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This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
There And Back Again: The End of the Self-Employed Chapter
It dawned on me when I was making my yearly intentions. I was tired of trying and striving. I was tired of the mental effort of running and building my own business. I was tired of worrying about money and the future. I longed for ease and fun and living life. I needed to not let my business be my everything.
On January 5th, I wrote in my journal:
I’m sitting here writing my 2023 intentions blog post, and I write about how I don’t want my business to consume all my mental energy. And I have to ask myself, do I even want this anymore?
It took me a while longer to admit, but the truth was…no. Things had changed. I had changed. I no longer wanted to be self-employed.
My Word of The Year And Intentions For 2023
On the last day of 2022, I took a walk. The sun was making a rare appearance and I stood looking out over the lake, watching the sun hanging low over the tree tops on the other side of the water. It was quiet and peaceful.
Standing there, I thought about how serious the last couple of years have been. In the outside world, pandemic, war and inflation has raged. In my personal life, I’ve worked hard on building a business, an undertaking that has consumed much of my mental space.
Looking at the last rays of sunshine of 2022, I felt strongly that I want 2023 to be different. I want it to be lighter, simpler, and frankly, more fun. I don’t want another year of spending all my energy on figuring things out. I long for ease. I’m ready to let my shoulders drop and have some fun.
My 2022: A Year of Growing Up As A Creative Business Owner
2022 did not turn out as I intended. I had hopes, visions, ideas and plans for this year, but the year had its own mind and I stand here at the end looking back, smiling. There was so much I didn’t know, and I didn’t know that I didn’t know them. They were still whispers, threads that would pull me in directions I didn’t expect.
This year might not have turned out as I hoped. But I see now that it gave me what I needed to grow and mature, not what I thought I wanted. And it turned out so good in the end.
Establishing A New Balance As A Part-Time Business Owner And Full-Time Creative
What does a balanced creative life look like? How do you know you’re out of balance, and how do you know when the time has come for a change? It’s a question I’ve pondered this summer, after a spring ending in worry, stress and the realisation that I had hit my messy middle.
The truth, I suppose, is that there is no one signal to tell your creative life is out of balance. Instead, it’s the many small signs you need to look for. When the little frustrations and worries that on their own are acceptable pile up to something larger, a consistent trend, that’s when you need to look out.
My Evolved Why: Creative Lives That Are Good On The Inside
Why do you do what you? It’s a complex question, with an answer that is rarely straightforward. And sometimes, that answer changes.
This past year, I’ve felt a slight but persistent shift in my work. The signs have been everywhere - from my inspiration pointing in new directions, to resistance to parts of my old work, to a content rut stretching out over months.
I wrote about this evolution of my work in a blog post about navigating the messy middle of building my business. And in that post I wrote that I would spend much of my summer trying to figure out. Well, here I am, it’s the end of summer and what do you know, I figured it out.
I'm In The Messy Middle Again
It was the middle of the night. I had been tossing and turning for hours, my mind in a loop of anxiety mingled with inspiration. There in bed, suddenly a thought hit me. Was I back? Was I there again? Was this my messy middle of building a sustainable, joyful creative business?
I turned over on the other side and gazed at the grey morning light playing behind the curtains. My mind was a tangle of thoughts, ideas, worries and fears. Yes, I thought. That’s it. I’ve hit the messy middle. Shit.
Finding The Joy Of The Process
There are few things I believe in as strongly as this. Few things that have mattered more in more creative journey, and have helped me more through challenging times. It’s the closest I’ve come to a magic trick. What is it? It’s the joy of the process.
It’s so easy to get stuck in the results of creativity. On how good your skills are, on comparing your output to other creatives, on whether people are liking and following your work, how you’re gonna “make it”. It’s not surprising. Our whole economic system and society is built around the value of tangible outcomes, and creativity is often measured and judged on those same terms.
Yet for the creative, an overly strong emphasis on creative results can be detrimental to the creative process. What we need to do instead is to look for the joy.
Being Your Own Creative Project Manager
I love the sense of freedom in creative projects. It’s just me and my imagination, I can take it wherever I want to, and nobody will tell me what I should do or how I should work.
But that freedom can also be a bit tricky. Nobody will look in on your progress, there’s no clear step by step path to follow, no curriculum to develop your skills and style. No one to tell you when it’s good enough, and you need to stop tinkering and overthinking.
In this freedom, we have to do all of that for ourselves. Keep an eye on what the project needs, as well as what you need, and build good foundations for a sustainable creative life. In other words: you need to be your own kind, helpful and encouraging creative project manager.
How My Creative Life Vision Has Changed And Why ‘Slow Living’ Isn’t Part Of It
It’s almost a year since I went full-time with my creative business. It’s been a big year, beautiful, challenging, life-changing. With the decision to pursue self-employed life, so much changed and at some point during the first year, my vision started to feel a little outdated.
I could sense my inner creative direction developing, shifting, morphing. The vision for my creative work, my business, and how I wanted to live my life… it was something I had developed before I went full-time. When winter arrived and the pace of the world slowed down, I decided it was time for some introspection. I needed to check in with my creative compass.
Discover Your Unique Creative Ecosystem
I found what I came to call my creative ecosystem in the midst of creative depletion. It was November of last year, and I had just launched my membership community. Behind me, I had weeks of diving deep and getting this new offering together, creating lots of content around it, and before then, my first six months of running my creative business full-time.
I had no ideas. No inspiration. No creative energy. I had used it all, and none was left. I was creatively emptied out.
My Word Of The Year And Intentions For 2022
It feels a bit odd following a big and significant year like my last one. 2021 will always be the year I went full-time with my creative work, and it’s a year that have a big, flapping flag post in the time-line of my life. In comparison, 2022 looks paler and less defined.
Our societal values of continuously outperforming ourselves would have me believe I should top that. That each year should see me stretching further, reaching higher, doing more. Following an uncommon year with a common one can feel so very… normal.
Yet normal is what I crave.
My 2021: The Year I Took My Creative Work Full-Time
What a year it has been. Vast, challenging, pivotal, transformative. It’s difficult to grasp, and even more, explain what a fundamental effect this year has had on me. Who was she, the Elin who entered 2021, filled with fears and hopes? She feels oddly distant, not because I don’t remember her, but because so much has shifted since then.
But let’s go back to her. Let’s go back to the beginning of 2021, and to the Elin who had made a choice that would transform me into the person I am today.
Why A Membership?
I explored so many ideas. I knew I wanted to work with groups of creatives, but I wasn’t sure how. I thought about courses, programs, I held workshops, and while all felt interesting… they didn’t feel like the thing I was searching for. Then there was this idea that kept resurfacing, and I kept pushing it away, but it came back again. Finally, I decided to listen to it, and that’s when it all clicked.
A membership. A community of creatives, following the seasons and the creative process together. I started exploring this idea further, and everything just fell into place. This idea made sense on so many levels, in a way that no previous idea had. In this blog post, I want to tell why it made sense, why this feels like the thing I’ve been searching for, and why I believe membership communities can be so incredibly powerful.
Good Conversations, Life Lived And The Messy Process
I first noticed it in summer. I was reading Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney, and it was resonating deeply. Then it was Cait Flanders' podcast Opting Out, where she talks with the listener as if with a friend. Finally, I was feeling overall quite uninspired on Instagram, with one exception: @conversationswithcharis, who was sharing her life on a narrowboat.
These things that were inspiring me, they had something in common. They talked about life lived, about the complexities, the ambiguity. Things that don’t fit in your average box. Neither offered any clear answers, practical tips or how-to guides. No, they shared the experience, the process of life and creativity. They were based on conversations. And I found them wildly inspiring.
Instagram, We Need To Talk
I’m sorry, but it’s not working. I’ve not wanted to admit it to myself, but it’s not been working for quite some time now. And something needs to change.
For months now, maybe even a year, I’ve been increasingly uninspired by my own Instagram posts. It’s not that I’ve grown tired of photography. No, it’s something else, and it’s taken me a long time to figure out what it is. But I think I’ve got it now. I’m tired of showing a polished surface, of being aspirational, and of the lack of realness. think I’ve got it now. I’m tired of showing a polished surface, of being aspirational, and of the lack of realness.
The Crossroads Between Security And Freedom
In April, I started my leap. For 6 months I would be on leave from my 9-5 job to try to take my business full-time. The goal was always to turn my creative business from a small side business, to something I could keep doing full-time. But I knew there was a big chance I wouldn’t get all the way in 6 months time.
At the end of summer, a little over a month left of my 6 months, I knew I had to choose. Would I go back to my job, maybe fewer days a week, or would I keep going full-time? Neither option was perfect, and I found myself at a crossroads between security and freedom.
Six Ways My 6 Month Business Leap Changed Me
When I decided to take 6 months off from my day job to try to take my creative business full-time, I thought a lot about how it would change my business. I thought less about how it would change me. Yet as I’m now nearing the end of my leap, I can see that those changes are the most important ones.
In creativity and business alike, your beliefs, identity and mindsets are going to play a huge role in your work. It will affect what you create, how you create and, in extensions, what results you get. So today, I want to tell you about six ways my business leap has changed me, and how that in turn is affecting my creative work and business.
Your Creative Path Exists Inside Of You
We all grew up following worn paths. From one school year to the next, we were following in the footsteps of thousands, no, millions of kids before us. We were told what to learn when, we were taught the right answers, showed the way forward. Sure, our interests shaped the path a tad, but we were still kept well within the boundaries of the predictable.
So it’s not surprising that in our creative lives as well, we look outside ourselves for a path to follow. That’s what we were taught to do, after all. The opposite, to find your own path, is something we have much less practice in.
But when it comes to creativity, the path isn’t out there. It’s inside of you. And this is what I truly want to help creatives with. To find, trust and follow that path inside.
Stretching Your Creative Identity
How do you view yourself as a creative? How do you see your creative work? These are not easy questions to answer. But regardless of whether you can put it into words or not, how you view yourself have wide-ranging effects on your creative work.
From our creative habits, to the kind of work we create, to how we present ourselves online, your creative identity plays a big role in shaping your creative life. It will put up boundaries for what feels possible for you, and it will affect what you feel comfortable doing.
So at times, you might find that your identity, in fact, are working against you. That it has started to feel limiting, like an old skin, and that it might be time to stretch it. This is what happened to me during the summer, and this is what I want to talk about in this post.
The Dream Of Writing
For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to write. Growing up, my bookworm mom fed me with stories to read, and my best friend's mother was a children's book author. Together, my friend and I nurtured the dream of one day writing our own books.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my coaching clients told me she wanted to start working on a book. She's an artist and doubts her writing skills, but she admitted that she had been dreaming of writing a book for some 10 years now, and she wanted my help to finally get started with it.
After our conversation, I got to thinking.