Stacey Hedman | Photography

I happen to love Mondays. Starting fresh, looking ahead… reaching for my notebook to start a whole new to-do list! It’s like a mini New Years every week.

I realize I’m saying this as some who works creatively and for myself, but I did spend 15 years logging in to corporate e-mail every Monday morning. If you’re not excited about what you’re doing, start finding what does get you excited. Research it, read books, share your ideas with others, carry a notebook, turn the TV off, be inspired.

I started a blog on dog photography as part of an agency contest on blogging. I couldn’t even win, because I was on the strategy team leading the contest. We wanted to encourage our colleagues to explore social and digital media so that we in turn could encourage our Fortune 100 clients to participate as well. I researched photography, dogs, and dog photography. I figured out how to tweet and blog (figure it out, friends – I credit 110% of my business to it). I volunteered at the local dog shelter and approached friends and strangers about practicing with photos of their pets. Realizing this was actually a business, I started picking up more and more of the marketing books I should have already been reading for my job. I was refueled. That was in 2008.

I had fun, I loved the creative outlet. But dogs would always be a side thing to the career I had gone to graduate school for, right? As my work grew to weddings, editorial assignments and events, it soon took over my evenings entirely. My weekends were spent running from taking photos to editing photos. I survived on 4 hours of sleep a night for two years, and somehow my husband and friends stayed on board. It was HARD. I worked HARD. And I loved it.

When people told me they “wished they had the time,” I almost punched them in the face (sorry, guys). You gotta do the work. You make the time. Involve your kids and your exercise routine… whatever it takes.

And truly, I think most people just wish they knew what their passion was. Trust me, I had no idea myself. My best advice is to be present, listen to what makes you happiest, create more of that, and repeat. Don’t look for a quick fix or a big profit. There’s no instant guarantee to happiness. But life is too short to not start finding the time and space to do what you love. Pretend you’re six years old again and it’s Saturday morning – what do you want to do?

If you’re lucky, you got to wake up and do it today :-)