Most interesting commercial shoot this weekend. Way too much fun.

Tomorrow, we shop. Yay for cross border shopping!

My fav MSN today:

A says (8:38 AM):
you are like santa AND the easter bunny AND frosty
A says (8:38 AM):
you are that magical

xoxoxo!

Northern Voice was this past weekend and Reilly and I both spoke at Photocamp. It’s *so hard* to try to figure out what to possibly cover in 15 minutes, but we settled on lighting and split it up into two tidy packages and put together our stuff.

My presentation on natural lighting was fairly universal - anyone with a camera from point and shoot to full dSLR and gear could probably get something out of it. Conveniently, if you weren’t there, the whole thing complete with slides and video and all has been put up on the web and can be watched online.

Reilly’s presentation is also online and focuses on more advanced flash use and is probably more interesting to the serious amateur or for pros who haven’t spent a lot of time focussing on lighting, but totally worth checking out. That’s here.

What I didn’t anticipate - at all - and what I’m still surprised at - has been the absolute flood of people coming up to us, emailing us, facebooking us and seeking us out to thank us for what we shared. More than one person has told us that one or both of our talks were the absolute highlight of the conference for them, and that is pretty darn humbling. I seriously have no idea how we’ll top it next year. I’m just so excited that so many people found value in what we talked about and can walk away and put something we said into immediate use.

On the this-is-my-personal-blog-and-I’ll-talk-about-myself-if-I-wanna side, I LOVE teaching. I love being the subject matter expert in something. I love being the go-to person for people to ask relevant questions to. It’s probably been the one thing I’ve missed most about the corporate job (strictly the Edmonton side, when I managed the people in tech support) the most.

I’ve picked up some of it in other ways - I love mentoring other photographers and small business owners - but I want to do more. It’s not a God complex - well, it probably is - but I just get so much joy out of helping others succeed in whatever they’re doing. This weekend, it was as simple as helping people learn how to take better photos. At the Corporate Job ™ I loved being a decision maker and mentoring others in their career paths - when someone credits you for helping them get the job of their dreams or into management, that’s pretty darn awesome. Lately, a few of the people I’ve encouraged to go into business for themselves (because they are crazy amazing with fab talent and just need self confidence!) have taken the leap, and have told me they would never have done it if I hadn’t inspired them or encouraged them. Wow. What do I even say to that?

That - right there - is the single thing that gives me the most joy out of anything in the world. I am SO PASSIONATE about living your dreams and finding your passion and just getting out there and trying things. Life is too short for anything else.

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing more formal business consulting and mentoring, although I’m not sure what that would look like. I love small business and I know I have so much I can share and help others with. And, on the side of self, I get so much joy out of watching others succeed - I’ll take that drug any day. I’m just still trying to figure out where it all fits. On the life plan, I know exactly what I want to be doing in 5 years (which is related to what I just said… but I’m not ready to share it all yet) - I just haven’t figured out yet how to get from here to there and what’s in between.

It’s official - I decided on a new URL. Upgrade your bookmarks, correct your feeds. My site can now be found at
http://www.sassycontessa.com

Little is more aggravating than spam. Unless, of course, you self selected into the spam - and now can’t self select out.

See, at some point I signed up for the Ikea newsletter. I don’t know if it was in Edmonton, when we lived down the block, if it was in store, or if it was while living here. It could have been 3 postal codes ago. I also have no idea if, when I did sign up, I provided real values for my postal code or if I just randomly filled the boxes like I (and many others) often do out of laziness and frustration at the amount of info I apparently need to give just to get regular updates on what I should buy and how much money I should spend with this company.

Regardless, I’m in and Ikea won’t let me leave.

Ooh - update. Apparently this won’t-let-me-go wisdom is the brainchild of Komunic - www.konversation.com - a Canadian based company, self proclaimed leaders in permission-based email marketing. I was ready to blame a poorly home-spun Ikea system, but this out of a dedicated service? Come on people. Making it hard to unsubscribe just makes your customers angry, not more loyal! Get with the program. You don’t have my permission anymore.

New typewriter
Royal Portable in fancy wood grain
manufactured 1927-1931

The coolest cabinet TV on the block!
And also, my new end table. Woo!

And finally, my new vintage wooden spool thread collection. Love it!

(click to enlarge, and to read!)

 http://www.foundmagazine.com/find/3000

I didn’t mean to go on hiatus, it just sort of happened.

This year has been great. Beyond great. Self employment is wonderful, business is doing really very well, all is good.

When I left Telus, I was convinced that we’d have so much extra time on our hands now that I wasn’t giving away 45 + hours per week. Somehow, that hasn’t been the case.

Huh?

We still got swamped late in the season as we did the year before, and I still feel like I’m working all the time. I’m not crazy stressed like I was before though, life is SO MUCH less stressful. I’m just not *accomplishing* as much as I should be - I’m busy constantly but not constantly productive.

For a long time it was simply the honeymoon period of not having to go to work anymore so I didn’t feel guilty. Then it was crazy busy season where I really was working all the time, so I didn’t feel guilty. Then it was Christmas, so I didn’t feel guilty.

Now, I feel guilty.

There’s a big difference between busy work and true productivity, and I’ve been unproductive for far too long. I spend too much time wasting time and calling it work.

I know how to be productive - starting with turning off my email and facebook and forums - I’m just lazy. And, more importantly, I need a new project and I don’t know what it is yet. I have more than enough capacity to handle something really big - I just haven’t found it, and the longer it’s taking to figure it out the more used to this lazy unproductivity I’m becoming. I’m getting very antsy.

At heart, I’m an entrepreneur. I love business, I love new business, I love starting businesses. Right now that business is photography - and I’m really good at it. As soon as I have actually figured out my next business though I’ll be hiring someone to do all the day to day so I can for the most part direct and show up to shoot - there’s a lot I can bring in someone else for while not compromising the core of the company.

I’m also pretty damn smart and I have a decent amount of education and experience and such when it comes to business. I’m fancy like that.

What I don’t have, however, is the ability to truly think outside the box. I am not creative. I am FABULOUS at taking the seed of someone else’s creativity and finding inspiration in unrelated things and running with that and building upon it and expanding it - but that initial spark? I don’t have it. I fake it pretty good, I keep countless ideas and things filed away in my brain that I’ve seen or heard or discovered in unrelated areas to pull out when I need to. My photographs are inspired by movies and art and funky packaging and line and colour. I can run with obscure inspiration - but I can’t come up with it on my own. I have to get there from something else.

I read a lot of entrepreneur related blogs and such and I keep reading over and over and over and over again about people lamenting that all they have are ideas but no knowledge of how to implement them. Everywhere I go, it seems that everyone has a million ideas and just doesn’t know which to run with.

How can I compete when I don’t have the ideas in the first place?

I feel I have the exact opposite problem - I could build a business plan in my head in minutes given an idea to start from. The whole thing folds out for me… I can rattle off marketing ideas like nothing and can give a pretty solid roadmap on where to start and what to research and where to go. Starting a business is never *easy* because there is so much work and so much uncertainty, but for me the process is the part I enjoy and am good at.

But - where to start when I don’t have the ideas?

Of course, I keep trying to do the same thing that I do with everything else - look in unrelated areas for inspiration. I go back and forth between choosing something that has synergies with my existing business -which would make loads of sense but I’m still unsure. I step back and really analyze what I am good at and what I want to do and even though I have a good sense of the end goals I still don’t have the middle pieces.

I really just thought the whole thing would come to me by now.

Actually - it almost happened. There was one. I had an idea. It wasn’t my idea, but I was able to expand on it in a way that was new. It would have been a partnership and we began the research phase… to discover, of course, that a company operating basically identically to what we said we’d do not only existed but had just been bought out for a tonne of cash. Sigh. This is, of course, why you do research - but at least there was some validation that the base plan had been a solid one. But, I knew that. The people I was telling were looking at me with a very unsure look, but I knew. I’m fancy like that.

So, until then, I’m trying to come up with a good reason to be more productive. If I’m more productive then I have all this free time see, and that scares me, too. I don’t know what to do with lots of free time, which is why I need a new project. And really, while Guitar Hero & Rock Band are fun - they are so not it.

Today we had the pleasure of not only getting our own mail, but apparently the mail of everyone else in the building. Everyone. As in, 29 pieces of misdirected mail intended for 15 other businesses in our building.

WAY TO GO, CANADA POST!

We’re not talking magazines and junk, either, it’s all bank statements and hand addressed stuff and what appears to be a lot of cheques. And did I mention these are businesses?

To say that I am furious would be an understatement, but to say that I am surprised would be a joke because I expect little more from these folks as we have to call to complain about something mail related on an unfortunate semi-regular basis around here.

I have called to put in a complaint and demand a call back from the area supervisor, which I am still waiting for. I will be asking for both a personal visit to pickup the mail to deliver it properly (I’m not going to set it downstairs unsecured, but I’m also not going to do their job and hand deliver it all myself) as well as a written apology to every resident of our  building.  Seeing as they haven’t even bothered to call back yet, we’ll see how far I get.

I’m letting the media know, too. It’s hardly media worthy but maybe they’re having a slow Tuesday. I’m particularly angry because I had 2 pieces of really important mail that came today in addition to a cheque from a client for a few thousand dollars, and had they been delivered elsewhere like everyone else has had happen, it could have caused problems.

Here’s my “Vancouver Citizen Fed Up with Canada Post Service” photo: