#100Bucket List | Colorado Wedding #99

I will never forget a conversation with someone who said, “Sara, I’ve reached the top. I am the most successful at my career today than I can be.  It depresses me because I don’t know where to go from here.”  Wow.  That hit me like a ton of bricks.  I was in awe with what this person had accomplished.  I was actually simply honored to be having a conversation with this person because of their elite status in this particular industry.  And yet, they were at the tip-top and searching for more, wanting to know where they could go from here.  I could see the sadness in this person’s conversation with me, but transparently, I couldn’t wrap my head around what they were saying.  How could you be “here” and not be exuberantly happy?

This time last year, 2018, I had just arrived in Crested Butte, Colorado at Hillary and Dave’s Mountain Top Colorado Wedding which would be held, September 29th, 2018 at the tip-top of a mountain overlooking the most scenic views you could imagine.  I was so thankful.  I remember thinking how all of this came about because of a conversation on a plane with David the now, groom to be. (Read the blog if you’re interested in this fun story)!

As I write my #99BucketList item to share, I can’t help but think about that conversation with that person in 2010, who was saying, “There’s no where but down hill for me now.”  Today, I can understand a bit more about where that person was coming from and want to share with you my perspective today as it relates to my #100BucketList item.  First, I am grateful.  I am thankful that God blessed me with this ability to capture people’s stories, capture wedding days and capture light.  And while photographing a wedding at the tip-top of a mountain with some incredible people, who are now considered great friends, was a bucket list item for me, I am looking up to where this wedding set my expectations of the next dream wedding to photograph.  Where I scratched this experience off my #100BucketList, I have added a new one; to photograph a wedding in Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland or some other lush landscape or frozen tundra in another country other than the US.

Here’s how I’d like to relate this dream to the conversation in 2010.  I have set high goals for myself to be a destination wedding photographer and have worked hard to make those goals into a reality, but I don’t want to stop there.  Because I have accomplished one goal, I am going to set higher goals.  The opportunities are endless, truly.  I am definitely not anywhere close to as prestigious of a photographer as this person I was speaking to is in their industry, relatively speaking, but I have set goals and they have been accomplished and that has been fulfilling to me in my little world.  I have also since seen this person go on and do AMAZING things with their world, so without asking directly, if you know who you are, I hope you’re at incredible peace with where your life has taken you, and you continue to climb upwards.  The sky is your limit.

Now, I will set new goals with this #100BucketList project and see where they can take me!  The opportunities are actually endless if you look outside your comfort zone, if you imagine you have the ability to do anything you set your mind to do.  You can do hard things.  You can do big things.  You just have to believe that you can and it will happen (and pray a lot)!