I had a mad June. Of my 21 weddings this year, 8 of them ended up being in June for some reason. And they were all over the country as far north as Inverness and as far south as London.
I know my numbers are much lower than most, and if you’re able to shoot that many in a month and feel fine, I’m jealous.
I was actually fine until the last week of June when I second shot a crazy wedding, followed by 4 days in Warwickshire for Click Live Expo and FedWed, and then a double header – Sikh Wedding in Wolverhampton followed by a church/marquee wedding in Cheshire.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as worn out mentally as I have since the end of June.
I’m fully on top of my edits which I’m extremely happy about and if I can find a non-smug way of talking about how and why I do this, then I will do in a future issue.
But aside from that I’m utterly useless on a day to day basis. Which sucks. And my back hurts.
So this week I’ve forced myself to just stop sitting at the computer staring at the screen achieving the grand total of nothing and just making myself feel more tired and more useless.
I’m writing this after waking up from a sofa nap. I was actually trying to watch Nadal vs Norrie in the Swedish Open. It was early in the first set when I nodded off and when I woke up someone else was playing.
Nadal won. I’m sure it was great.
When I woke up I thought ‘ugh I need to write a superchARJ’ so naturally I tried to quell that thought by doom scrolling TikTok.
And when I did the first video was a guy who said ‘your success will come from your rest’. And I loved that.
They do say the internet will always tell you what you want to hear, and yeah I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t a lazy work shy loser for having a sofa nap. And this guy did that. So thank you random TikTok man.
But… there’s always a but…
I fully believe this, and I sometimes forget it.
Back when I did my “the positive creatives” podcast, I spent a long time researching stuff like productivity and procrastination and there are many many studies that show the longer we go without resting our minds, the slower our productivity becomes and eventually it grinds to a halt as a protest.
But if we allow ourselves to – and even force ourselves to – rest instead of persevering with the work that *just* *needs* *finishing*, that work will actually probably get finished quicker and almost definitely to a better standard than if we grind through.
So I know loads of us are in that mid-season fog. We always forget what it feels like until it descends. And then it’s here and I think it’s the worst part of the job honestly. Worse than a period without bookings, which I’m also currently experiencing…
So on top of the fog, it appears we’re existing in a generally negative market at the moment. Most of us down on bookings for this year and next, and the anxiety that comes along with that.
I do have a lot of separate thoughts on that which I’ll go through next week. But I’ll summarise it now by saying focus on the shoots and edits you’ve got to do right now, keep the faith, hold out hope but don’t bury your head in the sand or rest on your laurels either. It can be a problem with your work, it’s more likely to be a problem with your marketing, and new for 2024 it could also be a problem with your general attitude. To be discussed.
But to close out this issue… treat rest as a task. Put it on your to-do list. Whether it’s a walk, a lunch out, sleeping through a tennis match, playing computer games or even scheduling in a full day off where you don’t even open your emails.
Rest intentionally, and unashamedly. Productivity will almost always follow.
Your success will come from your rest. I love that.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
