2019 In Review

Just as with last year’s review, this one uses three big questions to get a fairly wide overview of my #artistlife for 2019. As with the rest of this blog, I’m putting this out in the open, fully honest, so that you can see the actual inner workings and perhaps glean something of use in your own creative career. Also, this isn’t about my personal life, sorry, no juicy gossip here 😛

What Did I Do, Create, or Experience This Year that I’m Really Proud Of?

This was a year of giving back. I got a lot more selective in where I hand out art donations for charity, which upset some people. However, it ensured that I was more effective, and that is a theme I’m continuing for 2020. I was able to financially support projects related to both arts education and the environment, my chosen focus for charitable contributions through my art business.

What Mistakes Did I Make that Taught Me Something? What Lessons Did I Learn that I Can Leverage?

I’ll have to be even more selective in 2020 for donations because while I’m happy to have enough success for it to be an option, I’m also not comfortable with where the year has left me financially.

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My first mistake was donating money while I had it without considering if I’d also need it for the future. This means that although I may want to immediately help, it makes better financial sense given the fluctuation in my income to wait until the end of the year to ensure I’m not making the mistake of donating when I can’t actually afford to. This, of course, only applies to material/financial contributions. I still plan on doing some of the volunteering that I typically do, particularly for local environmental issues.

My other big mistake here (kind of related) was expecting my income to remain steady throughout the year, which is silly since even in 2018 most of it relied of good weather and strong tourism. For 2020, I’m redistributing my eggs into more than one basket to avoid a repeat of that.

A lesson I’ve learned is that loyalty to a venue that doesn’t earn you enough to pay yourself a living, no matter how much you like the space and the people, is a bad business choice. There are other factors that can keep one going back, like making up for the shortfall reliably at other events, but that sort of takes me back to the mistake in the first paragraph of this section. I can’t know if I’ll make up the shortfall until I actually make up the shortfall. Right now, the #artistlife for me is too volatile to keep making that bet and ultimately losing. This is not a knock against any specific venue in my lineup, not every one will align with my goals, ideal customers, or income targets. It’s never personal, it’s business. That’s a tricky distinction when you’re self-employed.

What Am I Willing to Let Go Of?

This is probably the toughest question you can ask yourself whether it’s personal or professional. Well, ok, it’s not tough to ask; it’s tough to answer…publicly…and to actually act on…publicly.

I’m willing to let go of the need to be a “real artist” to other people. Despite having a couple of people directly say things to me like, “oh, this is digital, so your not a real artist,” I think it’s mostly impostor syndrome I’m imposing on myself. I must get comfortable with being a digital artist that often times produces painterly works. It’s medium and workflow that makes me happy, and that should count for a lot more than I let it.

I must also be willing to let go of more distractions and tangents. I said I was going to do this last year, and I basically just swapped tangents, and not really dropping the distraction they cause.