I think it is safe to say that this is unbelievable times at the moment! If someone had told me that when I was planning out my 2020 goals, dreams and plans that in a couple of months the world would be facing the biggest challenge it has ever faced of a global pandemic, that it would affect everyone’s lives, day to day, we wouldn’t be able to leave our home apart from to go to the supermarket for essentials and 1 hour of exercise a day – that we couldn’t see our friends, family and our daily routines would change. That my entire income and work for the coming months would be taken away from me and I wouldn’t be able to do the main thing that my business surrounds, I hands down would not have believed you!
There are many reasons I have been pretty quiet over here, mainly because I have been processing everything that is currently going on surrounding Covid-19 and the current changes we are facing. I am not going to lie I have been having up and down days throughout this. Mainly at the beginning, I found I was reading the news every 5 minutes, constantly refreshing my feed, worrying about the stats and numbers and paranoid about getting ill.
It's okay to change
plans & pivot
I very quickly realised spending 85% of a day just reading the news is going to be NO good for anyone’s mental health, so made the decision to just check in once a day for the daily press conference and limit my time on social media for the coming weeks.
Going through this at the moment is making me realise so much about myself, my business and the support network I have in my life. Funny how you find out who is there for you during a pandemic – the people who keep in touch, who check in, who are there to support and be there for you where they can.
Just before lockdown, my husband and I had completed on a house that we had initially offered on back in December, it had been a long process for it all to go through, and finally we got the keys to our project house, and our first house we have ever purchased. Not going to lie it has come at a good time, in terms of lockdown, but this crisis has definitely thrown our personal plans – as well as business.
Having a service based business, where I primarily photograph events AKA weddings, has meant that my work in the immediate coming months has been sadly postponed. I would be lying if this hasn’t rocked my world, and going to have a HUGE impact on my business in many ways.
What feels like the strangest feeling is that I was coming into wedding season (my work is seasonal!) and moving house that was scheduled for March/April, I knew and was prepared to becoming into my busiest months and overall year. With the postponements, this is has meant a lot of time is being spent on how to diversify my business, to continue to market my business so that I can attract new customers and to work on projects and plans that have been in the pipeline for such a long time, but always been put to one side when I have got too busy worth client work.
Whilst I came into this time feeling uncertain, on edge, a bit scared – I am writing this now with a sense of calm, having appreciated a slightly slower pace of life, appreciating the little things, feeling grateful for my health and my immediate circle of people who are just the absolute BEST! And so grateful to my business, my clients both brides, grooms and the amazing entrepreneurs and students I work with!