2009 was a crazy busy year, thank goodness.  In an otherwise tight economy, my real estate stayed pretty steady, and photography jumped WAY up.  Katie, Carson and I took a couple fun vacations.  I was hitting all of my deadlines, delivering awesome service to my customers.  Everything on the surface seemed pretty good, but behind it all was one insanely stressed out person, trying desperately to hold it all together.

Trying to still carve out time for Katie and Carson during the day, I would work through the night on more occasions than I care to admit.  I leaned on caffeine as a way to keep me moving.  Zero exercise.  Poor eating.  With no time left, I rarely visited with my friends.  I still got to spend some time with my parents and brother, but not as much as I would have liked.

During one of my last weddings of the year, I thought for sure I was going to pass out on the dance floor, right there with my camera in my hand. My heart started racing, my head was spinning, and each thud from the speakers was reverberating through me, almost syncopated with my quickening pulse.  Yikes.  That’s when I knew something would have to change—and quickly.

2009 ended with me taking a 1 month break from blogging.  Real estate and photography were pretty much wrapped up for the year.  I slept—a lot.  I reconnected with folks.  I spent a bunch of time at home recouping.  It was during this period of reflection that I made the decision to hire somebody that could help take the edge of things during 2010.

I will always thank my good friend and equally amazing realtor John Rice for telling me about Candi.  They had worked together before in real estate, and he knew that she was also an aspiring photographer.  Could it be?  Someone organized, who also had some real estate and photography background?  After some informal meetings, I quickly came to realize that Candi was a talented go-getter with a super-optimistic personality.  A perfect fit for helping me with my businesses.

In just the first full month of 2010, Candi has helped me to get things organized and she’s been setting up systems that will allow me to just focus on what I love most—being with people.  I’ll be able to focus on my relationships, personal health, and still keep providing rock-solid service in real estate and photography.  I know that 2010 will be a year I’ll look back on as being a game-changer.  It will be the year that I took back ownership of my personal life.

There’s a lot that I’m looking forward to sharing with you all, and I hope that you’ll root me on as I work to find balance in my life.  It’s not easy!

Let me introduce you to Candi Thies (”h” is silent, rhymes with “peace”).  She’s my right hand from here on out.  Thank you, Candi, for all you’ve already done to improve my life and businesses.  Katie and Carson thank you, too!  2010 is going to rock!