I can't believe we're already into 2017. I feel like the month's already going super fast! So, I really need to get on this! I'm not a big goals person. I just sort of give myself some general things I want to do, and if I accomplish them, then yay! Though, more often than not, I think that if I set some real goals ... attainable goals, with milestones ... then maybe I'd have more success.
These are the goals I really want to accomplish this year. I don't want to go too crazy, and then feel like I've failed. Maybe next year — if I can make all of these! — we can make it more adventurous. So here we go!
Professional
Support clients in more ways: Because photography is all about people, we want to continue to grow in supporting our clients and building up your experience with us.
Be better at tracking funds and travel: So ... we all have these things in our lives ... those things we are just not great at keeping track of until we absolutely have to! I am notoriously bad about not keeping track of things like expenses and mileage like I should. Notoriously. But this year will be better! To at least get in a step towards the right direction, my goal is to keep track of all money and mileage each month. Each. Month. (And then maybe next year we'll go to immediately recording it!)
Organize a styled shoot: This more of a fun goal! I'd love to set up a styled session this year. A styled shoot is basically a collaboration with different vendors to produce a mock event, like a wedding. I don't have a vision for it yet, but that's all part of the goal! Hopefully by sharing it with you here, I'll ask work up the nerves to get it done!
We did this styled shoot as part of the Rising Tide Society's Tuesdays Together group.
And it was so much fun! A lot of work. But super fun!
Personal
Try one new restaurant a month: This is the second year I've had this goal, but I think it's a good one. It's a great way to get out and explore St. Louis and try new places I've never heard of. We already hit January's goal: we tried The Shack in Frontenac. We'll definitely go back. If anyone in the St. Louis area has recommendations, let me know! About the only thing we don't eat is fish!
Read one book per month: So, it took me until this month to finish a book I've been reading for, maybe, two years? I know! I am known as someone who loves reading, but this book just killed that for me (I won't say which one). Now that I'm through it, I want to jump back in. While this will be super challenging, especially in busy months like April (at my day job) and October (family picture season!), I am going to try!
Finish updating old files: My hard drive ran out of space at the end of 2015. It was pretty terrifying, because I've never run out of space before! The drive had all of my digital photos ... everything from my digital cameras, everything from my iPhone(s) and even some scanned pictures, including a few of my grandpa and ones from my trip to Germany the summer after eighth grade (I don't don't need to say a year, right?). And, it's not like in all of those years I used Lightroom ... it wasn't even really popular until I was in college. So in addition to migrating all of my old photos and updating the keywords, locations and other metadata into Lightroom, and adding the thousands of (personal) pictures I take every yea, it's a lot to keep up on. But now that my first little hard drive has filled up, I want to go through everything ... make sure every picture has locations, appropriate keywords (including tags of people in them), and ratings. Make sure everything is edited. And then make backups of even my backups! It's a pretty time-consuming process, but I'm super excited to do it and, of course, keep up to date on my current drive, too. :)!
Bonus:
Really rock our anniversary: So this one sort of counts as both! Jared and I are celebrating our 5-year anniversary this July. And I want to make it awesome. I've got some surprise ideas I can't share yet. But I definitely want to get anniversary pictures and I want to really plan and figure out our big trip. For our honeymoon, we were able to go to Rome, Venice and a Mediterranean cruise. I really want to come up with a trip that will rival this one's awesome-ness. We've got some ideas, but we might need your help! But the goal is to get everything booked and figured out this spring, so that we're not trying to figure it all out last minute, when we're stressed and crunched for time and when the prices have sky rocketed.
My favorite place during our honeymoon ... Venice! Even though there weren't a ton of "touristy" things to do, it was worth it just to walk around, sit by the water and eat gelato!
So ... that's a lot, right? Hopefully this will help me stay accountable. If you want help with your goals, let me know what they are! We can be goal buddies! :)