The Wednesday Wrap (aka The Deets on the Tweets), Vol. 5, Part I (End of the Year Edition)

Every few Wednesdays, I pick a trio of my recent tweets, and go beyond brevity to give you a few more deets. More work for me, more love for my blog. This post, which was actually started when I selected the Tweets in September, serves as the end of the year edition, so pull up a chair and a flute of Prosecco. There is just so much to catch up on that I've broken this post into two easier to swallow portions. Read Part I below and tune in later today for Part II. As always, you can read more about why I do the Wednesday Wrap here.

•Tuesday, September 22 at 10:53 p.m. "Just realized I am six - yeah, six- weddings behind when it comes to blogging. I am so far back I actually might be ahead for next year."

Confession: I started this Deets on the Tweets post more than three months ago, back in September when my seat on the blogging wagon was wobbly, but I'd yet to fall completely off. Fast forward to today, and I am officially a full on BLACKER! Would you believe that me, the girl who used to blog within hours of a wedding, hasn't shared one here on the Samantha Warren Weddings blog since Courtney and James' August 22 nuptials in Scarborough? That means you haven't seen Nancy and James' (and Hurricane Danny's) Hancock wedding, or Carly and Al's in Portland, Becca and Ryan's in Northeast Harbor, Liz and Jay's in Scarborough, Gail and David's in Kennebunkport, Liz and Derek's in Center Lovell, Aimee and Eric's in South Portland/Portland, Dana and Matt's also in South Portland/Portland, Robert and David's at Mount Washington Resort, Alison and Mike's in Stow, MA and Susan and Jeff's in Kennebunkport. Six weddings behind suddenly sounds not so bad, compared to the 12 post plus blogjam I've got going on as I head into 2010. (Hangs head in shame.)

So what the heck happened? Well, where to begin? First of all, last April, I took on a part-time position that has turned into a full-blown love affair as the Marketing and Communications Manager for a small non-profit, The Institute for Civic Leadership. What started as a temporary two-month stint to help the Portland-based institute while their marketing manager was out on maternity leave quickly grew into something much more meaningful and lasting, as did my passion for the organization's people and its mission of offering a range of programs to train, support, and engage civic leaders and build organizational and community capacity across the state. Recently and with my help, we've launched a statewide young emerging leaders initiative that seeks to better engage Mainers under 35 in nonprofit governance and I am very proud of what we are putting together toward that effort. I greatly believe in our programming and the people behind it, and consider myself quite lucky to have literally fallen into something that seems so right, right now.

While summers are a blur, the offseason can be a bit blah for a New England wedding photographer, and my three days a week work at ICL allows me to keep busy when I otherwise would not, exercise my marketing, media relations and writing and photography skills and strategies and enjoy the camaraderie that comes from working in a bustling Old Port office with Maine's foremost leaders in the public, private and nonprofit sectors (something you don't get when running your own home-based business). At the same time, the flexible schedule (including a slower summer) allows me to appreciate the quiet days I have at home to focus on my business and gives me plenty of time to shoot, edit, design and cultivate my relationships with clients and other wedding vendors. Seeing I was in graduate school and teaching the previous two years of my business, my new position at ICL has not added more to my plate, but my commitment to marketing and communicating our work there has quite frankly left me with little drive to do the same for my own business. A case of the cobbler's kid having no shoes for certain!

Furthermore, I have a habit of writing rather detailed posts- both emotionally and word count wise. (I'm just barely beginning this one and I bet you already need a bathroom break). While I realize that not everyone wants to read a Tolstoy-esque tome every time they visit my blog, brevity is just not my bag, baby. I rely on other social media, like my Twitter feed and Facebook page, for quick communication, but my blog is a place where I can go beyond the pithy updates and really show and tell you about me a person, and a photographer. If my Tweets (which also generate my Facebook status') are a window into my world, my blog is where I throw open my front door and invite you in to share a bottle of red. I so often get compliments on my writing from people who follow my blog, and though back in my newspaper days I wrote hundreds of articles each year that had a readership of thousands without a worry, lately I've been feeling a paralyzing amount of pressure each time I sit down to blog, especially when I am trying to do justice to the richness of the relationships I am honored to document. And so it becomes easier to just type a trivial tweet (max 140 characters) then delve into the deep stuff. Easy is good.

Finally, in this age of tweeting and texting and letting everyone know what you are up to every moment of every day, I often find myself wondering "Who cares?" In some sense, it's pretty self-absorbed to think people actually need to know, let alone care, that Kyle got me custom tassels for my bike for Christmas, or that I'm making banana bread using vanilla yogurt instead of the sour cream Martha Stewart's recipe calls for? Yeah, I've tweeted about both of those really earth-shattering events in the past week. Back in the summer and fall, when I was seriously stressing about the state of my blog and vowing to stay up straight until I got caught up, Kyle (always a sage voice of reason) asked me matter-of-factly "To what end? What's going to happen if you don't?" I muttered something about the world coming to an end and with it, the business I've put my hands, head and heart into building these past four years, but when I stopped and thought about it, it all sounded kinda silly and self-centered. Clients were still getting their image galleries, slideshows and album proofs within two weeks or so, and so my work and the word of mouth (and my Website, which I do sometimes update) would speak for me in times the blog could not. And so, the blog became less of a priority, and my family, friends (many of them former and current clients and other Maine weddings vendors) and myself became more of one.

That said, I greatly value my blog despite its challenges. While the number of weddings I photograph each year is fairly stable, I've been able use this platform and others like Facebook and Twitter, to give prospective clients a better sense of Sam and Samantha Warren Weddings, which has resulted in couples who are a great fit for me and my style of being and seeing, and thus, truer images. In 2010, I vow to view the blog as a blessing rather then a burden and to that end, intend to spend more time here. But don't hold me to it. If you really miss me, of course you can always try Twitter.

•Wednesday, September 30 at 12:35 p.m. "I love going to the dentist so much that I just committed to going every two weeks for an entire year. Invisalign, you better be worth it!"

We've all heard the "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference" bit. It all sounds so simple, but as all Utopian visions are, it never is. Or is it?

As I reflect back on the past year, which has brought deaths in the family yet the birth of so many new and meaningful friendships, I realize I've never had a 365-day period of such growth. And I am acutely aware that so much of that has come from the realization that I have control over my circumstances. Gasp!

I remember reading a blog entry a few years back by a well-known photopreneur who suggested that to achieve "freedom," photographers make a list of the things they like and don't enjoy about their business, and find ways to limit those pesky dislikes. Try it! For example, if you don't enjoy designing albums, then hire a graphic artist to do the work for you. (For the record, I adore album design.) The whole goal is to get back to doing what you love, which hopefully for most of us, is taking pictures of people in love! At the time, I detested post-processing, the act of taking those 2500-3500 images I shoot at a wedding, and culling them down to the 1000 or so final photographs I present to my couples. So, I outsourced the work to a post-processing company who did it for me, until I found a workflow that made editing more fun and took back the task. Suddenly, I realized the beauty of being a business owner- that control to not let the business own me, but instead, to sculpt something that would satisfy both my clients and myself!

If it worked for Samantha Warren Weddings, I suspected it might for Samantha Warren as well! Early in 2009, I started with a little thing- hiring a cleaning company to come to our house just once a month. Surely a splurge, but if their two or so hours of work freed up an entire day for me, then it was worth the cost. After all, my time is valuable too and it cleaned a dreaded to-do right off my list!

And that was just the beginning. I've taken more control of my life and found the courage to remove from it what I can and should to make me happier and healthier and give me more time to devote to the activities I love and the people I love doing them with. Instead of complaining, I've chosen change. Often, it's small adjustments that have big payoffs. There is so much in life we have no control over - the economy, the weather, our waistlines (hey, genetics is a powerful thing), that it is surprisingly satisfying to take charge of the little annoyances! I've unsubscribed from listserves that I never read anyway, I've moved the chair over a few inches instead of just cursing it every time I crashed my knee into it, I take Advil when I get a headache instead of just sitting there and I've omitted people from my life who no longer made me feel good about myself and accepted those who do for who they are, and not who I think they could or should be. Instead of hating on my kitchen, with its gold-flecked formica countertops, I budgeted the money for a renovation and we're now the proud owners of granite ones. Instead of telling Kyle I'd clean up my clothes on the bedroom floor, I've just cleared a path and told him "I am sorry, but this is who I am."

And, with the Invisalign, I've (heavily) invested in and committed to a series of very small adjustments that will hopefully move my teeth back from being the bucked bane of my existence to a place where I'll be proud to smile. I am thinking in 2010, I'll have lots to smile about. Yes, it may be vain to spend so much money on my appearance (there are some health benefits, I swear) and yes, my teeth may not turn out the way I wanted. But I accepted that I was not brave enough for traditional metal braces and found the courage to commit to the cost and discomfort to do whatever I can beyond that to fix a flaw that I focus on far too much.

As you begin your New Year, I encourage you to consider the blessings and burdens in your life, and how you can outsource or omit what doesn't bring you bliss. Because you can.

Stay tuned later today for Part II of this edition of Deets on the Tweets. In the meantime, you can follow me here on Twitter, and friend me here on Facebook. Happy New Year!