Happy 2018 everyone! I hope you had an amazing New Year. John and I spent NYE in my favorite city (besides Paris of course), San Francisco! While I did get some work done, I also had plenty of time to really enjoy myself, relax and spend quality time with my family. Something I always had trouble doing in the past. In an effort to continue to write posts that use my experience as a blogger to help you build your own successful blogging business, I want to share with you what I have learned about separating blogging life from your real life. It’s important to figure out how to be a great blogger and to know how and when to turn that switch off. You have to be able to enjoy all those amazing moments your life has to offer! Staying present is key because you can easily get lost in this blogging world.
Last year was a year of major growth for me and Frank Vinyl. After years of blogging one thing I have finally been able to master is the art of juggling work and play. My relationship at home with John is so important for me. Especially since it’s my first year being married. I want to make sure we get enough quality time together and I don’t ever want him to feel he comes second. Blogging however, is a full time gig. I am always instagramming, snapping, editing, emailing, responding to sponsors / readers questions and putting together content for the future posts. Frank Vinyl is my baby and I love what I do! It can be easy to just work work work and forget about play, or even worse… blend them together in a sloppy way! In which case, you wont be fully present in one or the other. In the end, it really is about quality over quantity. Both in work and your real life.
Things I do now to help me stay present, enjoy my time with friends and family, and bust out quality blog content all at the same time.

• I always set time apart for blogging and set an hour where I disconnect completely. I used to sometimes be on duty all day long. I mean 9 AM until 12 AM. No time for myself or even the family. Now I manage to work my two jobs (the blog and my photography company) and have also mastered being off my computer by 8 PM (ok.. sometimes 9 #guilty) on my work days so I can hang out with the hubby. It’s all about being strict with yourself knowing that it’s better in the long run. It’s so easy to keep working when you are on a roll but your brain needs to reset so it can have room to grow creatively and to gather juice to make your work even better when you start up again the next day.

• I Schedule everything. I’ve gone over this before but this one is key. If you schedule everything (especially time to hang with friends, and days off), then you will be so much more focused because your brain is free from trying to remember what you might be missing. Everything is already scheduled. All you have to do is look down at that schedule to be on track. Being flexible with the schedule is also very important because sometimes things don’t work out how you want it to and you have to move things around. Totally cool… we’ve got this.

• I go out of my way to shoot #ootd or #coffeenclothes type shots during my “work hours”. This way, when I am actually eating with the hubs, I don’t have to interrupt what we are doing to get the perfect shot. Sometimes I even shoot more than one outfit in a day just so I don’t have to be running around every day of the week shooting. It can be so time consuming!

• If I go on vacation, I spend extra time gearing up content to post while I’m gone. This way most of my stuff is ready to go and I am not taking time away from the vacation. If I want some cool pictures while on vacay, I google places ahead of time so that I know exactly where I want to shoot and when. I remember years ago I would just shoot all over the place if I was somewhere pretty hoping to have a lot of cool shots to share with you all! Over time I have learned that if I set time apart to shoot and really put my all into it, then I can just sit back and relax the rest of the time. I keep posting to a minimum so I can really take it all in and save a lot of photos for content to post when I’m back in my boring city (jk I love my city) sitting in front of my computer.

I feel so much happier now that I’ve realized the importance of completely separating the two parts of my life. I feel my content has gotten better because I am focusing more instead of trying to multi task all the time. I hope this helps some of you especially if you find this is something difficult for you. What do you guys do to help you stay present and separate work and play? Did you find this post helpful? Let me know in the comments below!
Also, you get to see a tiny sneak peak into my house 😉 It’s mostly a mess but it’s a mess filled with love! This year will be moving out of this cute little home, so thought I would share some pics of me and john in our favorite place before I run out of time! Much Love! xx F
Photos by Brogen Jessup