Honestly, planning is not really my thing. I hate planning. Maybe it’s my indecisiveness. But, I’m learning that planning ahead has some major advantages. For instance, if I want to do some Valentine art to take to the stores I sell at, I need to be thinking about them now so that they can be dropped off before Feb. Sounds obvious, but this is the first year I’ve thought like that.

So I’m doing a little 2022 planning. 🤓 I’ve been in biz groups that talk about this every year for quite a while and every year I’m like 🤔. How do you plan a release when you don’t know what you want to study/paint yet? Or when you’ll be done with that study to then schedule and market for a release? 🤷‍♀️

Each year how/when to plan things effectively becomes a bit clearer. But for this year, I’m still making it loose plans. Partly for what I say below 👇🏻 and partly because as things inspire me & I get ideas I go with it and that’s hard to plan.

In 2015 I jumped all-in without really having a plan, because that’s what I felt called to do. One of these days I’ll get it all written down on how that was really the only way for me and how it turns out it was all really about so much more than just the art business.

That’s me packing up my office on my last day in Dec. 2015. 😃

In a recent Bible study, we talked a lot about feeling the pull and follow God’s plan - no matter how crazy, reckless or uncomfortable it may be, you find blessings on the other side beyond what you could imagine. And you realize it’s never really all about me, my plans, my dreams…..there’s often something else in store that’s way better. For me that’s been seeing the fruit of being able to be here, be more present, more involved with our kids, being able to be at home with Ava. I know lots of moms that do all of that really well along with their 9-5, but that wasn’t our story. This Art biz has been extremely slow jumping off (at least it’s felt like it) but in hind sight it was better that way.

I went all in this Xmas season and it was rough. There were a lot of 2 a.m. nights. My husband took the kids to Grandmas with him for an entire weekend and I did nothing but paint ornaments all day and half the night. But this year finally felt like it was starting to be a sustainable business.

All that to say planning is good but sometimes we can’t plan, we need to change paths to our plan when we feel pulled a different direction. I need that reminder because as much as I hate making plans I also have a hard time when the path veers in a completely different direction. Maybe that’s why I really hate planning, I know it’ll change so why plan anyway?

After a pretty great year this year, I’m also starting to see the importance of making plans and goals for 2022 to get me one year closer to that goal of matching my old underwriting salary on my own. And at the same time if it doesn’t happen…..eh. Because I also realize Ava starts full day pre-K in 8 months. 😭 And we need more toddler/Mom days than we need go play on your room while Mom finishes this up days. ✌🏻 Not that she can’t work along side me some…..but maybe a bit less than it’s been the last 6 months.

So I’m only planning 3 canvas releases (possibly two) and more smaller releases for 2022 and in between instead of collections I’ll likely paint whatever I darn well please and take them to shows/add them to my site as I go. (I often feel pressure to stay within a specific niche when painting, and to make a collection of it…….so if i feel inspired to painting one semi-abstract bird painting, even though I primarily paint impressionist flowers I’m going to paint a bird. Birds like flowers anyway, right?)

If you’ve read this far thank you for being invested in this journey with me! I’d love to hear what kind of paintings you’d like to see? After watching humming birds last summer, I started a big, colorful hummingbird painting. Maybe I’ll pull that back out and see where that goes.

Here’s How I’m Coming at 2022