No Rest for the Wicked

Nothing messes up consumer confidence like haphazard leadership and economic uncertainty.*

In years past, when I’ve done a end-of-year reflection and round-up, the general theme has been to ask a few powerful questions, crunch my data to get the answers, and then plan for the new year. Once the plan is made, relax and recharge for a while. My numbers for every month in the 2nd half of 2019 are down at least 20% from 2018 and it feels awful. Some of it was weather, some of it was depression, and some of it appears to be local market saturation. I don’t feel as though I’ll have that post-plan downtime. I feel as if I’m going to have to jump straight into action once the plan is developed.

Rest?

It’s not like I take an actual vacation, or even a stay-cation. I usually end up working on something during this “downtime” because I’m still in the same physical space where all the tools of my work are. Workoholism is a habit easier to avoid if you don’t live in your studio, I think.

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So what’s a guy to do? Well, this year it seems that I’ll do my round-up the final week of December, take the first 10 days of the new year “off” and then get right back into things, with a focus on making some new line of work to address that market saturation issue that crept up this year.

How do you plan your next year? Do you plan any of your next year? How about review your previous year? Do you focus just on the money numbers or do you look deeper at the business, the art, and the artist (that’s you, silly)?

*This is not a political post. Regardless of your politics, you have to admit that the past couple of years haven’t been stable, smooth, or “normal”.