Life as an Artist: update 4

Hello, I’m here to give you another update on “life as a full-time artist,” a series of posts I’ve been doing about my first months as a full-time artist. You can see the previous posts here.

If I could give this post a sub-subtitle, it would be “ups and downs.” Everybody has ups and downs—it’s just life. Even when you’re doing your dream job, there are still good days and bad days. A couple of weeks ago, I had a pretty low week—worries about whether or not finances were going to work out for the creative shenanigan that is my life right now, were consuming me. I felt a bit like I was dragging around a couple of heavy weights in my heart, as I worried my way into a case of the blues. Talking to my husband, he said these sage words, “Everybody has down days.”

While this phrase did not immediately pull me up into the sunshine, it worked on me, it stayed in the back of my mind. As I continued to work on myself—realize that my worries were not helping me in any way (actually they were hurting me)—I was able to make a little peace with my blues. I ended that week with a little champagne to celebrate all that I have, and many prayers for guidance in figuring out how to navigate things. A few days later, I was on fire with possibility, and last week became a week of great possibilities—some new ventures, a lot of new ideas, and much renewed hope.

Writing this, I begin to wonder what the lesson is, or why I’m sharing this information. I suppose the moral could be what my husband said, “Everybody has down days,” even when they’re doing what they love. Actually, I think it can catch you even more by surprise when you’re doing what you really want to do. You wonder, “why am I not happy? I was supposed to be on cloud nine here!” As I’m learning, there will always be ups and downs, no matter what you do, but the real test is how you deal with them. I’m finding that if you just keep doing your work, the downs will pass, and if you keep asking for guidance from your inner self, the universe, god, whatever larger power you see in life, you will find your way, even if it’s slow. And sometimes it may be slow. But maybe it’s not supposed to be fast? This is something I struggle with often—patience is a virtue that I wish I had more of. From my art desk: I’m wishing you patience, the courage to carry on, and of course, as always, buckets of hope!

Life as an Artist: update 3

Hello there! I’m just rounding my third full week as a full-time artist, and I thought I’d give you an update on how it’s going. If you’ve been following my blog, you will have noticed some new projects popping up, and when I was first thinking of a photo to take for this post, I thought of scattering my desk with various said projects, but instead, I settled on a calmer idea:

This is a “to-do” list for my upcoming weekend. I have learned quickly that I still look forward to and need weekends, even when I’m doing something I love for work. While I do not spend the hours of the week counting down until Friday anymore, the weekend is still a much needed mental break.

Other than the reality of having many new projects going, how is it really going over here at Blue Bicicletta? Well, if I had to choose a word to sum up my Life as an Artist right now (at least the more business-y part), it would be choices. I find myself constantly faced with choosing—which projects to work on, which projects to let go, and which projects to plan on doing in the future.

While I love that I have no shortage of ideas, it is my current challenge to learn how not to drive myself crazy about making each little choice of how to spend my work day, and bigger choices of how to structure my career.

I’m often reminding myself that it’s also a choice to relax, be calm, go with the flow, and trust yourself to get the job done. I am trying to make that choice as often as possible.

On the flip side, I am so excited about all of the new art ideas that keep coming into my head, and I’m so grateful to have the time to pursue a number of them. The creativity keeps coming, and it really fills me up.

Happy weekend to you, and I wish you days full of inspiration and calm!

Oh, and for those of you new to this blog, you can see previous artist life updates here

Life as an Artist: update 2

Why, you may be asking, is there a photo of my ugly, dirty, sneakers at the top of this second post about being a full-time artist? Well, this morning when I was jogging with my dog, I got to thinking, as I often have, how jogging is a metaphor for my new career (and any career for that matter, or life in general).

You see, I don’t really like jogging, so I often find myself thinking while I jog about the nature of my relationship with jogging, and why I find it so hard to get motivated to jog. Don’t get me wrong, I like making art a whole lot more than jogging, I love it in fact, but the elements are the same: some days you wake up and feel great, you go out on a run, and you feel like a well-oiled machine. Other days, you can barely summon the motivation to put your sneakers on. This is life—it will always be like this, there will always be up days and down days, and how do you get through it? You put one foot in front of the other.

It is the importance of “putting one foot in front of the other” that I have been realizing so much about my art career this week. As I mentioned in my last post on this subject, this week was my first full week of being a full-time artist. How did it go? Some great moments, some scary moments, and a lot of in between—just the doing part of the art (the putting one foot in front of the other).

The great moments can be summed up by: “I can’t believe I get to do this all day every day (and not set foot in a boring office job for one second of the week) and “Wow, I’m really doing this!”

The scary moments can be summed up by: “Oh gosh, what will I work on next? I don’t want to do that. But I must, because I’m doing this all day, every day.”

The in between moments can be summed up by lots and lots of little steps and uneventful, but wonderful consistent work that helped me bridge the gap between the great moments and the scary moments and come out feeling successful. I am struck again though, by the jogging metaphor. I think we all focus a lot on big accomplishments, but I realize, especially during this week, that it’s the little accomplishments that are amazing—being able to say, “I finished this small step, now what’s next?” and then actually succeeding at going onto the next part.

It really hit me earlier this week that I am now the master of my own time, for better or worse. I have to face myself head on, every day. It’s completely up to me now, whether or not I get the work done—there are no more excuses like another job getting in the way. This is no surprise to me, but the reality of it is different than just thinking about it before it happens. Your neurosis don’t vanish, they exist, and you have to learn to work with them, or around them, or despite them. This is where “putting one foot in front of the other” really helps: when things get overwhelming, I just remind myself, “all I need to do is take one little step, do one little thing.”

And now I will salute all of you self-employed people—I have so much respect for you, especially now that I’m living this reality.

In summary, this was a wonderful week of learning about myself and creating. Unfortunately, many of the creations I am working on are not bloggable at this point because they’re part of larger projects that I will unveil all together when the time is right, but here are some ideas of what I’ve been up to:

-greeting card designs for a greeting card company that approached me in the summer
-a small book (chapbook/zine size) I’ve been scheming for some time and now actually have the time to work on
-some tiny artworks for the upcoming holidays
-one other new idea percolating about a way to expand Blue Bicicletta in a little bit of a new way

That brings me to one of the things I love about being an artist, and now being a full-time artist: you can build your work around lots of different, wonderful, creative things that you love.

Life as an Artist: update 1

Since this is my first week as a full-time artist, I thought you readers might be interested to see how it is going. Granted, this is only a partial week (I returned from vacation on Tuesday), but this week seems to be a good week to start sharing this experience with you.

If you’ve been following my blog, you may have read this post a few months ago when I announced I would be quitting my office job to do art full-time. Since there are so many creative people out there, many who are wondering what it would be like to do their creative pursuits full-time, I though it would be fun to try and document this experience more specifically than just the occasional mention in a blog post.

In answer to this, I will start making some “life as an artist” updates (all tagged “artist life”) on a semi-regular basis. To clarify, these will not be about the business and logistical side of things, although I might mention such things on occasion, but they will be more about what it really means to make this shift, from my very personal perspective.

First, I would like to say that returning from vacation this week was a totally new sensation for me—I was actually excited to get back home and get to work! What an amazing feeling this was, after many returns from holidays where I found myself dreading my return to work, almost (sometimes actually) to the point of tears.

In fact, the entire experience of this week is so new—one of my main dreams was to have enough time to really pursue creative ideas, and also time to breathe, as I always felt like I was doing double-time when I was working and doing art after hours. I find myself having to teach myself how to relax into the time, how to not be in frantic mode—trying to cram every creative idea into small windows of time. I find that this whole shift is so much more than a career shift—it’s a life shift—a letting go and slowing down. Learning how to let things happen.

While there are still many, many questions about how this will all work out, especially financially, right now I’m feeling pretty good. I’m looking forward to so may new things in the coming weeks. Next week will mark my first full week as a full-time artist, and I’m excited to see what I learn about myself and what this new abundance of time brings out.

The picture above is a pretty good idea of what I’m doing in my art work right now—I have lots of ideas for both art and art business that have been in my head for many weeks, especially as I prepared to make this shift to full-time. I am a major list and note maker. Little scraps of paper everywhere. The list though, is a good point of questioning about the “slowing down” I mentioned above. I often struggle with whether lists make me more or less frantic. Sometimes the act of making a list can feel like a huge weight off my brain, but sometimes the act of having an existing list can make life feel frantic because there’s a never-ending list of things to do. Right now, I think lists are helping me—especially with this new expansive time it’s nice to have a reminder of new things to work on. As always though, I continue to evaluate what things work and do not work, especially when learning how to manage my time as a full-time self-employed person.

In other news, happy weekend! I wish I could put some of this weather we’re having in an envelope and send it to all of you. It’s gorgeous fall weather here—the kind of weather where you want to take long walks in the sunshine, crunching leaves. I’m glad to have returned from vacation to this. I hope you all are having lovely weather too.