Category Archives: goals

A milestone remembered

Huh. According to Timehop (an app I have a love/hate relationship with, because… man… memories can be wonderful or brutal) five years ago, I did my first paid photo gig. I’ve certainly come a long way since then! And I still have a long way to go.

I strive not to live life with regrets, but to instead look at mistakes as lessons learned. But I could certainly say I do regret not giving my photography more attention over the last five years. I would be so much further along if I had. But, to look at it as a lesson, I won’t drag my feet another five years.

That being said, I’ve spent much of the last week deep in thought on ways to advance my goals as a photographer without compromising other passions, such as this blog and other business interests. In the weeks to come, I do plan to make some changes, and I absolutely can’t wait to see this happen and to share it with all of you.

In the mean time, my Project 365 for 2017 is well underway! And as if it were a sign to keep moving forward, the Nashvillest is back up and running. This blog featured some of my photos well before I considered photography as anything more than a hobby. Their support really helped give me confidence… so go give them some love as well.

2017 Goals

After I wrote my last blog post, I made a decision I’ve never made before. I actually wrote down my goals for 2017, and I put them in a checklist on my phone to refer to throughout the year. I thought I’d share a few of them here.

Project 365 — I’ve done a lot of these, and they’ve helped my photography skills. For 2016, I did a Project 365 of Instagram challenges. Specifically, a year of Fat Mum Slim Photo A Day challenges. I plan to keep playing with those, but I might be more picky about which prompts I do. Time will tell on THAT. But I do plan to do a free-for-all P365 this year with “the big camera” as my primary tool for it.

For anyone interested, my last year’s P365 can be looking through here…

Project 365 - Instagram Challenges
 

52 Weeks – I have sort of done one of these years ago, but I confined myself to only doing self portraits on Saturdays. This year, I’ll do one self portrait a week… any day of the week, and I’m challenging myself to be more creative with them. I’ve really fallen down on participating in the Self Portrait challenges put out by Lotus, and I’d like to be way more active with that. Hopefully, it will help me learn more about good portrait taking without subjecting innocent people to my experiments.

Photography Gigs – Well, since I am on this roll right now, I’ll just keep at it. I went back and found I did 13 photography jobs this year.  I want to increase that number, so I’m giving myself the goal of a MINIMUM 24 gigs this year. Minimum.

Reading & Writing – Read a book a month. Blog a minimum of twice a week.

Financial & professional – Pay off at least one debt.  End the year with some savings in the bank. Work heavily towards getting our bar open. Who knows, maybe even get it open by year’s end. It’s worth shooting for that!

Home – A new deck on the house (with a ramp) and a storage shed. These aren’t wishes, they’re musts.

Health - Get into yoga regularly. Lose 10 lbs. Have some dental work done. Eat at home more — try at least one new recipe a month!

Relax – Make it back to Oregon this year, and a vacation in Gatlinburg.

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Making a few of these work together will be challenging. But I’m up for the challenge. I know life can throw you curve balls, but if there is one thing the last few years have taught me, its to go with the flow and know that just because your timeline gets off, it doesn’t mean the goal stops. It just makes you work even harder for it.

Happy New Year everyone!