If you have seen my Facebook or Instagram over the past 3 weeks, you have seen that we finally renovated our sunroom into an office. This wasn’t just a weekend project (like I naively thought). This was three weeks of working every single day on it. Three weeks of my husband putting hours and hours and hours into this room.

The plan started 1.5 years ago. Yep. YEARS. When we bought our home, 5 years ago, we were kidless, so we had two extra rooms and a beautiful sunroom. I used the second largest room in the house for my office. Along comes Bennett and I’m booted to the smaller room. Then Patrick becomes self employed and I then have to share HALF of the smallest room with him. It was cramped and cluttered and not a relaxing space to work in.

Then Bennett started to nap less and move more, so having to go upstairs into a room to work, just wasn’t working. A year and a half ago, I moved my 27 inch iMac onto our kitchen table. Yep. I’ve been working from our kitchen table since Bennett was actively crawling. That’s a long time to work in a kitchen and cook around an iMac. Anytime we would have guests over for dinner, my computer would get shoved to the side and we would all squeeze in. Again, not ideal.

We then started thinking about getting pregnant again and then I would be booted from the last room permanently. We thought about moving but after looking, our house was such a steal and the location is perfect, so we wanted to make it work where we are. I forget who thought of it first, but the idea blossomed for us to convert our sunroom (which we rarely used) into my office. As soon as I knew that we could actually do it, I wanted it done.

What I didn’t know (and JUST realized) was the enormity of the project and what all it would entail Patrick doing. I thought, just tear it down and build it up. No biggy. What I didn’t know was how to raise a floor, frame a wall, run electrical, install havoc, move a door frame… etc etc. So, for a year and a half, I begged Patrick to build me an office. It caused tension and arguments. I just didn’t understand why he didn’t build it?! Until now. I was oblivious to how much work it would be. Now, after apologizing and thanking him over and over, I am sitting in my beautiful office as I type this.

The process of building this office created the thought process for a lot of different blog posts, but this one really just stood out to me and relating it to things I struggle with.

It’s really easy to be jealous of others success’s. Rarely do you see how long it took them to get there or how hard they worked for it. In the business world, it’s really easy for me to look at other photographers and go, dang. Why do they have clients streaming in? Why are they making 100k? Why are they so dang successful?

And then jealousy creeps in.

It might be easy to look at me with my new office and just think, wow, how can she just spend all this money on that office? Why do they just get to up and build it? At least, these are some of the similar thoughts I have had towards others when I see them doing cool things. Why them? Why not me?  We forget that often there are years of planning, hard work and dedication into those successes.

If Patrick would have built this office 1.5 years ago, I wouldn’t have the money saved to furnish it… at least not the way I wanted to. We are a debt free household, so if we don’t have cash, we don’t do it. I saved and saved and was able to buy some really nice things for my office. It was well worth the wait.

I’m pretty much preaching to myself but when you feel jealousy creep in, try to think of how hard that person must have worked to get to where they are. How long were they planning for that dream vacation? SAVING for that dream vacation (can you tell I’m ready for a vacation)? Where else did they sacrifice to make their dream into a reality.

Social media makes it really easy to showcase our prosperity, successes, triumphs, etc. What it doesn’t reveal is all the work, planning and saving that goes behind it.

Again, I’m pretty much preaching to myself today. You probably haven’t even thought twice about my office… but maybe you can relate in another area. Anywhos, just wanted to share (and type something in my new office).