On being busy, working from home, and loving thy self.

I never would have imagined that owning my own business would feel like this. Then again, I never imagined owning my own, real, business. I always wanted to, yes; but I never really thought about what it would actually be like day to day. I get the feeling that many people don't know either.
Working from home is a challenge. An internal and personal challenge as well as a challenge with others, including family, friends and clients. Most people think that because we work from home that we can drop what were doing for any reason. Or on the other side of the spectrum, that because we're a home business that we don't have policies or practices in place to follow. Well, we can't and we do. Spontaneity isn't something we prioritize just yet in our business because if we did, it might overshadow our goals and our deadlines. Yes, we are our own bosses and we do what we want, but we also have boundaries.

It took us a year or more to get the right balance and the discipline to work effectively from our home office. It took a lot of research and even more list making to get a system nailed down, but we have one that we stick to. We love our work, what we do is our passion. Sitting in front of a computer screen all day designing a brand for a start up company, whether it be for a friend or a complete stranger is what we love doing. Editing the latest wedding photos from the laptop, on the couch, while eating dinner...is the best feeling in the world.

When we say we're busy, its not that we're too busy...its that we do the things we want to do first, usually. Now everyone could stand a few extra hours in the day, don't get me wrong. But to us, being busy doesn't mean we work too much. It means we're filling up our days with the things we prioritize most because that's what we want to be doing.

A day in the life:

Everyday, we wake up and make coffee. I might go to jazzercise and might have coffee afterwards with the girls from the restaurant, but if I don't, I'm promptly back home sitting at my desk. Everyday, we respond to emails and return client calls, we receive packages and send out packages. We spend about 4 hours of the morning editing, designing and other daily tasks and then we take a lunch break, just like any other person would. We cook at home, and spend 30-45 minutes eating.

Then, we promptly return to our desks and find a new station on Pandora for the afternoon. Justin and I choose to work part time in restaurants that we working in before starting our businesses, not because we need the funds, but because we need the social interaction. We work with amazingly fun people, and really enjoy spending a 4-5 hour shift interacting with them, its our release from each other, from our home and from our work life.

On nights that we don't go into the restaurants, we usually have dinner and spend time together watching our favorite movies or shows. Right now, we love Glee and Party Down. And then, much to "normal" people's surprise we often return to the office around 9 or 10 and work on random things or have personal computer time until we tire and go to bed.

Our work is different than most. I get to write this blog post. I get to post photographs on facebook and comment on clients posts. I get to submit work to other blogs to be published, I get to research and watch videos and share those things on social networking sites. Thats my job...well, part of it. And when I am not doing that, I'm out shooting some awesome clients in an beautiful place. When we're in the office, we try not to take personal calls/texts, just like a person working for a big company would do. We try not to get off task or spend too much time doing non-work-related things, just like a person at a big company would do. And we do those things, because in the end what benefits our clients, benefits us, and same goes for the other way around.

We don't quantify our work week in hours or by the amount on our paycheck, but if I were to make a guess, we probably work 70-80 hours a week doing what we absolutely love.

So, when we say we're busy...we are. We're tired and worn out and barely have time to vacuum the floor, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Our clients and our product are our priority, they make sure we're able to express our creativity in the ways we always wanted.