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Tag: Personal

On Dreams

When I was a kid, I dreamed of so many things I wanted to do when I “grew up”. The one that really stuck (at least through high school and early college) was that I wanted to cut hair and own my own beauty salon. I always wanted to own it. I wanted it to be mine.

Along the way, things changed (obviously) and that dream never came to fruition. I blame it all on the advanced accounting class I tried to take my freshman year of college. I grossly overestimated my ability to handle that class and dropped it after the second week. Then I changed my major from Business Management to Psychology. Oh, how I wish I could go back and tell my younger self what a stupid idea that was! (And I now do accounting on a daily basis for my full-time job!)

After I got my B.S. in Psychology, I went on and started on a Master’s of Social Work. One year into the program I decided I couldn’t finish it. One year of classes and more added college loans left me with no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up in a temporary job that I have now been at for over 10 years.

Along the way I’ve dabbled in lots of different things. For a while I was convinced I could and would be a web designer, even though I had no background in design. I set up a web site and toyed with the idea of starting up a company. Then I had a baby and that whole idea fizzled out. It is a little hard to code on no sleep, with a crying baby in your lap.

The idea of wanting a business of my own never has gone away. It has stayed in the back of my mind for years, always as a dream, not a reality.

Then came photography. Photography has been a gradual journey for me. I have always loved taking pictures (as I can prove with the staged photos of my stuffed animals when I was a kid), but it wasn’t until I was finally able to afford my first SLR camera that I really pushed myself to learn about photography. I had no idea what an f-stop was, or ISO, or shutter speed. Little by little I figured it out and my love grew bigger than I ever imagined.

Last year I finally saw a little piece of my dream come true. I started my own business. I worked hard to figure out all the details and actually set it up as a legal business. Caleb threw a little bit of a wrench into my overall plan, but things are steadily growing. I’m learning a lot as I go along, including just how time consuming a little part-time business can be. I dream of it one day becoming full-time and being able to support my family doing something that I truly love. There is just no way to describe the feeling of joy it brings me when a client loves the photograph that I’ve poured my heart and soul into. It really is true that when you are doing what you love, it doesn’t feel like work at all.

I’ve got a long way to go to fulfill my dream, but the fact that I have started shows me that I do have it in me. I really believe that I will get there some day.

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If you would like to keep up with my photography journey, please visit and “like” my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/deeperrinphotography.  You can also follow the blog at http://www.deeperrinphotography.com, where I plan to be updating more frequently (soon!).

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Want

I need a maid, a personal chef, a cat puke cleaner-upper, a bill payer, a computer expert, a chauffeur, and an extra pair of hands.  I need a clone of myself, actually how about 3 or 4?  I need someone to do all of those things that I don’t have the time for or just plain don’t want to do.

I want to escape the day to day life and go back to a time when things were simple.

I want to go sit in a comfy chair and read for hours on end, maybe even finish an entire book in a single day.

I want to knit until my hands cramp up, then warm them while I sip on a cup of hot chocolate and reflect.

I want to find a great photography book and teach myself how to set my camera just so and get that perfect shot.

I want to sew and to have the time it takes to learn by trial and error with no distractions.  I would like to make my daughter a dress.

I want to dust off my guitar and re-learn the few chords I used to know.  I’d like to learn to play an entire song that I can strum and sing to my kids.

I want to devote an entire day to playing with my kids without thinking about that bill that needs paid or the laundry that is piling up.

I want to design web sites again and finally finish the one that has been promised for so long.

I want a job that allows me to see my kids for more than 2 1/2 hours a day – one that is meaningful and that I can be proud of.

I want so many things, yet I feel like everything I want is so unattainable these days.  The thing I want the most is time.  There’s never enough.  We rush through the work week to get to the weekends, but when the weekend comes there is so much to cram into it that we miss out on the things that matter most.

Sunday evening I felt myself getting frustrated beyond belief.  I spent most of the day cleaning, trying to make up for all that was strewn around from the prior week.  We spent Saturday having fun with family, which was totally worth it, but it made for a lot of catch-up on Sunday.  While I rushed around the house picking up jackets off the floor, tripping over toys, cleaning the kitchen, vacuuming the floors, washing and putting away laundry, and fussing at Zach repeatedly to clean up his toys, Hubby sat and watched football.  Evie followed Zach and I around, taking out everything that Zach and I had put away.  Hubby was having some computer issues and kept stopping me to ask me questions.

I took a break from cleaning to fix dinner.  Hubby made his awesome guacamole that I had requested and we enjoyed a nice dinner together.  Then I started in on the evening bath routine.  While Zach was in the shower, I ran through the living room to put another thing away when Hubby stopped me yet again with a computer question.  I was short with him.  I just couldn’t take one more thing.  I was in a hurry to get Zach finished with his shower so I could get him settled down with a TV show and I could try to get bills paid before my shows came on that I wanted to watch.  Hubby snapped back at me after I snapped at him.

I just wanted to get done so I could finally relax.  In that moment I felt so under-appreciated.  I felt like I had spent all day working my butt off while everyone else spent the day playing and relaxing.  I was short with my kids and my husband.  I was stressed about the fact that I just can not ever get it all done.  I will never be caught up.  I will never feel like I can truly sit down and relax because my mind is going in a million different directions.

I need life to slow down.  I want my kids to have happy memories, not to remember a mom who yelled all the time because she was always so overwhelmed with life.  I don’t want to be in such a rush that I miss the good times.  I want to enjoy this life, not look back years from now and wonder where all the time went.

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Coming Out of the Fog

So the surgery on Thursday went well. They had me good and doped up so that I didn’t really even feel much of anything until the next day. The cyst was removed with no surprises, exactly as we had hoped. I slept for most of the day, only getting up for a small dinner and to see the kids for a bit in the evening.

Friday I felt great. I was surprised that I wasn’t hurting too much and decided that I felt good enough to go with Hubby to take Evie to her 18 month check-up at the doctor’s office. After that we stopped at Wal-Mart for a few things, picked Zach up from preschool, and decided to go ahead and eat dinner out. I was doing just fine until just about the end of dinner when Zach had to go to the restroom. As I waited for him I started getting a little dizzy feeling. Fortunately, Granny came in to check on us and I was able to go sit back down right away. I had definitely overdone it.

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were pretty much a fog. I slept off and on. I’d get up for a while, only to find I needed to go back to bed. Between feeling dizzy and having a queasy stomach, I really couldn’t sit up for very long at a time. By Monday evening I was feeling a bit better, but with a lingering headache (probably due from a combination of too much sleeping and forgetting to take my Zyrtec).

Today, I’m finally feeling a little better. I got up, showered, and even fixed my hair this morning. I was feeling pretty weak afterwards, but was glad that I made the effort to do my hair. I had some breakfast, hoping that it would give me a little energy back, then went to Wal-Mart with my in-laws to pick up some groceries and a few other things. Again, I was pretty worn out after Wal-Mart but I needed to go.

This afternoon I’ve been trying to do a few little things but resting in between. I managed to put away a basket of Zach’s clothes and now I’m resting again. Everything I do seems to take a whole lot of effort, but I am trying to take it slow.

My pain is pretty well controlled and only bothers me when I do a lot of walking around. I stopped taking the Percocet on Monday and have only taken Naproxen since then. My incisions are healing, though they are now starting to itch like crazy and I have some really pretty purple and yellow bruises. This is the first surgery I’ve ever had where they have used glue to close everything back up instead of stitches. That is a little weird, but at least I’ll have less scarring on the stomach that no one will likely ever see again.

The kids seem to be handling everything really well, though that is probably because they have the attention of Granny and Papa to distract them. Evie keeps wanting to come up in my lap and every time she does she has to look at my “owies”. She has also been searching for owies on everyone else’s stomachs as well and doesn’t understand why they don’t have any.

I am so thankful to have my in-laws here to help out. They have been taking care of everything including getting to kids to and from school and day care so that I can rest. I don’t know how I would have done it without them.

The fog is definitely lifting today and I’m so glad to feel a little more like myself. Hopefully in another day or two I’ll be able to go into work for a little bit. But do you want to know what I’m really looking forward to? Being able to put on a pair of jeans again!

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