Goodbye 2023, Hello 2024
An overdo newsletter with updates from the last four months.
I avoided this newsletter for months under a fake excuse of not having anything to report, but the real reason is that I've been feeling burned out. This newsletter was one of the things that I could banish from my to-do list to give myself a little more headspace to focus on other things. I have no regrets! I needed the brain space to get through some challenging feelings, some family weekends, the holiday craze, and the onset of the winter blues.
BUT NOW the holidays are over, and Nick and I struck a few *other things* off our to-do list, so I've got room to pontificate and ramble about my career. HELLO. Read on for an update on the last four months, some fun pictures of the shed, and some ideas I have for the new year.
SEPTEMBER
I started calling September "Shed-tember" because it felt like building the shed was all we did. My camera is full of sunny shed photos of us (my dad, Nick, and I) covered in sweat and sawdust. (This feels like a lifetime ago, even though it was just four months, damn, the weather was so nice!).
We put the siding up and the plywood on the roof. We cut holes for the windows, cocked all the seams, and painted exposed edges.
In addition to working on the shed all month, I rode my bike around Crater Lake with some friends, went to a wedding with my family, and spent most of my working hours on a Wordmark for a new fine jewelry store called Fiina.
The client just wanted a wordmark to differentiate their new fine jewelry store from their existing brand; they didn't want to do the entire brand process; they just wanted to jump into designing the wordmark, so that's what we did. It wasn't my typical design process, but I'm happy with how the wordmark turned out.
OCTOBER
October brought more shed progress. We got the first coat of paint on, installed the windows, and got the trim up. Nick and I went to Ashland with Nick's dad and stepmom. We rode our mountain bikes in Hood River, up at Sandy and Washington. October is the best month for mountain biking, and we did a good job getting out! I love fall biking.
I got a new client, The People's Courts and I got to make some fun event posters and email templates for them. I also got a part-time job working the front desk for them twice a week (mostly to get out and see people in real life) because I wanted a break from feeling like I always had to be hunting for the next project.
It's been nice to have a little extra income coming in, and I enjoy getting out of my office and thinking about something else for a change. Also, I'm getting good at pickleball!
NOVEMBER
We were waiting for a sunny day to paint the shed in November, and we finally got one on our anniversary: November 16th! Nick had the day off, so we celebrated by painting the shed and going to dinner at our favorite bar. Painting the shed meant it was “winter-proof,” so we closed the door and cleaned up our mess. My dad took all his saws home; we called it done for now. We’ll finish the interior in the spring once we get the electrical run in the next few weeks.
At the end of November, I did some office clean-out and listed some art prints left over from my 'yard sale art sale' on my website. I'm still trying to figure out how my art practice and my design/illustration work can come together to sort of be the same thing. I know so many people who struggle with this. You have a whole group of people who are either "artists," "designers," "Illustrators," or "muralists," then you have a bunch of other people who have found some sweet spot in the confluence of a few of those things, or even all of them.
Then you have the people who cycle through all these titles and land back on "artist" and can do anything. (Lisa Congdon and Andy J. Pizza come to mind).
Right now, the design work I do for clients feels separate from the illustration work I do for clients, which also feels different from the art I make for myself. They all feel disconnected, but I know there's a world where I can make money from client and personal work. Or a world where I find a way to build a career based on my particular style, no matter the use case of the work.
I'm inspired by people like Ty Williams, Chris Delorenzo, and Marisol Ortega – who all had different starts to their creative careers but have all kind of 'done it all' and are now just commercial artists who make all kinds of really thoughtful work for all types of clients. I'll get there eventually!
December
December was low-key for me, work-wise. I helped The Peoples Courts make several little signage pieces and kept working on outreach and scheduling for future projects. My friend Casey and I finally found a project we are excited to collaborate on, and I'm looking forward to working on it with him in the new year.
We had Nicks's parents in town and went to a million great places (I shared a map of them all on my Instagram), Which most restaurants re-shared. That felt fun since I got so much engagement on that post. Nick and I went on a few more fun bike rides with friends; we got a Christmas tree with my family and went to Zoolights. We got out on our skis for the first day of the season on Christmas Eve and celebrated the holiday at my parent's house with all my siblings.
That's it. That's my update! Thank you for reading it. I'll return in 2024 with plans for the new year and more rambling updates.