Stacey Vaeth: Faith + Inspiration

Putting yourself on the calendar is a trick of my mom's. It's pretty simple but hard to enact until you see the benefits. It literally looks on the calendar like: March 30th, Stacey's Day Off. When clients want to book March 30th, I look at my calendar, see my name on it, and say "so sorry, I'm booked that day". 

When I first considered this approach, I was working 80 hour weeks. I was in my second year of business, and in that year I had only taken two weekends off. I was so fearful that I'd lose a client if I said that I was unavailable, so I made myself available all of the time. I was burned out. But an amazing thing happened once I carved out space for myself each week.... I became MORE in demand by making myself LESS available. And I became a better photographer because I had time to refill my own creative well by hiking, doing yoga, resting, and baking that loaf of bread.

Once I had some time on my hands, I came to discover that finding what feeds you is paramount to living a full and inspired life. And that often, what feeds you is actually not what makes you money. For me, it's travel. Preferably by car or by boat. I love to travel alone. To camp for weeks at a time. To look at the passing landscape and just breathe it in. For others, solitary travel evokes loneliness or fear. But when I head out on the road, alone but for my thoughts, I feel free. I feel light. When I first started to travel alone, so many people tried to talk me out of it. They shared with me horror stories, true or heard third-hand, to remind me of how fragile life can be. Or how dangerous "others" are. But I knew then and know now that traveling alone into our natural landscapes feeds my creative soul. I need that time alone, the breath of the fresh air, the chill of the evenings, to feel connected to the pulse of this earth. So I have chosen, again and again, to thank those with different opinions for their thoughts, and to then to do it anyway. For each person, finding what feeds you takes going on that solitary adventure whether physically or mentally. Perhaps it's taking classes to learn how to work wood or glass or make cheese. Maybe it's learning how to code or build robots. 

We each have something inside of us that can teach us more than just what we do for a living. We just need to find it.