The biggest piece of advice everyone and their mom shared with me when I was pregnant was BE OKAY WITH ASKING FOR HELP. When I was a visual merchandise manager at J.Crew, I learned lesson after lesson on delegation, and how the best bosses know what to focus on, and what to pass off. But my anxieties throughout year one as a mom mixed with the oddities of this industry just kept forcing me to drown in work overload, stress and refusal to let anybody help. It was my own damn fault! I did have an assistant for a minute around this time last year, but while I had Hudson with me full-time, it just didn’t seem like an environment that was conducive to work (because it wasn’t!) and the timing felt off.
So my friends, up until this week, my schedule was as follows – spend every waking second that Matt was off work shooting blog content! Matt shot everything for me. If he was off of work, we were never like “yay, we get to go to the movies!” it was always “I have to shoot X,Y and Z.” and even when we did anything fun, because we did have fun sometimes ha, it always always involved shooting for the blog. Days he was working & Hudson had daycare, I always spent working on the computer creating collages, editing videos, answering e-mails, and drowning in the stress of impending deadlines that I prayed I’d make. I am very type-A personality, so this never sat well with me. Of course when you’re busy with work and life and you are on a path that you feel passionate about, it will cut into your “fun time,” but I hit the point where there was 0 fun time. Every morning I’d jump on the computer, and every night I’d fall asleep on it. Sad, right?
Why didn’t I ask for help you may ask? Well, a LOT of reasons. For one, I worried about feeling insecure shooting with a different photographer. I worried about not being able to find somebody on Long Island, outside of NYC. I worried if I could afford it. I worried whether I’d be able to fill their schedule with things to do. I worried about how to explain the ins and outs of blogging to them, without seeming crazy. I WORRIED. I had 284838873 reasons why I didn’t want to take the plunge, yet I’d see my other blogger friends shooting all day with their assistants, and it always looked so much better than my situation. Why do we let our fears hold us back?
So, my point is, if you are struggling, ASK FOR HELP. If you’re an overwhelmed mom, find a sitter or two. If you’re buried with work, hire help! This week feels like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, because my business can finally exist like a business! I can take on more, with less of a headache, and can finally settle back into living a sort of normal life. I made dinner last night and we sat down for a meal for the first time in a long time, and it felt very nice. I hope this inspired you to make a change, and have a lovely weekend!
P.S. You’ll be seeing plenty of Danielle, my lovely assistant, around here soon!