Walking to a Fork

 So, I need a rant session to get my thoughts collected.

I have a hard time admitting this to anyone that may be associated with my photography business (future clients, past clients, followers, whoever) that I work a full time job on top of running my business. I work in retail as an assasitant manager in a game store. Sure, most days are pretty easy to run but it's getting to the point now where I'm working myself dry. I have no off days, ever. I worked for a month straight between mid May when I got back from my trip in England until I went on a mini vacation with a few girlfriends of mine down in Hilton Head in mid June. Then, as soon as I get back from HH, it's back to work at the full time job. I'm already working nearly 2 weeks straight with no break again because I try to schedule my shoots around my job which makes it so I never get any off time. And I feel like my life has been that way for the past 4 months now. I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this.

Photography is the way I want to go so, I'm going to need to step down or quit my full time job when the year is up [debt is the only thing keeping me there until then]. I'm working to get an officially licesened LLC up and running again so I can start working full time on my photography and running it the way I've always been meant to because I'm meant to be my own boss, schedule my own life, and be apart of making memories for everyone to cherish for forever. Including myself. It is the only thing that feels right in the direction of any sort of career for myself. I just can't keep running around like a headless chicken for people anymore.

I have no time for myself. I haven't done a creative project since before the holidays of 2011. And if you know me, you know that's devastating. I'm constantly running errands, doing house work, working, editing, working again, taking my laptop to my full time job and editing there during my breaks (which used to be my reading time), meeting up with people that I don't really care to hang out with but I'm a people pleaser at heart. Working again, trying to fit in date nights with the hubby which to me, marriage should come first and shouldn't have to be fit into a schedule. But that's a whole thing in itself [I make a terrible wife these days].

I'm exhausted.

I've taken on this huge amount of workload because I wanted to challenge myself into thinking I can take on the world alone. But, I'm finding that I can't. I need help or if I can't get it, to just stop doing half of what I do. I can't continue running myself into the ground because I'm missing out on so many things that really matter in life.

Reading? Relaxing? Taking a walk in the summer sun? Catching up with some of my favorite video games and new ones I haven't even started? Sharing quiet evenings with my best friend? Having weekends off to visit family events that happen periodically over the year? What is any of this? None of this is a part of my life anymore. I haven't finished a book all the way in nearly 2 years. Nor a video game. I haven't cooked a new receipe in months. I haven't been out hiking, biking, camping? I don't even know how long. Being out in the great outdoors? When did we last spend time together, Mother Nature? Wow...

I'm becoming something I don't want to be and sometime soon, it is going to have to change. And it's not about to be my photography business. I'm going to have to let go of this job I've put nearly 3 years of my life into. But it's becoming a distraction from what I'm really meant to do, which is my photography.