What I actually (also) wanted to say with my last post, I didn't really say fully. About how I am actually more seriously "leaving my business" and my identity as an artist, or you can say, making a change in my priorities.
I have tried to make a living on being an illustrator and artist, but it has been a job that needs a lot of time, that I haven't had, and not a lot of outcome, and it has turned out to also be some kind of fake identity for me.
I realized that what I really want to - or need to - do, is being a mother and support myself and family by growing healthy food together.
Getting to know the land, the soil, the air and the plants, plus taking care and bringing up a child (and probably future children) is a full time job, that needs full attention.
The last year I have had my hands in the soil and around my baby, but not really enjoyed it fully, because in my mind I was more an artist than a farmer and maybe even more than a mother. I was always kind of waiting to 'get my life back' after childbirth, but then I realized, first, that the end is much further away than first imagined -since we are keeping our son home instead of nursery home and probably will do home schooling too and that more children probably will come - and second that I don't want 'my life back', because life goes not backwards, but forwards, and this IS my life now, and I have to embrace it as my new life! Be in THIS moment NOW, forget what was and what I imagined to be once.
In all the time and work that it takes to build up an illustrator career, I have been running myself into a field that I do not really enjoy any more. Therefore, at least for now, I am leaving this whole idea of wanting to be a professional artist and illustrator, and seeing it as my identity, my job, what I do, and instead move art down the priority list to more of the space of a hobby.
I have always known anyway that it is dangerous turning your hobby in to your job and in this way I might get some of the creativity and joy back to it!
I will still have my Patreon page open, and my Etsy Shop and RedBubble and so on - it is still basically my only income - but I will take a break in updating and having it as an obligation.
I still love and want to draw, but I might use my artistic skills more to the space around me - making a beautiful garden and painting our future bus and sketching in my sketchbook, decorating the surroundings.
Who knows, maybe I will one day get the time and energy back into forming up some kind of "career" again, but for now, it is no longer my priority.
For now I am just a mother and a gardener, who likes to draw! Or just a human being really.
The more we do away with labels, the more we find our true selves.
too bad
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