Whoa. So yesterday was… completely unexpected. I mean, I KNEW Justin & Mary were going to rock out What’s Next, but since I’d been at The Big Next and I religiously follow J&M’s blog, I thought it’d probably cover some of the same topics previously discussed. I was not prepared to have my world utterly ROCKED. I wasn’t prepared to be writing quite so quickly and ferociously, like the state of my businesses depended on getting everything Mary was saying into my notebook, filling up twenty pages with scribbled mess. I wasn’t prepared to be told that some of the ways I’m marketing myself aren’t going to cut it for much longer, and I wasn’t prepared to hear that I’m GOING to fail, that sooner or later, everyone experiences the gut-wrenching pangs of falling flat on their face.

But I was ready to hear it all.

So much of what a lot of photographers are preaching these days is the same, and I was sort of gearing myself up to hear more of what I’ve been hearing for the past two years. But shame on me, because I know Justin & Mary, and they aren’t “everybody else.” They have such a unique brand of refreshing honesty, of speaking truth into my life in a gentle but urgent way. Mary’s words were refreshing, they breathed life into me, and whereas this past week I woke up feeling slightly defeated when I thought about how very far I have to go and how disappointed I am with myself, I’m now raring to get started again. She lit a fire deep in my soul that I didn’t know existed, and this passion, this love of what I do, it feels anew again. Justin’s portion on lighting had me ITCHING to get out and play with more dramatic, mature lighting situations, and I’m just so excited to implement more of what they learned into my shooting style this year.

Thank you, Justin & Mary. You’ve flipped my world upside down time and time again, but yesterday was surreal.

Friends, if you don’t have a ticket to one of the remaining stops, GO GET ONE RIGHT NOW. You won’t regret it at all! Check out all the info here!