Business Corner
with a side of personal work and mysticism
As I described last week, I’m turning a big new leaf in my studio life.
My morning pages practice and “writing for guidance”, another practice from the book Living the Artist’s Way, created containers into which I have been pouring my jumbled thoughts and feelings, and gradually a clear picture is starting to emerge.
Writing for guidance feels a little like Letters from Love. I was practicing writing these intermittently for a few weeks before joining Cody’s book club. And prior to all of that I was working on parts mapping from IFS, after having read No Bad Parts and worked with this a little in therapy (incidentally, similarly titled No Bad Kids by Janet Lansbury is one of my fave parenting books for early childhood).
Writing to myself in the second person feels awkward, but even so the words tumble out and I generally feel better and have a sense of where to go after having this internal meeting.
Depending on who you ask, this practice taps into a person’s wise or core Self, or maybe the collective wise Self, or some call it spirit guides, ancestors or God. I don’t want to put it in a box so I’m chalking it up to some combination of these - or maybe these are all different faces of the same thing. Something about inhabiting this perspective allows the critical parts, anxious parts, dissociated parts to get out of the way so that I can get some clarity.
I’ve also been developing a bedtime reflection routine. This includes a list of positive things that happened in the day, and then a gratitude list, and sometimes a list of ideas from the day, or things to focus on the following day. Sometimes a little more guidance comes up.
Using all these tools, in combination with divine timing (?) has boosted both the scope and speed of this transformation. Trust that I am feeling overwhelmed, and also excited and hopeful.
And now for some bullet points to give you a sense of what I’m working towards. I’ll probably be touching on these and expanding my thoughts around these in future posts.
Overarching Intentions
more in person community building
more digital community building.
efficiency and simplification of my process while still producing high quality work and having fun making it.
finding ways to earn passive income - educational content in the form of downloads, downloadable classes etc
monetizing work I have already made - calendars, merch etc
hiring help with tasks I can delegate
Studio Goals for the next 12-24 months:
move into a new studio space - in June if everything continues to go well
create the paintings for my April show. finish everything before we go to Spain for Spring Break next year.
refresh my website and add a shop again - August/September Launch
sell some work out of my archives this fall & holiday season
create some merch - calendars, silkscreens, and such to sell during holiday 2024
develop teaching offerings - art education & self teaching resources, classes in person at my studio (tentatively next year after work on my show is done),
work with other artists who enjoy teaching to offer more classes at my studio.
expand my marketing & social strategy - substack, IG, threads and Facebook are my current haunts but I could add tiktok and youtube as I make more video content. And I guess linkedin is a thing - I have mostly ignored it for the last 12 years.
Gather and organize client, collector and CV details by digging through my email archive. Since my kids were born, I’ve managed my email with 10% panic and 90% passive neglect. Over time my email anxiety increased as it got more chaotic until I decided to put myself in email rehab about a year ago. I’ve been finding some gems.
work on a licensing portfolio or childrens book or make more products or ??
have another show??
Work on my solo show continues to unfold. I have some fun developments I am sitting with to potentially share next week!
Here’s my timelapse featuring my first reel with a voiceover.
And this poem:
I journal at night about events and emotions. But, I do like the idea of completely free form morning writing. Thanks!