One of my teachers believes that our careers should be our lives. If we're not willing to do everything possible, we are not going to succeed as photographers. But you know what? Photography is not as important to me as having a family. That is what I live for; not my job. At the end of the day, I'm not going to want to come home to my camera; I'm going to want to come home to my family. I am not going to find happiness in my career; I am going to find it in those I love. My career is just a way to support that happiness. Now I'm not saying I don't care about what I do for a living. I want to be able to enjoy what I do. But I'm willing to overlook my dream of owning my own portrait studio/ranch in order to enjoy my real life. Owning your own business takes so much out of you. It makes it so difficult to separate your personal life from your professional life. I want to be able to give my family my full attention when I'm home and not carry any of my work over into my personal time. There are people out there who make their careers their lives. They submerge themselves so much in what they do for a living that they don't have time for anything else. If that makes them happy, that's fine...but I couldn't live that way. I would rather be miserable at work and happy at home, than happy at work with nothing to come home to. In high school, so many people could not understand why not everyone wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, but I understood at least one reason why: freedom. When you have a job like that, it would be so hard to stop thinking about it. Every night you would be distracted trying to find a solution to some problem or another. Maybe it makes me a selfish or heartless person to not want to help society in that way, but I don't want that responsibility. When I clock out, I want to be free. Free to do whatever I want to do and think whatever I want to think. I don't like the way our society has become. People place so much value on making things "bigger and better" while overlooking the value of little things. Not everything should be judged by its commercial value. There are some things out there that money cannot replace. Things that cannot be bought or sold are the most valuable of all...but people are forgetting that. They get so caught up in everything that's "shiny and new" that they are no longer content with the things that really matter. And then when all the sparkle wears off, they can't figure out why they can't find happiness. It's because they're looking in the wrong places. Everyone has their own goals and priorities, and they are entitled to them. They are part of what makes us each unique. But for me, there is much more to life than work. If I have to give up some of my personal goals in order to succeed in my professional ones; I will choose my personal goals every time. If that means I will never make it as a photographer, so be it. I can live with that. So long as I have what really matters, I will be happy without the other stuff.