The past few years have been some of my favorite times in my whole life. Living in Europe, exploring so many different countries, trying new foods and meeting awesome people, working so incredibly hard and relaxing just as hard, marrying the love of my life, documenting amazing moments in peoples lives, and celebrating and loving on some of our nearest and dearest friends and family HARD. But it hasn’t all been instagram-able and FOMO enticing moments. Real talk – the past two years we’ve mainly relied on my photography income and our dwindling savings accounts to support our travels and lifestyle in Europe and the Bay Area. I know that I honestly can’t complain because we were living our dream and seeing the world, so it was totally our own choice to live this way. But it has put a lot of pressure on me now that we’re back to take every shoot, do every wedding, and kick ass while cutting costs in my business so we can pay rent and our living expenses. It hasn’t been easy and it hasn’t always been fun, but it’s been so worth is to support our lifestyle over the past two years and watch Jack kick butt at Stanford and impress the pants of people all around the world. And luckily, I’ve been really fortunate to book a ton of amazing weddings this season now that we’re back in the States, and have been blessed with amazing new and reoccurring clients that continuously book me for sessions. The love and support I feel from my community is unbelievable – I rely mainly on referrals and recommendations from friends, past clients, brides that didn’t end up booking me but still refers me (believe me, it’s happened!) and friends of friends’ parents’ neighbors that have liked and shared my work on social media. It’s a crazy awesome time to be a wedding photographer in the Bay Area, and I’m so grateful to be busy and kicking butt.

All this to say, that I had a pretty big moment yesterday when I finally felt comfortable and financially stable enough to invested in myself and sanity. I love listening to music and it plays a big role in my sanity – it can instantly change my mood and bring me back to a very specific memory. The past few years we have had the free spotify account and have suffered through multi-lingual spotify ads – from guttural dutch to mind-dumbing “zip recruiter” adds back in the states. Everyday listening to music with those adds every 3 songs can drive you a little bit crazy, but we financially couldn’t subscribe to the premium with the reoccuring free. We always joke that “when we’re rich” we’re going to get spotify premium and always have fresh berries in our fridge. Well folks, yesterday Jack accepted an amazing job offer in the city (GO JACK!!!) and I got spotify premium (and some strawberries). Goodbye, annoying commercials every other song, and hello nonstop, beautiful sweet sounding tunes all day long. It by no means means that it’s time to buy the yacht and a house in Marin (ha!), but its so incredibly nice to feel a little bit of freedom to invest in our sanity. So here’s to chasing your dreams, embracing help and support, and celebrating the small things.

Next up, maybe we’ll go out to dinner in a real restaurant for the first time in forever?