Week 2: Creating a Life of Meaning

This week was an important week for my business.

For the first time, I was taking photos by myself of a couple I had never met in person before. I don't know that I had ever been so nervous for a shoot. I prepared myself well, did tons of research, and made sure the couple and I got along well, but it was still a very nerve-wracking event for me. I'm overall very, very pleased with how these turned out, though!

After the shoot I was thinking about this week's topic - creating a life of meaning. My family and I have never been much for country music, so the song "Live Like You Were Dying" wasn't familiar to me until my mission, where it was one of the permitted non-Tabernacle Choir songs. The first time I heard it, I cried. 

As I drove home from the shoot, the words to that song were on my mind. Then later, when doing the Stars and Stepping Stones assignment, they came to my mind again. I believe Randy Pausch was able to achieve so many of his childhood dreams because he had the right perspective -- it might have been a product of his terminal diagnosis, but it got him there. I know this class is about entrepreneurship, which at its core is the ability to temporally provide for yourself and your family, but it took until this week and this shoot for me to realize that every accomplishment I really care about achieving in this life has to do with relationships and not about business at all, which is the perspective shift I needed. 

For example, I have career goals, of course. I love being a photographer, and I love creating something beautiful. But my childhood dreams were always to be married, to have children, and to love them as much as I could. I remember asking my mom if I could be a bride for Halloween when I was four. When I die, I want it to be said about me that the people who knew me never doubted once that I loved them. I believe this is important, and that it can happen for me, as long as I keep this star to guide me.

With this in mind, it gives me new perspective. Of course I'm going to keep up with my photography -- but I feel as though God was telling me this week to make sure I'm building and strengthening the relationships I have and welcoming new people into my circle of friends.