2020 has gotten off to a bit of an uneven start, but I’m happy to say that I feel like I’m making progress. My energies have mostly been related to my photography. The first Saturday of the month I spent my afternoon at Illinois Beach Resort for their bridal tasting and vendor event since I am a preferred vendor over there. Then the following Thursday, I had my first photography gig of the new year. I did photography for an event to celebrate the fact that Feroze Hanif was donating the money that he won as one H&R Block’s Franchisee of the Year to the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum. The Thursday after that I was yet again doing event photography with this time it being for the Lake County Community Foundation’s Engage Lake County that took place out at the University Center in Grayslake. The final victory I had in my business during the month of January was getting booked for three more weddings this coming year.
I like many people have tried to make changes to go with changing of the calendar to a new year. One of my goals for the new year has been keeping up with my routine of running semi regularly. At the end of 2019, I was doing pretty good on keeping up with my running. Unfortunately in the first month of the new year it has been really hit and miss for me. Part of my problem is that I’m resisting getting a gym membership even during the cold winter months and as a result have to coordinate my run with the Field House’s times where Waukegan residents can use the indoor track for free. The first available time for city residents to run is at 9am ends up cutting into the work day. Meanwhile for the later time starting at 7:30pm, I struggle to motivate to change into my running clothes and hit the track after the work day.
There are also a couple new ventures of mine that have started in 2020. For one, I’ve been spending about an hour each day doing a little housework at my parents’ house. This is meant to help supplement my income during these slow winter months. The second new endeavor for me is I’ve entered into the area of stock photography. Starting in the middle of January I started to upload some of my past photos to Adobe Stock. Here I am more than a month later and I still haven’t quite caught up with my back catalog of photos. You can bet that once I am caught up, I’m going to start getting back out there to take some new photos.
Overall, I’d say it has been a decent beginning to the new year. My social life has been fairly quiet the last month, but I won’t complain too much about that. A lot of time my weekend nights have been spent being a homebody cuddled up on the couch with my cats enjoying a few drinks and finally watching Orange is the New Black on Netflix. Otherwise those evenings were spent hanging a bit with my parents and even occasionally my sister, Josie, before she headed to the Czech Republic for her semester abroad.