Talk about being married to your work!

My love and I are reading a really great book called Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrot. (Yes, they are a married couple with the same first name.) I love it so far! I am only in the second chapter, but I would definitely recommend it to all of those engaged. It's like premarital counseling in a book.

Anyway, the point is, today I read a portion that sounded a lot like my post from yesterday and I just had to share!

Speaking on marriage it says, "We have put a lot of miles on this marriage. It has been exasperating, elating, horrible, wonderful, shackling, freeing. It has been our single most intimate source of conflict and joy. Still, it has so much to offer."

The next page offers a quote from Erich Fromm's book The Art of Loving. It says, "There is hardly any enterprise which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love."

How interesting that we can compare starting a business to love and marriage. Talk about being married to your work! If your job can even come close to blessing you as much as love and marriage do, then by golly it deserves the blood, sweat, and tears you put into it!

Entrepreneurship

I subscribed to a new blog today and read something I liked. Sean Low has a brand new blog called The Business of Being Creative. Yesterday he wrote about one of his former Professors:

"He told us that starting a business is HARD. You won't have a life, you will risk everything and you will experience the extreme of every human emotion possible. And, in the end, 80% of us would fail."

I love this statement because it affirms me. It tells me I'm normal. It tells me that it's OK for me to be stressed, agitated, excited, unsatisfied, eager, and elated all at the same time! It also tells me I'm not crazy for wanting this so badly. 

If I were to be honest with myself and all of you reading, which I have promised to do, I would have to say that some days I don't feel like doing this. "Life shouldn't be this hard," I tell myself. I shouldn't have to work a full day of waiting tables and then spend the rest of my day trying to convince people I'm awesome at what I do. (Not waiting tables) But reading this quote reminds me that I'm not alone. There are other crazy fools out there that want this just as badly and some more badly than I do! And that's OK.

Everyone has an opinion

Planning my own wedding has opened up a whole new world of insight for me. I didn't fully understand the pressure until now that I've experienced it first hand. I always tell my brides and my friends, "It's not their wedding, it's yours. Do what makes you happy." 

I've discovered that it's much easier to plan someone else's wedding than to plan your own. You don't have the emotional tie that those directly involved have. Now that my betrothed and I have decided to do things a little out of the ordinary, everyone has an opinion. And a lot of them are not positive. Experiencing this first hand, I can finally tell my clients and friends, "It's not easy, but you can do it." You can take your grandmother by the hand and tell her gently, "I don't want a formal invitation. I like spunky. I want you to love my invitation, but I would also like to be happy with it." 

The same goes for vendors. Take their expert advice, but don't let them talk you out of something that means a lot to you. Explain to them your reasoning, and they may have a better way of achieving the look you truly want.

Obviously, this does not mean that you can go disrespectfully bossing around your mother or demanding impossibilities from your vendors. Just remember that those who give an opinion usually have your best interest at heart. And those who don't......well, we should save that for a whole other day shouldn't we? : )