Everything's Easier with Company

Nicole writes like a girl 

For a stretch, I was feeling a bit lost and a lot overwhelmed. I frequently worked 13 hour days, finishing one shift only to drive across town to the next. While pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to earn a little extra scratch sounds practical in theory, it still wasn't really adding up. I had the energy to earn the money, but not quite the willpower to save it. Those extra dollars turned into the cups of coffee and takeout lunches and dinners I'd buy to support my habit, and though I refused to admit it, my energy expenditure to total gains ratio had hit its limit long ago.

I always knew that the juggling would have to end at some point - indeed, that it must - but it wasn't until the right day and the right conversation that the absolute necessity of it clicked into place.

I'd recently been promoted, and decided it was time to bring some more adult style into my life - and I knew that Nicole would know exactly what to do. We made lunch out of it, and before I knew it the conversation had turned from the books we were reading to the stories in our lives that have helped to make us who we are, and the more we talked, the more it felt like a weight lifted. As we talked, we conceived of another reason to meet, and a week later photographed this workwear series together.

Throughout, I could not stop thinking about the wealth there is to be had by investing in creativity. By letting my fiscal worries scatter to the wind, I had opened up an inner sanctum in which I could begin to build wealth in my sense of community. When you are able to lay all your cards down on the table, and force yourself to turn them face-up - it is then, and only then that the sorting can begin. Boy is that sorting ever some necessary, important work, too.

When you arrive at what you are, new things can begin - and I'm ever glad for the collaborative company in which it can happen.