lazer in on what I love without a second thought. Let me just tell you, it DOES need a second thought. All this time is amazing, but it’s easy to get sucked into like an addict and a substance. If you walk into the chapter thinking that all you have to do is sleep and work, all you’re going to get done is sleep and work – seems natural, right? There’s no shame in sleeping and working – you do you, boo boo. But, if you think that because the time is there, it’s going to automatically allocated to the new side hustle, hobby, or interest without a little bit of refocusing or recentering…. that’s just not realistic in my world.

I’ve realized this is kind of the same with friendships too. When I was in school, I was seeing the people I loved as much as possible but had these legitimate things in the way from me seeing them all the time – homework, quizzes, exams, whatever. I thought when I moved closer & didn’t have any of those things, I would see them everyday without any added effort.

Truth is, sometimes you have to kind of refocus your social life too! Like, if you want to see your friends more or want the invite to the bars & that wasn’t your scene in a previous chapter, you’re able to make it your scene now!

I had this big assumption that I would move and I would automatically fall into the perfect schedule for a new business and a full-time job and a more involved social life. I assumed that that would require little to no work from me. I was way wrong & it just kind of caused chaos that was hard for me to wade through and understand for a while.

Like my mom said, though, we are on our way. The car is moving forward. We might have to come to complete stops in understanding what’s holding us back or dealing with some trigger, but you are still in the car on the way to where you’re supposed to be. You also can’t drive way above the speed limit. Sometimes, we’re so obsessed with speed through life to get to a certain checkpoint, that we take the roads that we’re traveling in ways that aren’t safe or effective to us. It just causes more chaos.

We are all moving forward. We are on our way and we can’t just jump through this journey. So it might be bumpy or smooth, but dammit, you’re on your way.

What do you want to hear about next on the blog? Tweet me, message me, or slide into any of my DMs on socials: @EmyDBlog. You can also share your story and email me at EmyDSaliby@gmail.com!