Alright. I’m blogging again. Except I never really started successfully, soooo here goes nothing.

I’ve been taking photos since I was a tiny human with a Nikon Coolpix, aggressively documenting everything — my friends, my pets, sunsets, moody self-portraits before they were cool. I genuinely thought I was revolutionary. I was not. But I was committed.

One of my earliest photos, below.

Then in high school, people started asking me to photograph them. And then they started paying me — which felt illegal at first. Senior portraits turned into events, events turned into weddings, and suddenly I had a real business.

And I was good at it.
Like actually good.

Over the years, I built this world beyond Maryland — Pennsylvania, Delaware, North Carolina, destination weddings, even an international wedding. I was traveling, shooting love stories, making real money doing something creative. It was the dream. The actual dream.

Then the pandemic hit and everything got rearranged.

So what did I do? I hustled harder. I double-booked weekends. I rescheduled entire seasons. I showed up no matter what. I delivered because I adore the humans I am so very lucky to meet and photograph.

But at some point, my body was like… girl, absolutely not.

It wasn’t dramatic. I didn’t have a breakdown. I just hit a wall that didn’t move.

At first, I was confused. I truly thought it was normal exhaustion. Except this was the kind of exhaustion sleep doesn’t fix. I had built something incredible — and I was starting to resent it. That was the part that scared me.

The grief wasn’t about photography. It was realizing I had zero work-life balance. It was giving up weekends for years. Missing family time. Missing friends’ celebrations. Being constantly “on.” Fighting the natural rhythm of my own life because I thought success meant never slowing down.

In 2024, I slowed down.

I didn’t realize it at first, but the pressure on the gas pedal, so to speak, softened little by little… until the momentum came to a stop. I started bartending and picking up odd jobs to make up for the loss of income, but instead of rising out of the ashes, I truly created the perfect Groundhog Day. I wasn’t in any peril, but I wasn’t moving forward either.

Burnout strips you. It humbles you. It makes you get honest with yourself in a way nobody else can do for you.

And now?

Now I’m rebuilding.

But this time, it’s intentional.

I feel called to pack up my life and move across the country to build something new. Not from hustle. Not from panic. But from clarity. With so much prayer, reflection, and surrender, I realized the importance of the creative mind, of work-life balance (yes, it is possible), and that it’s okay to have goals that aren’t business-related. Truly, the world will not blow up in your face.

In this shift, my goals are now in this order: creating a home, being a creative, and having hard guidelines around work-life balance. The introduction to slow living.

So maybe this blog becomes more than just photos. Maybe it becomes the place I talk about building, breaking, rebuilding. Falling in love with your work again — and maybe even falling in love, period.

We’ll see.

All I know is I’m not done. Not even close. ◡̈

x,

liz