Ecclesiastes 3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. 

So good. There’s a season for everything.  For growing and learning, for hustling but also… for slowing. Right now, I’m slowing. And it’s a challenge for me you guys. A really big challenge. I am such a busy body. My mind literally never stops and my husband does not understand why I find it so so difficult to sit down and rest. Poor guy. He works a 40 hour work week and he wants to spend his down time having down time…relaxing with a cold brew watching football or hockey or just sitting in the backyard. I, on the other hand want to plan out what house project we’re going to tackle next, talk about what we’re going to do on our next free Saturday and brainstorm new business ideas together. Any entrepreneurial spirited friends out there relate?!?!

For those of you who are new to following, I’ll give you a little background on my story…I’m a teacher. Ron and I did our undergrads together at Western University before we got married and then I did teachers college the following year. While I was waiting to get on the supply list, I began to pursue photography, something I had been doing as a hobby for a while. After second shooting a season of weddings with a friend and begging my best friends to model for me, I began to book my first portrait sessions and then a wedding and it wasn’t long before I had a business up and running. I fell in love with working for myself. I loved the flexibility with my schedule and hours. I was the one who decided when I wanted to work and when I didn’t. We were talking about starting a family soon and I knew I wanted to be at home with my babes in their early years so this was perfect. My business was growing and I was setting myself up to do just that.  I was soon able to quit my part time job and focus solely on my business.

Photography has been perfect for this season in my life. It’s allowed me to be at home with my boys during the day when my husband works. We shoot weddings on Saturdays together during the spring-fall but we currently limit our bookings so we still have plenty of weekends to do fun family things during the warmer seasons. It truly has turned into a dream job for me.

But going back to my non-stop busy body self. There’s a lot of downtime with photography. I don’t shoot for most of the winter and other then editing, there’s not a lot of extra work to do when I’m not shooting. So once my boys got to a stage when they weren’t as needy and were able to entertain each other for longer periods of time, I began to itch again for a new creative outlet. Over the past 2 years, I have done a handful of other side gigs along with photography. From writing a mom blog with my best friend, to online fitness coaching, to teaching courses at our church and beginning to work on a podcast project with my husband…I’ve been hustling constantly. Obsessively chasing after my goals and not stopping until they’re reached (the dangerous side of a driven entrepreneur).

But then wait, my goal in being a work-from-home mom in the first place was so that I could watch my kids grow up. So I could work less and spend more time being a part of every new milestone, every new chapter, every fun new season of their lives. I long for my number one goal to be raising a family and I do not want to lose sight of this without realizing it while I’m hustling too hard at other things. I’ve come to the realization that I’ve been filling too much of any “free time” I’ve had with new projects, new goals, new dreams for the future. I truly didn’t (and still don’t) know how to just be. 

I don’t regret any of the past projects I’ve worked on as each experience has shaped me and grown me. I have learned so so so much about myself, about working along side others, about being a leader,  about the importance of personal development and I could keep going on. My most recent endeavour of fitness coaching helped our family to really get on track with a healthy, active lifestyle, something that has improved our quality of life in so many ways. It kept me accountable for 9  months which has really helped to solidify those new habits. But the crazy thing is that when I was telling my husband that I was feeling this chapter of coaching may be coming to an end for the time being, he said “oh so what will you be filling that extra time with now?”  That’s what got me.  He expected me to dive right into something new because thats what I always do. That is what my family and friends think of me. They know full well that I don’t know how to slow down. That I always have to be working towards something new and I don’t stop until it’s done.

I mentioned in my last post about minimalizing, that it included our calendar. So while my mind is currently exploding with new ideas and dreams, (HA) I am committing to press the pause button and just “be” for the next 5 months. To not fill all my time with working when I don’t have to, but to have more time to say yes to spontaneous hangouts with friends and family, to have more un-planned Saturday’s where we can wake up and decide hour by hour what we’ll do next. To really pray and seek the Lord’s direction for our family and for any future business endeavours. To read and learn and grow and read some more.

They’re will be more seasons of hustling I know.  More seasons to go hard with goals and chase after dreams. But for right now, I’m putting those dreams on hold and committing to a season of slowing down and learning to “be”.  Hold me accountable will ya?

Thanks for reading.

xo Natalie