Monday Series: Expanding on Last Week's Thought
It's time. Time to get moving toward some sort of long term goal again. As I mentioned last week, all of these months spent working for money have distracted me from the reason I quit my job to begin with: the pursuit of creative freedom. Since much of this future is still unclear, I'm going to spend the next few minutes outlining what I know, what I suspect, and what I don't know in this arena.
What I know:
- Creative freedom, for me, means creating things I want to create and finding an audience who will purchase those things... not designing or drawing things for other people. Those things earn money but experience has taught me that I do not find them creatively freeing.
- I like drawing and designing. I don't want to abandon either one and an ideal project or collection of work will likely incorporate both.
- Working on a million simultaneous projects is not fun or conducive to long term success. It only succeeds in making me feel really anxious.
- I have a lot of current work to finish before I have the freedom to work on fewer things at once. This is a lesson I am learning the hard way and will not be repeating in the future.
What I suspect:
- Turning C&B into a stationery-focused illustration & design business might be a good way to combine my interests in illustration, design, and pattern creation under one roof. It's varied enough to remain interesting but curated enough to make sense as a brand.
- Achieving financial success in this format might take longer but will likely be more creatively satisfying.
- Due to the above, I may need to get a bridge job in order to make enough money while the stationery/illustration/design biz is picking up steam. This is not something I have to decide right now.
What I don't know:
- How to balance everything in a way that allows me to work on this goal immediately while still working through my backlog.
- If I'm actually going to enjoy this.
As I look at it, there isn't much I don't know here. I even know where to begin. The limit, really, is energy. So the question for myself moving forward is: how much of a priority do I want to make this, knowing that focusing on it is going to push some other things aside?
I'll chew on that over the next week.
The caveat in all of this is that I'm in the middle of moving so I don't expect to make a ton of progress on anything until I'm done. I still have about two weeks before I'm fully in the new space and perhaps another week after that before I'm largely unpacked and situated. A lot can, and will, happen in that time. And I don't want to wait 3 weeks to get started, so we'll see.
Stay tuned.
