How to spend your free time?

As I have said in previous posts I have recently gone through some huge life changes. To say the least it is not something that has been easy. I thought that when this transition happened that I would be OK. Why? Well I have my camera, I have a client base and I held the belief that between my family, marketing, editing, and actual sessions that I would be one busy lady. Oh how wrong I was. 

First off I realized that over the years my family has learned how to function without me being there all the time. My children have grown up with the understanding that I have military obligations, and due to those obligations there are a lot of times that I will not be able to be there, and there is so much that I have missed. They grasped the concept and understood that I was doing that I had to do in order to take care of them and they in turn grew up much faster than I realized and now they function with, or without my presence, unless of course they need a ride somewhere. 

Thankfully my camera has not gone anywhere. It has stayed ready in my bag with a charged battery and ready to jump at the chance to shoot a sporting event, prom, graduation photos or just personal project photos when ever I am ready to grab it. These various events have given me the chance to work on my editing work flow which has cut my time down significantly. 

I have had sessions, however, not the number that I projected that I was going to have. Which has been disheartening. Some of this I attribute to the fact that the weather has been out of control this year and bouncing from one extreme to another, but I think that my biggest issue has been advertising/marketing. Prior to career changes I was not worried about the number of sessions that I did, and was more focused on personal projects in order to improve my skill as a photographer. However, the story has now changed.

Marketing/advertising has been a huge challenge for me. I have gone the traditional route and purchased business cards, and developed a web page, and I even created a Facebook business page. I also have started working through word of mouth for recommendations and even dabbled with bidding on the occasional session via Thumbtack.I have trolled Facebook, and watched how others have worked their marketing skills, which led to the addition of this very blog, and yet it all seems so ineffective. 

As I sit here typing this I wonder how the rest of you spend your free time. As I have pointed out marketing is my weakness at this current point and I am sure that I as I continue to study and learn that eventually this will change, however I still struggle with my free time. In my previous line of work there was never a moment to sit down and breath. I rarely took a lunch break, and I was lucky if I had the chance to even take a restroom break during a twelve hour shift. Now there is all of this free time. Something that I am not use too, and I feel as though I am wasting time that I could be using for something more important, rather than sitting in front of my computer or reading another article. 

What do you do with your free time? How do you continue to feel productive with your business even when you are currently not as productive as you need to be?