No More Mondays

We used to hate Mondays. We started hating Monday on Sunday night, actually. It was a feeling that almost seemed to start on Friday afternoon as soon as we left work. We had a brief We’re free! moment, and then the countdown in our head would begin. Only 48 hours, we thought, and then it’s Sunday night – and it starts all over again. Getting out of bed was the worst. Our alarm would go off and we’d snooze it as many times as we could. A lot of times, we’d sleep right up until the very last minute, just moments before we were supposed to leave. Without a shower (or a shave), we’d throw on clothes and hustle out the door to work. It was hard not to feel bitter on the way there, to our day job, tough not to be angry on the inside when we arrived, impossible not to feel like it was keeping us from our dream job.

But, for hours and hours every Monday, we put on our happy faces in direct contrast to what we thought and how we felt. No one else knew, but we did, and those feelings we were harboring were eating us alive. We grinded through each and every Monday (and every weekday, for that matter). Jordan rekindled his college romance with coffee and made it a forever thing. Amy picked up the habit for the first time and never looked back. And, for a period of time, we just slugged it out. One day after the next, but we couldn’t get traction. We didn’t feel momentum. It felt like we were pushing a boulder up a walking escalator that was going in reverse. Against the tide. Against the odds. More work than ever, more sacrifice than ever, less sleep than ever, and more nights sitting on the bathroom floor crying together than we’d like to remember.

We had happy faces, but hurting hearts, and wounded spirits.

We hated Mondays.

And it was our fault. Completely.

We slipped into the trap of believing that our dream was more important than anything else. We forgot our day job was the one paying our rent and keeping our lights on. Our employer was the one who made sure that when Jordan went to the hospital that fall that his medical expenses were covered, the one who, looking back, was more than we could’ve ever hoped for in a first “job” straight out of college. Because, looking back, it was a training ground for the rest of our life. Let us say that again, our day job was a training ground for the rest of our life. We wouldn’t be here today without it. We might’ve been teachers, but that job taught us more than we ever could’ve imagined.

That’s the ironic part, really, that the thing that we thought was holding us back from our future was the thing God was actually using to refine us and build it.

So, we read a book, one of the best ones we’ve ever read, so much so that it’s on our bucket list to meet the author in person, share our story with him, so he’ll know that because he went from his day job writing website copy for AutoTrader.com to be a full-time author and motivational speaker, we’re doing what we’re doing today.

Our main takeaway from Jon’s book was the idea that how we performed in our day job would have a direct impact on how fast we got to our dream. You can’t separate who you are during the day from who you are on nights and weekends, he’d say. One pours over into the next. Plus, he points out, when you work for someone else, you only have one boss to please. When you go full-time on your own, everything becomes your boss: your rent, your phone bill, your health insurance. The list goes on and on. Instead of having one boss, now you have twelve.

Thus, we adjusted our sails midcourse. We fixed our attitudes. We gave our whole hearts to the children in our classrooms, poured our souls into them and got ours filled up in the process. We didn’t feel tired in the afternoons anymore. We didn’t dread Mondays, because we knew that the faster we got there, the faster we could get our week started – all of it. And, you know what? It worked. Our students’ test scores were in the top few percent in the state that year. Their growth was astronomical in some cases. Students and parents who came into our class hoping for an experience they deserved got what they did but only because we made a choice – a choice – to put their wants, needs, and desires before our own, and God blessed that and did things with our business bigger, better, and faster than we could’ve ever done on our own.

So, if you’re today where we were not too long ago, if Monday hurts and you need help, we want you to know that we’re here for you. We get it. We understand. We’ve also got some great resources to get you unstuck, out of the rut, and on track to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Here is your action plan:

1. Buy or borrow a copy of Dan Miller’s book No More Mondays and Jon Acuff’s book Quitter and read them this week.

2. Check out our free 10-part blog series called Making the Leap, where we break down how we went from part-time to full-time photographers.

3. Sign-up for The Monday Minute, our free weekly newsletter for photographers that we don’t publish online anywhere, so that you can get filled up on a weekly basis with tips and tricks that have helped us along the way.

We believe in you, friend! You got this.

Photo Credit: Annamarie Akins