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This is my blog archive. My new writing lives on Substack.
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.