2019: A New Year, A New Life

I’ve had this website for along time now. I’ve been working as an artist for a long time too. I’ve had different jobs and have made friends in all sorts of places. Looking back now, I’ve grown as an artist and a person. At least I hope I have.

I’m looking at this little island in this vast online sea I’ve created for myself. Years back I remember sitting in my Illustration Marketing class with wild aspirations of having a beautiful website with my artwork all over it and a wonderful blog others could enjoy. The only things that have really changed for this site are the designs, new artwork and a few new blog posts. I had a clear vision of what I wanted out of my little island but a not so clear plan of how I was going to maintain it yet alone bring people to its banks.

Over-Analyzing

Researching over the years and watching so many trends come and go, I was lost in all the information. If you want a successful site you needed to have a high ranking SEO. You needed so many words in a blog post. You’re social media posts should have so many post per day. You needed to respond to everyone’s comment and so on and so forth. It was so dizzying reading all these “rules” for blogging. While all these are valid, I was so very lost looking out onto the vast sea of the internet. It seemed endless and that I was going to remain lost. I wanted to be successful; I wanted to be financially stable in my dream career; and I wanted to be myself. All of these things are still true.

With the continuous research, I was searching and still am for my own niche, a voice and design that echoed my art and personality. Nothing seems to fit what I’m looking for. So I’ve decided to stop looking and start creating. Carving out and building up my own little slice of paradise, success as I define it. As I write this post, I’m slowly beginning to find my voice. Something relatable but enlightening.

20/20 Hindsight

Looking back I’ve grown as an artist and a person. I’ve had different jobs and have made friends in all sorts of places. Acquiring new and valuable skills along the way. I learned what I didn’t want to do for a living and more about myself. It opened my eyes to what I desired out of life.

I think now is the time for me to truly focus on my career as an artist. Over the past years I can see now I didn’t put enough effort into this career save for the few conventions and art festivals I exhibited at. Hindsight is 20/20. Through all my failed attempts at conventions, creating art and writing, I’ve learned so much. I’m constantly reminded that you will fail more times than you succeed, but it is through our failures that we learn to succeed. While it may feel like I’m taking one step forward and two steps back, I’m learning which step to take forward.

The Past Months

Last year in the summer and fall, I attended more art festivals than I had in the past 5 years. I switched to a full time job for benefits and better support myself. So much happened in the last part of the year, I hardly had time to focus on my career. Those last few months of 2018 made me realize what I don’t want to do with my life. Rather I want to work from a creative space with hours that may vary from day to day, week to week. As long as I am creating something I know I’m in the right place.

At the end of 2018, I took some time to myself to decide what I wanted from life. I want an art career where I can financially support myself. From there I needed to decide what was it going to take to pursue my dream career while making a living form it. I have some lofty aspirations for myself this year. To reach them I needed to break my ambitions down into smaller goals and began planning for 2019. There are so many things I have planned for myself this year. Immense and scary goals that I don’t know if I’ll be able to achieve, but they’re still worth trying for. I’ll talk in a later post about how I came up with 5 planners to keep myself on track and my approach to tackling large aspirations.

A New Life

It’s a new year, a new life for me now. As for what I have planned for this site, I want a place for me to communicate with and inspire others to create, build, and follow their dreams. I’ll include new artwork, how I approach certain art subjects, festivals I’ll be attending and various other topics about living an artistic life and making a career out of it.

I hope you’ll follow me on my journey while you pursue yours. You can either subscribe to my RSS feed or my email. I suggest my emails since subscribers will receive updates first of what I’m up to, which art festivals I’ll be attending, when my artwork goes up for sale and also a monthly newsletter. You can also follow me on these other social media sites too for more frequent updates.