If I said to you that from 8th May to the 15th May I drove 2000 or so miles with a maximum of 5 hours sleep a day, are you still interested?
I do know what you mean about the day to day job. As I said though, you will find out that there are some aspects of a "boring" job that you can not escape.
With regards to your question about the 18-55mm. If you are deadly serious then I would suggest a good all rounder is the 24-70L lens. It has f2.8 for those portraits and goes wide enough at 24mm. This is ideally on a full frame camera to get the best benefit from it.
And speaking of full frame cameras, there are a few libraries out there that won't take you seriously unless you are using a full frame camera. Their clients demand quality and rightly so!
Keep asking and if I have time I'll happily post more
