Work Life Balance for Photographers :: Give yourself a weekend every week ... What a concept!

Have you ever stayed up ALL NIGHT long rebranding your website?
Ever said "I'll be right there, honey!" And then two hours later you finally finish editing that shoot and you're way too late for dinner?
Or how about looking down at your calendar and realizing that you haven't taken a day off all month and you literally just worked a 28 straight day shift?

Welcome to the world of the self-employed small business owning photographer!
You are not alone! But you are about to burn out!

About a year ago I started taking the whole work-life balance thing really seriously. About 8 months ago I started doing something REALLY crazy....taking a weekend....every week! What? Yes. Two days, back-to-back, every single week. What a rebel!

Photographers are always impressed when I tell them about my weekend. They look at me like I just said I travel to the moon and back every week. I get it. Taking two full days off from your beautiful little business is tough! It's like mommies that miss their kids after they've only been apart for an hour. Your business is your baby. This is normal. But the thing to remember since that mama needs some 'me time'!

Here's the trick...
Schedule your weekends ahead of time. Why ahead of time. Book your weekends on the calendar at least two months in advance. Everything else gets scheduled around these weekends. Your weekends can shift foreword or back a day or two - we have to be flexible BUT never remove your weekend completely.

It's important to take two days off back to back. On day one you will probably think about work ALL FREAKIN DAY. Resist. My best advice is to get as far away from your house and office as possible. Go hiking or boating or skydiving! Force your mind to forget about it. #distraction If you hold out and make it to day two, something magical happens. You actually enjoy relaxing and you dont want to go back to work the next day. This is a good sign. It means you're getting the rest you need. Step three...force yourself to go back to work the next morning and discover the next layer of magic jelly beans....you're full of energy and excited about all the work you can get done with your clear mind and belly full of fire!!

Taking weekends has changed my entrepreneur work life. Seriously. I have so much more energy for life and enthusiasm for my work. I'm WAY more efficient and I'm actually doing OTHER things in my life now that have nothing to do with photography in the most wonderful way. Lol

Go live your LIFE!
:)
xoxo
Chamonix

Embrace Adventure and Be a Yes!

One year ago today Miggy and I moved to Hawaii to live the dream. We set off to try something new and exciting and totally different than our rainy homelands of Seattle and Scotland. Like everywhere I'm sure, life in Hawaii is was different than vacation in Hawaii. We arrived on the island with a rather stressful to-do list: buy a car, find a house, get Miggy a job, make friends, figure out where to buy good food and heaven forbid, get to know a doctor that can be our on-call in the event of a shark attack. 

It's incredible to believe that we were there for only 6 months because it felt like years. We've been back in Seattle now for 6 months and the time has flown by. I'm so happy to be back and finally Miggy is able to make some great progress with his life. He has a potential interview with a psychology department at the university to do some volunteer research and he has health insurance now so finally after a long time coming he is able to start getting his shoulder healed. He had his MRI this afternoon and I can't wait to see what the results are. 

Now that we've been back in seatown for a while, we're both tarting to feel the itch to move on to the next great adventure. I keep myself entertained with business adventures and weekend hiking trios. We've been chatting about bigger adventure though and I think about them every day. Traveling the world, being part of an exploration team, starting a little retreat center somewhere in the wild. 

I wonder what my next great adventure will be. I wonder if I'll recognize it when the invitation arrives and I wonder if I'll adventure the guts to say yes. Saying yes can mean uprooting but saying yes can also mean the quality if my life can sore to supercalifragilisticexpialidous levels. #beayes 

Xoxo

Cham 

Remove Steps & Make Things Easier to Increase Your Success Rate

Ok, weird mystery. I love blogging for myself but I hate creating blogs for the Happy Film Company. What's with that? I dread it and I procrastinate it and then two weeks later I realize I haven't blogged a family photo shoot and I'm fallin' behind and gettin' stressed and oh help.

Likewise, I have these fantastic writing spells where I blog here everyday for a weekend and then a creative drought arrives and you guys don't hear from me for a month. Again....what the heck?

I work at a yoga studio near my house and I get an awesome employee benefit - unlimited yoga classes. Lucky much? But day after day I struggle to get myself to yoga mat. Clearly my years of blaming my 'lack of yoga' on 'lack of money' is a theory that is flying out the window as we speak.

So this leaves me wondering...why do I have things in my life that I want to do....but don't do.
Maybe it's because I have so many thoughts in my mind, so many events on my calendar, that these little tasks seem daunting. My favorite motto that helps me with tricky conundrums like this....Simplify Simplify Simplify — Henry David Thoreau 

Every difficult task, break it down into small pieces and figure out which pieces make you suffer the most. See if you can remove those pieces or change them to make them easier to swallow. It's like Canned Responses in Gmail. If you don't have to type out your name at the end of every single email, that's one less thing you have to do, which makes it one step easier to get through your inbox each day.

I've started making little changes, like keeping my yoga mat in the car - always ready to go. I now schedule my appointments & photo shoots so they end just in time for me to make it to the next yoga class on the schedule.



Up until this week, I've always uploaded a photo of myself at the bottom of every blog post. For some silly reason my blogging platform still doesn't allow you to create signatures or templates. Whaaaat??? I know. So anyway, that 30 seconds of uploading a photo is a pain every time and I'm so over it! I've stopped including that picture and already blogging is a little easier for me. It makes me kinda sad because I like including my photo at the end of of my posts because I think it make it more personal but if that step is tripping me up and making me avoid blogging, it's probably not worth it right now. Sacrifices.

When you're struggling to do something in your life or business, step back and look at the specific steps that you're dreading. See if you can change one little step and maybe the whole experience will change too! :D

xoxo
Chamonix

Shaving Your Head for Friendship & love

What a wonderfully inspiring video. I find it scary just watching these women shave off their hair. My hair is probably the part of my appearance that I'm most attached to. I love having long hair and I feel like it takes forever for my hair to grow. The idea of cutting it short feelings traumatic, let alone having it shaved off completely! Of course, the women in this video are completely right — hair is only a little part of you. What is really important is having your health. I suppose I wouldn't hesitate to shave off my hair in exchange for good health (if it ever came to that). I'm just so impressed with these women who didn't have to do this, but they DID. And the gesture they made for their friend is so beautiful. I hope I'd have the courage to follow through with this lovely idea if I were in their position. Enjoy this inspiring video of friendship.

Stop Hating on Other Photographers & Start Being Self-Centered

Last week, I sat at Starbucks in Kihei, Maui with my friend Naomi Levit and for two hours we moaned and complained about all of the mental problems that come with the territory of being a photographer. Both of us have been working on our business for a couple years now and we're both feeling dragged down by self-doubt, jealousy of other photographers who seem like they've got it all together, bitterness at photographers who haven't treated us so nicely, constant stress over our logo and website designs, blah blah blah. The cycle of negativity never stops. After hours of spilling our guts, we were feelin' downer than when we started. 

We hopped in our cars and drove down the town to the Thai food restaurant. As we sat outside waiting for our takeout order to be prepared, our conversation switched direction. We realized that sometime the complaining is a healthy exercise, purging all that crap from our systems BUT afterwards, you've got to lace up your boots and start running towards exciting things again. 

You've got to look at your goals, your fun projects, what awesome things you can contribute. The more you focus on yourself and what you're doing, the less time & energy you have left over to focus on other photographers. By the end of the night, we were both pumped up and feeling empowered. We couldn't care less what other photographers were doing because we had our own stuff going' on. When you find yourself in the nasty cycle of comparison & judgement, try redirecting that energy, be totally self-centered for a moment and start planning your own awesome adventures!!

When I got home, I recorded a little video explaining everything that was running through my head. (What an attractive screen shot, not! haha)

What do you think? How do you deal with all those nasty feelings?

Beauty Photography - Selfies Dove Campaign: Beauty Is #beautyis

I love how portrait photography has the power to help women feel more confident and realize how beautiful they are. These days, DOVE is coming up with awesome Beauty Self Esteem Campaigns. This is one of their most recent videos that I stumbled upon the other day. I take selfies all the time and more often than not, I end up taking 20 pictures just to get that one that I really like. How picky we are!! I'm a big fan of the selfie in the mirror haha because I can actually see what I'm taking a picture of. Today, at lunchtime I went into the bathroom mirror and snapped away on my iPhone until I created an excessive collection of beautiful me-photos. I've added a fun filter but I didn't do any retouching - not that I need it ;) You can check out my selfie photo shoot below. Geeze we're a strange generation haha. Check out the video and go snap your own selfie my friends!

And of course, I can never resist a good retouching session so I let my crazy retouching skills loose on my own selfie. I'll admit it is very fun to see all the changes I can make in Photoshop - totally transforming my appearance into something totally different. In the retouched photo, I just did the stereotypical magazine types of retouching — smoothing skin, enlarging eyes, slimming face, lengthening limbs, slimming waist, etc.... I was totally happy with the way I looked in the originally and although I admit it would be nice to shed a few pounds, even after seeing the overly-retouched me, I'm still feeling very content with the original version...thankfully.

Strange though... at first, the retouched one looked so unnatural to me - maybe that's just because I'm not used to seeing myself so "lean"! But then.... the more I stared at it, something in my mind started to change. After writing this blog post, I thought the retouched picture definitely looked better. It was an adjustment - like how we've all adjusted to seeing supermodels in magazines as a "normal" body. At first I thought I looked too skinny in the retouched photo but only 5 minutes later and I'd adjusting to thinking that version looked more normal and better!

Of course, there is a part of me that wants to look like the retouched image because it reminds me of what I'd see in magazines / TV. But that's just the insecure part of me that wants to look different and lose weight and be admired by all. I have to keep reminding myself that at first glance, the first time I saw the retouched photo, my first thought was "I look like I'm sucking it all in." LOL :P What a joke! Media imagery is so messed up!

Share your selfie and hashtag #beautyis!

How to Change your Photography Style & Create a New Portfolio

Q: Should I be afraid of changing my photography style? I'm tired of shooting the same thing over and over. I want to try something new but I'm afraid of how this will affect my business. Will it confuse clients? Do I have to build a whole new portfolio? 

Definitely not. Well, on second thought, I guess we really don't have much control over what we're afraid of, BUT we do have control over how we react to our fear, right? As artists, our style is always changing. Sometimes we take matters into our own hands and we make this change happened faster or we control where we want it to go. Whether you work with clients or just enjoy photography as a hobby, I think you should always be pushing the limits of your skills and searching for fresh ideas — doing both of these things will change your style (probably in a good way) whether you like it or not. As long as you're creating, you're growing. The more you create, the more you grow. With quantity, comes quality.

The only thing you have to look out for is if your clients are hiring you for a particular style that you have promised them through the images they’ve advertised on your website or blog. They are expecting a certain product from you and you need to deliver that. If you’re not loving your current “image” (the style you’re being hired to shoot), you need to do some underground revolution work! Shoot with models on the weekend and create a new, updated portfolio that represents your new style. Slowly integrate these new photos onto your blog, let people know you’re headed in a new direction, and eventually completely overhaul your website portfolio.

Just in the first two years of my business I’ve watched 3 or 4 major styles waves come and go (in my own work and the work of my photography friends). Each time I was nervous about how it would affect things but each time I felt so happy when I let my creativity run free and I could look back and see how I was evolving. I say "feel the fear and do it anyways - go for it and watch what happens”!

Here's a little look at how my style has changed over the past 2 years.
August 2011: My first photo shoot I ever organized. It was at Promenade Beach in Edinburgh. Check it out here.
October 2012: This was the first photo shoot I did in Seattle. I photographed my brother's girlfriend in my parent's living room. Check it out here.
October 2012 (2nd collage): This was one of the last photo shoots I did in Scotland. I was shooting with my friend Rhiannon. Check it out here. 
October 2013: This is my most recent photo shoot on a beach in South Maui, Hawaii. Check it out here 

What do you think? Are you going through a change of style right now?
Have you seen your photography style go through changes? Any advice for other readers?

Half Face of Makeup — Merging Before & After Images

My friend Sophie showed me this crazy photo of an Asian woman who only applied makeup to half of her face. It's crazy how the right side looks deformed (even though that's her 'normal' side). It's crazy how we instantly gravitate towards the 'prettier' left side. This picture alone could start a huge conversation about the politics of women's beauty standards in our society & media. How does wearing makeup change the assumptions we make about people. I'll be really honest and say that the stereotypes I see are: LEFT: pretty girl with lots of friends, Westernized and into modern pop culture & RIGHT: nice woman who studies math or works in a flower market in China. Crazy racist stereotypes, I know. But those are the judgements that jump into my mind (I don't know why). I'm not so shallow to think that my instant stereotype judgement would be anywhere near the reality (people always surprise me and that's so good) but if I have to make an instant judgement that's what jumped into my mind. Anyway, it's insane because the only difference is some face paint. What stereotypes jump into your mind when you see each half of her face?

"Half Made Up Woman" Original Article

Sophie challenged me on this topic and asked me how it relates to my photography. I give women makeovers and present them in a certain way that lines up with certain definitions of beauty. How is my photography affecting women? Is it part of the media that's harmful to self-esteem? Or is it empowering, showing women that they are indeed beautiful, just like the women in the magazines who are beautiful when they get their makeovers too? Celebrities don't look so gorgeous coming out of the super market. That's why we love seeing those paparazzi pictures, right?

So I thought I would do a little experiment and create 'half made up' faces from my photographs. I took two beautiful women — their before photo is pretty and their after photo is pretty. I took half of the before photo and half of the final image and merged them together into one face to create the same effect as the original photo. What do you think?

What do you think about these images & this issue?

Pruning Your (Photography) Projects & Choosing ONE Passion — Todd Henry & Ramit Sethi

It's time for PRUNING your (photography) projects my friends. Learning some lessons from Todd Henry and Ramit Sethi this week, I've been inspired to choose one passion and focus on growing my business. 

Some people might say I'm a project junkie. I throw myself at the feet of a new project almost everyday. My life is like one big college fair where you scribble your name onto the sign up sheet for every club, sports team and theatre production you can find. I'm a fish and fun ideas are like bait for me — I jump at them but find myself hanging painfully from a hook being strung along, bleeding out and slowly watching my 1,001 projects die unfulfilled deaths. You see, although I have a 1001 projects, I don't have a 1001 hours in a day. Before I know it, all of my energy is gone and I've got nothing left to offer; silly projects and priorities are pushed to the wayside in a sad pile of neglect. Well, I think the universe is tired of watching me overdose on project pills and it's been sending me signs....

This week, I've been reading Todd Henry's new book, "Die Empty" and he's been talking about "pruning your projects."

"Where are your 'open loops'? These are the unfinished projects, the halfhearted efforts...they are the projects that you're afraid to say no to, but deep down you know that you can't commit to. These must be either acted upon and made a priority, or immediately closed and put aside. If you have to many open loops in your life, it diminishes your ability to focus on the mission-critical things. You must become good at pruning your projects and commitments so that you have energy available for your most important work." (Chaper 4, Die Empty, Todd Henry)

This weekend on Ramit Sethi's blog I watched a video about how to choose one passion and stick with it rather than spreading yourself too thin between dozens of passions or flaying around without any direction at all.

'When I graduated from college, I was working on 9 projects. NINE. I was doing a startup…I was working on an ebook…I was doing this, I was doing that. People’s eyes would glaze over when they asked me what I did.My problem was I didn't know how to choose. I didn't want to close the door on all these other interests of mine, and it's not like ONE was the overwhelming choice. I liked them all. The code words I used were very telling. I would say "it can't hurt" -- it can't hurt to dabble in a bunch of things and find out what I like, right? Actually, IT CAN HURT VERY MUCH!! " (How Do You Choose One Passion, Ramit Sethi)

Over the past year, these are the kinds of projects I've started & invested time in:
-starting my photography business
-creating promotional videos for other photographers
-thePhotoChicks: a photography podcast
-Did You Know She's Beautiful: photographing women survivors or war
-photographing military wives
-planning two photography workshops
-Barn Glamour: photographing horses & their riders
-my happiness project
-30 Days with Chamonix Video Challenge
-101 Years of Beauty: photographing women ages 0-101
-writing a novel 
-starting a yoga podcast
-doing a life experiment to inspire a memoire
-teaching a webinar

(I'm probably forgetting a few)

I heard through the grapevine that my aunt recently said, "Why is she doing these other projects? She should be focusing on growing her photography business." At the time I knew she was right but I didn't want to admit it because that would require me to do something different. I labeled her comment as being 'unambitious.' My plan was simple... take over the world by squeezing in as many projects as possible. But clearly, this was not the golden path to success because I overworked myself, got spread to too thin, burned out, and broke down like an old jalopy. Suddenly all the jokes about being a 'project-junkie' weren't so funny anymore. I couldn't keep my business running — my mind was too exhausted to carryout marketing plans, keep my finances straight or come up with new ideas to bring in new clients.

So, I slammed on the breaks. I stopped running my business. I dropped off the grid and didn't talk to people for a couple weeks. I decided to move to Hawaii and work for someone else. I've watched my brain recovering and with it, my desire to take on projects. Thank goodness for Todd Henry & Ramit Sethi who are giving me a reality-check-slap-in-the-face. "Pick one project, you crazy nut job!!"

As much as it pains me to focus in, I'm choosing ONE passion: women's portraiture — and I'm keeping it simple. No fancy fluffy projects to fill the time and keep my hands busy and no trips around the world to spice things up. For now, it's just simple photo shoots, studying business and sharing everything on my blog.  I'm working for Karma Hill by day and I'm working for my business by night (and early morning). My #1 goal right now is to build up a Hawaii-themed portfolio (from scratch) so I can sell my photography to the tourist market here on Maui. That's it. 

The only other side-projects that are allowed into my life right now are my podcast thePhotoChicks because it keeps me sharing knowledge, enthusiastic about being a part of the photography community, and connected to my beloved co-host, Cheryl Ford. And of course, I have my on-going project 101 Years of Beauty which doesn't require any special effort since I'm literally just ticking off ages as I photograph them. 

So that's my goal. Keep me accountable my friends! If you see me with big delicious project in my hands, you have permission to slap it onto the floor with a little social media scolding. (I'll probably regret saying that lol).

What projects can you prune out of your life?

Building A New Photography Portfolio from Scratch - Hawaiian Style

What do you do when you move to Hawaii, leaving behind your portrait photography studio, giant reflector boards, makeup chairs and wardrobe? You create a new portfolio, of course!

When I first started photographing women, I was in Scotland and I turned the back room of our rental house (a bright white, big windowed, little square box) in my 'studio'. A year ago, I moved home to Seattle and took over my parent's basement, turning it into my glamour studio. Now, I'm on a tropical island in the middle of the world's biggest ocean .... studio-less, forced to work my photo magic in the great outdoors. Intimidated by bright sun.

It's the end of week 2, working as a staff photographer at Photography by Karma Hill. I've been shooting elopements at sunset on Maui's beaches. All of this outdoor shooting has got me pumped to try these new locations for my own photography — women's portraits on the beaches at sunset.... I want to see what I can do with these conditions... taking portraits to a whole new level. I'm thinking a dash of Sports Illustrated, a sprinkling of Vogue, and a whole lot of something a la Chamonix (yet to be discovered). 

I'm especially intrigued to see what I can come up with because when I was living up in the northern portion of the globe I was adamant about NOT shooting outdoors. I really didn't like it. I was a studio-bound girl fo sho. Let me just say, I did try shooting outdoors in Scotland & Seattle but the chilly scenery just wasn't feminine & pretty enough for my portraits. Something about the dark forest greens just made the photos fall flat. The scenery detracted from the beauty of the woman's portrait = not ideal. Plus, most women weren't very comfortable posing in skimpy clothes in the cold rain... wonder why? 

Hawaii on the other hand promises a much more feminine and sexy backdrop. I mean just look at it, instead of the prickly pine trees, there are voluptuous banana leaves! I want to get me some women rolling in the sand, posing beside palm trees and flipping their hair in front of turquoise colored buildings. 

So, to get this tropical creative sabbatical of mine on a (cinnamon) roll, I've been scouring Pinterest for inspiration and I've decided to focus on building a brand new portfolio FROM SCRATCH. This new portfolio is going to be inspired by Hawaii (obviously). If I love it, I'll start seriously considering how I can remodel my photography style & business to cater to these outdoor glamour portraits for Maui tourists. It's a whole new market for me and before I can sell, I have to figure out how to rock the tropical sunshine and pose women in water, sand and sugar fields. I'm here in Hawaii for at least 2 years while I work for Karma (I'll be shooting for myself on the weekends). I figure 2 years should be enough to figure out a new photography style &  business model, right? I mean, I first picked up my professional camera 2 years ago and look how far I've come since then! Bonkers.

PS: Any advice for shooting outdoors is very welcome!

Sitting on a Beach in Maui, Obsessed with My Twitter Profile

We've been in Hawaii for almost 3 weeks now. Day 3 I was sitting on the Maui beach at sunset and all I could think about was Twitter! My mind was driving me absolutely bonkers! I came home that night and wrote this blog post — which I didn't publish right away because I felt too vulnerable at the time. I'm a little more removed now and ready to share....

[This post is accompanied by extra photos from Sophie's photo shoot because Sophie is one of my best friends and when I'm stressed about stupid stuff I talk to her and somehow everything gets better. I'm sure she could help me work through this ridiculous social media stress if she were here with me in Maui. lol]




"I sat on the beach tonight watching Miggy swimming (I mean crashing) in the waves. The sun was setting behind the rocks and the warmest glorious breeze brushed past my skin. I was trying to meditate but every couple minutes I had to open my eyes to check on Migs and make sure he hadn't been washed away to sea. I'm embarrassed to admit that despite being smack dab in the middle of this piece of paradise my brain was on hyper-speed.

All I could think about was my Twitter profile. How can I describe myself in 3 words? Should I change the background color on my blog? Should I redesign the header at the top of my blog? What should my Facebook profile say about me? God this is terrible. I feel so consumed by this need to define myself & pinpoint my brand so it represents me perfectly.

Despite the fact I'm on a tropical sabbatical, I'm still feeling that tightness in my chest when I think of what I want my Twitter profile to say — ridiculous, right? I mean, I could spend all day and night — literally — stressing and rearranging my online profiles. I promise though, I've been resisting, sitting on my hands, holding out, not giving in to this crazy temptation.

Such trivial things but somehow they seem to affect me so strongly. Why!!! It's so annoying. I wish I didn't care about it. I kind of dream of a "crazy" world where I don't have a Facebook account. It seems so peaceful in that alternative universe. I want to give into that world but I'm also afraid to leave the land of branding or loose my social media following that I've worked so hard to collect. I like knowing that people around the world are reading what I write on my blog. It feeds my ego, making me feel important, significance, noticed. It's scary to unplug and admit that I'm just another human in this big big world — one of 8 billion — and I'm unknown. I could easily disappear and 99.9999% of the world would carry on without blinking. Oh, why can't I just sit on the tropical beach free of all these worries? My photography brand and business has taken over my life — a parasite that I adore too much to get rid of.

I supposed that why I'm here in Hawaii - to figure out who/how I want to be, discovering my identity as a person, an artist and a writer. How I'm going to balance it all with everyday life and keep perspective on what's really important. Not an easy task but I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the Hawaiian air is going to help me out ;)"



Am I alone is this boat or is there someone else out there that can relate to my total craziness?
Do you ever stay up late thinking about your Twitter Profile? 
Do you simultaneously love and hate Facebook?
Do you daydream about what your company colors should be when you're supposed to be sleeping, listening attentively or having sex?
Do you crave praise, acknowledgement & affirmation from the world-wide-web (but feel like you should stop worrying about that and invest more time in your friends & family (people you actually know personally who make your life worthwhile)?
Please tell me I'm not alone on this one my friends. 

{My Happiness Project) Go Nuts!

We pulled into the Costco parking lot, looked at each other with an impish grin and decided to buy something tasty - a special treat. Typically, we always walk straight back to the fresh vegetables and fish section, averting our eyes away from all the sweet yummy stuff in pretty florescent packages that they throw in your face right up at the front. We are pretty darn healthy so our idea of a special treat is in a way different league than Oreos and Doritos. We're talkin' honey roasted peanuts, yogurt covered raisins, chocolate covered protein bars! Oh, I'm in heaven just thinking about all that. 

For lots of people these 'treats' are their idea of 'healthy.' Nuts, dried fruit, protein bars. Well, let me tell ya, when you're spending your afternoons chowing down on chilled celery, a little honey goes a LONG way. So now you can see our devilish excitement at the idea of actually pausing at the front of the shop to purchase something from the 'tasty-aisle.'

We had a spontaneous plan, let's buy a special treat and then cuddle up in bed and watch a movie together. We LOVE this idea. We know exactly which treat we're going for - coconut covered cashews. We throw them in the basket and proceed to our normal shopping route. But somewhere in the peanut butter aisle Miggy decides to ditch the cashews. He pauses, lifts the container from the basket, stares at it, makes that face, and slips them onto the shelf. 

I ask him, why? He says it's better for us to spend our money on vegetables and fish. That way the money is actually benefiting our health. The cashews are unnecessary, especially when we're on such a tight budget. 

I completely understand where he's coming from. In fact, I totally agree. We continue shopping. But there was a niggle in the back of my mind. I couldn't help feeling like we'd just stolen something precious from ourselves. At this point I didn't care about the cashew nuts. My concern was more the principle of following through with a treat, an idea, a romantic date. I think it's more harmful to plan the date and back out than it is to not plan a date at all. I think Miggy's been trying to explain this to me for years but it took some nuts at Costco for me to finally understand. 

If we'd been tempted to buy the cashews on a whim, I think it's better for us to resist them. We'll forget about them once we're back in the car. But it wasn't a whim. We had created a plan for a romantic evening, a special time for us to spend together to enjoy each other's company. When Miggy slid the nuts back onto the shelf it felt like he was giving up on our date. It wasn't that this hurt my feelings but rather that it made me realize how beautiful it is to celebrate little things in life and how harmful it can be to live in a constant state of self-deprivation. 

99% of the time we want to stick to our budget and eat healthily but in order to live a balanced happy and healthy life we also have to incorporate pleasure and a bit of indulgence. If you take something away you need to add something else to replace it. If you're only ever taking away you'll be left empty. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about treating yourself to fattening nuts and movies every day of your life. It's more of a once a month date-night kind of thing. You need to include that indulgence AND the resistance to keep that balance.   

We went back and retrieved our cashews and for once it felt really good to drive home knowing that we'd decided to treat ourselves and we followed through. We bought the nuts and now we can watch a movie and nibble together on nuts, a simple most delicious pleasure. 

Resolution 5: Every now and then, Go Nuts

Resolution 6: When you make plans to treat yourself, follow through.

Check out the previous "My Happiness Project" posts from September:

Celebration Success Depends on Planning

Treat Everyday Like a Celebration

Celebrating the Rain

Intro

During October, I'm going to be exploring 'Belonging'. My main motivation for this theme is that I come from a diverse background and I've moved around a few times and I feel like I can fit into a bunch of different cultures but sometimes, I'm envious of people who are deeply rooted in one culture, one group of people, one location. I feel a longing for a deeper sense of belonging. But I'm convinced that with a little bit of introspection I'll be able to figure out where I fit it and embrace it. 

Feeling Beautiful with Short Hair & Boosting Your Self-Esteem with Photography

A couple months ago, I stayed up 'till 3am with my friend Sophie, talking about why I photograph women and how being photographed affects the way women feel about themselves. Sophie had recently shaved her head and I was so fascinated by the emotional roller coaster she was riding all because of a hair style. I totally get it though - girls and their hair. It's a big thing. A couple days after this late-night conversation I photographed Sophie and asked her to share her hair story here on my blog. Take it away, Soph... 

"About a month ago I shaved my head. I wasn’t trying to conduct a social experiment, 

challenge the media’s portrayal of female beauty, or send any new signals about my 

sexual orientation. I was just bored of dealing with long hair and thought it would be 

fun to chop it all off. 

It turns out I was about the only person who didn’t think my new ‘do was a big deal. 

Strangers crossed the street to tell me their opinion of my shaved head. Several 

women I encountered seemed to think I must be a fearless badass, and confided 

that they wished they had my courage (as if I had done something much more 

heroic than getting a haircut). Men wanted to know WHY (Did I have cancer? Was I 

demonstrating solidarity with someone ELSE who had cancer? 

Was I gay? No? Then WHY?) 

Apparently a shaved head has to MEAN something. 

When my little girl cousins saw me for the first time they didn’t run and jump on me 

in excitement as usual, but approached with caution and asked what happened to 

my hair. Out of everyone, they were the most adamant that I needed to grow my hair 

back immediately. “You’re a girl. Girls have long hair. You look like a boy.”

"As usual, the kids got to the truth of the matter. I realized that people’s discomfort 

arose from the fact that I no longer fit into the heteronormative standard of female 

beauty. Long hair is feminine, short hair is masculine. By that logic, a woman with a 

shaved head represents something gone “wrong” (sickness, non-standard sexuality/

gender, etc).

Part of me celebrated- I’m all for challenging gender and racial stereotypes! And 

I would love to say that I continued to rock the look with pride. But another part 

of me became increasingly self-conscious. Before shaving my head I was never 

asked personal questions about my health or sexuality. My behavior was accepted 

without hesitation and people in general treated me with respect and kindness. I 

had never realized it, but just by looking the way society expects a woman to look 

(long hair, makeup, shaved legs and underarms, feminine clothing…) I enjoyed a 

lot of privileges that I was completely oblivious to. Shaving my head was like being 

kicked out of a club that I didn’t even know I belonged to. 

When I confided in Chamonix that I didn’t feel feminine with my short hair (and 

that, in turn, I felt less accepted, approved of, attractive and confident) she offered to 

photograph me. I don’t know if it was the photographing process itself, the gorgeous 

images that resulted, or the fascinating discussion we had about self-esteem,

femininity, and the unattainable standard of beauty portrayed by the media, but 

somewhere along the way, I regained my confidence. And instead of willing my hair 

to grow faster, I think I might just keep it short for a while. 

Footnote: I know I’m not breaking any new ground by observing that it is 

unpleasant to have assumptions made about you based on a superficial physical 

characteristic (I’m also aware that as a heterosexual, white, able-bodied woman, 

lamenting society’s prejudice against short hair is not particularly compelling.) But 

hey, in the words of Mr. Hall from Clueless, “Tolerance is always a good lesson”."

And of course, I can't resist creating a Before & After! It was a hard to decide which photos to use as the 'afters'. I love this woman so much (we've known each other since high school Spanish class) and just looking at her radiant and genuine smile makes me feel happy. Although the smiley photos really capture her joyful spirit, I chose to use these two final images in the Before & After because she's staring straight at me with a simple expression that really gives you the chance to see the softness and strength in her beauty. Sophie my love, you are an inspiration, my space space where I can share anything and everything, I love your honesty and how you always support me with so much enthusiasm. Thank you for letting me photograph you again and being vulnerable in front of me. These images are my gift to you and I hope they remind you to focus on what makes you feel beautiful and confident. I hope they remind you that you do have that "supermodel beauty" inside you, like all women do. So much love to you from Hawaii to Portland.

Have you ever drastically changed your hair style?
Did people treat you differently?
Did you feel differently about yourself?