I Accidentally Started A Business In 2020...

 I accidentally started a business in 2020.

I had recently quit my job at the church and lost what I was bringing into our finances.  It was worth it, but it was still scary to lose money we depended on.  I'm no stranger to leaving jobs, but this one hit different because I felt like I was fleeing a very unhealthy situation that was ripping me apart and hurting my marriage.

I've had every job you can image:

Chick fil a cashier
Dermatologist receptionist
Marketing Director at a winery
Nanny
Shampoo girl
Before and After care worker at private schools
Substitute teacher
Nail salon receptionist
Daycare worker

I could be forgetting some because I've tried just about everything and have hated most of them.  Some of these jobs I loved!  I remember when I was hired at Chick Fil A, there was rigorous training and they have you work several different jobs so that you get the lay of the land.  They put me on "lobby" which is wiping down tables, emptying trashcans, cleaning up spills, cleaning the bathrooms, etc.  Needless to say, I hated every minute of that shift and wanted to quit right then and there.  To be perfectly honest, I held back tears doing this.  I have to laugh at myself.  I was 17 at the time.  I had different ideas of what it would mean to be a Chick Fil A employee.  I think I lasted less than a year working there.

At my last job at the church, I started as the marketing director and that evolved into becoming the media director.  I created a social media presence for our church.  I researched and figured out how to get us online giving as an option.  This lead into the creation of a church app and a church website that I built from scratch.  I was the photographer at all the events our church put on and then distributed those photos across our social media.  I got our baptisms to broadcast "live".  I helped our building fund campaign and created many videos that were interview based.  I also got us swag too! It was a really fun job!  I truly enjoyed what I did for the church and people appreciated what I did to move our church forward!  And then we merged with a big network of churches and my position was moved because "we can tell you don't like what you do.  We see you're not fulfilled."  I was asked to a job that my friend had as the children's ministry director that she was being removed from.  I told them no and they didn't take that as my answer.  I was told that if I didn't take it, there would be no one to do it.  So I reluctantly said yes with conditions.  My conditions were that I would be able to participate in worship every other Sunday.  They agreed and I was given this humongous task of launching a curriculum and leading a team of 30 people.  This was the worst job of my life because I gave all that I had to doing this but it was fight after fight to get people on board with it.  There was fire after fire that I had to put out.  This job consumed all my time, it consumed my home with supplies.  It consumed my entire being because of how much work it required while still being considered part time.  What kept me going was being a part of worship.  And my husband was the worship leader so it would give us time to spend together.  Well, little by little, they took that away from me, even to the point of telling me that I have no singing talent and that I can play an instrument but I wasn't allowed to lead songs anymore.  I had lead worship for our church for 4 years prior to this, so this was a crushing blow to me.  I was even told that the previous Pastor said I couldn't sing either.  Talk about kicking me when I was down.

This job stole so much from me.  Mainly, it stole my confidence.  It stole the peace in my home.  It stole my zest for life and church no longer was a feeding source for me.  It was work.  It was beyond work, it was labor.  And since I was told very hurtful words, I chose not participate in worship anymore and that put a wedge in between me and my husband.  He needed help, but they took that away from him by crushing me with words said to me by the pastor.  It caused a rift in our relationship.

By the time we said that enough was enough, I was a pile of rubble from who I was when they first came.  I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for growth and ready for new life to come to into our congregation.  But all that happened was a slow death to member total of that church.  I left that church bloodied and battered.  I was a shell of who I used to be.  No church should have this kind of power.  No person, especially in a church setting, should wield this kind of power to crush people to get ahead.

As I licked my wounds in quarantine, I slowly had people creep into my DM's asking for photo sessions with me.  I started off with one.  It was a family session and they had a daughter graduating and wanted senior pictures done.  We had a lot of fun with that session and I felt a surge of creativity.  It felt like life pumped through my veins again.  Then I had someone ask for me to come over and photograph their newborn baby, and then someone else asked for engagement photos and then a small wedding.  Then I had more and more people asking me to take their photos, wanting a masked photo to commemorate 2020, asking me to meet them a beautiful places like a lavender farm and battle fields.  My family let me take their pictures at the beach.  It was a snowball effect that I didn't see coming, but it was exactly what I needed.  I found a resurgence of life with each session I edited and had people come back to me with elated responses for their photos.  I gave them photos, they gave me purpose.

Being my own boss is the best situation for me.  I work around my schedule. No one has any say about where to be and when to be except for me and my clients.  This is my dream job.  And it's a job I can build off of, too.  

I won't waste what I learned from my job at the church.  There's a lesson to be learned from everything.  What I take away is that I am talented enough to do whatever is set in front of me and asked of me, but that doesn't mean I have to do it.  When someone asks me of something, I can say no.  When they come back with an argument as to why I should laced with promises and prospects, I don't even have to respond and I can still say no to them.  I learned about boundaries with this job and I learned a very difficult way.  My marriage survived.  We have become a strong unit because of what we endured, but I'll never allow any job or any church to take such a seat in my life ever again.