You're So Lucky

I have gotten the term "You're so Lucky" spoken to me a lot lately since announcing my New York travels. I will start by saying I am very blessed and so thankful to have great people and opportunities in my life. So blessed. But lucky is a term that makes me cringe. Sometimes I feel like people saying I'm lucky is a way of taking away the hard work aspect that goes into making a living as a business owner. I am having a midnight revelation as I sit here working. I am tired, I've been working all day long trying to get a garage sale together to make food money for New York and I just got home a few minutes ago and have a job due in the morning so here I sit retouching at midnight. I am blessed to get the opportunity to do something I love but I wouldn't call this lucky. This has been more work in the last year than I've done in my entire life. Long days of shooting and even longer days of emails and retouching that go unseen behind the scenes. I feel like the Instagram era has made us all conscious about what we put out there publicly, we take a bunch of photos to get the perfect angle, we filter our sunsets to look more vivid and we only record and post the perfect and most beautiful moments. This is one of those moments that will never see the light of day on Instagram, this is me sitting in a bathrobe at midnight retouching a job I got paid way too little for but I needed the money. This is me so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open. This is not lucky. This is hard work and a decision to work hard for the future. This is the grind. This is the not fun and not beautiful part. There is no boss telling me to work hard, nobody keeping me from stumbling to bed - just me working hard and being disciplined even when I feel like shutting down for the night. This is every day now. This is hard work, not luck.

I have determined to never say, "You're so Lucky" to someone because luck is rarely the case. I want to compliment hard working people for the hard work they do when nobody else is watching. Those passionate souls who give everything to their craft with no cheerleaders and no fan club. Quotes were always my favorite in high school when I was playing sports and I still have sticky notes with quotes everywhere in my office. The below quote always stuck with me and so relevant. There is no substitute for hard work and luck has nothing to do with it. So rise up champions in every aspect of life - stay-at-home moms, artists, interns trying to land a full time position and everyone else who has dreams - don't let anyone take away from what you do by saying you are lucky when they don't see behind the scenes, the blood sweat and tears, the midnight and later work nights and all those days of coming in first and leaving late.


"The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking" - Mia Hamm

The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/miahamm204535.html

The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking. Mia Hamm
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/miahamm204535.html

The vision of a champion is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when nobody else is looking. Mia Hamm
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/miahamm204535.html