Time is something we constantly seek out in our search for rest—and how we spend our time is often a tug-of-war between work and life. Struggling with balancing work and life is something that just about everyone can relate to. Work life and regular life can so easily blur, and with that, it’s all the more important to be intentional and realistic on how to find moments of pause.
With this in mind, we asked our friends at Hideaway Creative about how they balance their time. A photo and video production company run by a husband-wife duo, Ben and Jordyn Giesbrecht, Hideaway Creative is also the talented people behind some of the beautifully transportive videos featuring our GOODLAND Wood Burning Hot Tub. The couple joined their independent creative pursuits as photographers and videographers to work together easier, and to find more time for pause, all from their beautiful home on western Vancouver Island.
Working independently means that you need to nearly always rely on yourself—on your own motivation and time—to accomplish any task relating to your business. With a never-ending to-do list, it can be a struggle to find a way to balance the two. As business owners and creatives, we began to ask ourselves: what do we truly need to accomplish, and can we be more efficient as a duo working together? With these questions in mind, we started Hideaway Creative to bring back a sense of control in our work and a sense of ownership to our time.
When we shifted from working separately to as partners, we realized that as a team our strengths were able to shine, and we were able to lean on each other for support.
But working together as husband and wife, and now as parents, has its challenges. It became all too easy for dinner dates to become conversations about potential clients, or for road trips to become moments where we could easily have work calls together while our baby rested. Our work and personal lives quickly blended without any boundaries. So we had to take a more intentional look at our life to figure out how we could bring better balance to both.
I won’t say we’ve figured it all out—finding time to pause in the midst of a chaotic shoot season, or a learning curve with our son—continues to be a challenge. But, if we can offer any advice for other people on finding balance between work and life, here are a few of our suggestions.
Make Time for Slow Moments
When you work for yourself, it can be incredibly tempting to fill every inch of your time. In our son’s first year, we didn’t have regular childcare, so we were in a daily challenge of balancing self-care, care for him, work, and time for rest. Because our work time was already cut short, it was tempting to fill every second of time when he was asleep to catch up on it all.
But listening to your body and its calls for rest is vital to your mental and physical well being. When we put our son to sleep, even if our emails are overloading and work seems wild, we take whatever time we can—even if that’s only for fifteen minutes—to do nothing at all, reset, and then move on. You can’t function at 100% every minute of every day, and taking time for rest is how to keep going.
Speak Openly About Your Mental Wellbeing
When life blends with work, it can be really challenging to find the line between the two. Finding a way to be open with each other is how we’ve survived as a working husband-wife duo. Each couple and each partnership has its own way of finding that balance.
For us, that looks like being expressive of needing a break when it’s our day to watch our son. Or communicating that we needed to go outside and away from our desk to do something, even if just for a minute. Having that open dialogue with each other doesn’t always come easy, and on the days when you’re feeling stressed it can be really hard to open up. But, it really is the thing we’ve found that makes us feel supported during challenging moments.
Do What You Do With Love
We started Hideaway Creative because we truly loved what we did independently, and thought it would be wonderful to blend that together and have more time as a family. If we didn’t love what we did and if we didn’t work well as a team, it would never work. There has to be drive, passion, and interest for whatever it is that brings you unrelentless joy.
In a self-employed or freelance career, life can blend with work without you even noticing. And, if you don’t love what you do, it can be really challenging to have a career like this. We don’t have it figured out, but on the hard days when rest feels impossible, we know that we love what we do and we love working with each other. That’s our guiding light as a company and as partners.
Jordyn Giesbrecht
Jordyn Giesbrecht is a photographer and producer based out of Vancouver Island. She specializes in storytelling through imagery, highlighting the people, places, and spaces she sees along the way. You can find out more at jordyngiesbrecht.com.
