Things I haven't done this year

Spectacularly successful and glorious failures of 2023

Once around the sun

365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds.

362 days ago, I made A Plan. I wrote 1358 words detailing my short term, medium term and long term vision. I defined my purpose, my aims and my strategy. I wrote specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound objectives for the year.

I felt energised and excited. It was a good Plan.

And throughout the year, there were a bunch of other things I added to My Plan.

Now I am here with 3 hours and 2 minutes left of 2023. Considering whether it’s been a success, or a failure.

A list of failures

✨ I got a job in January and left at end of November. The shortest time I have ever worked anywhere.

✨ I did not finish illustrating my friend’s Christmas children’s story and we did not publish it.

✨ I did not set up my own accountancy practice for creatives.

✨ I did not make any progress on my website SEO.

✨ I did not send marketing emails every week.

✨ I didn’t return to being a full time illustrator.

✨ I didn’t post on Instagram with any regularity.

✨ I didn’t build my Pinterest account to get the evergreen leads rolling in.

✨ I pretty much stopped posting in LinkedIn.

✨ I stopped posting on Twitter.

Letting go

For a while, things felt the worst they’ve ever been. Overwhelming and relentless pressure at work. Trying to keep going, do everything. Unable to sleep properly, months teetering on the edge of burnout. More tears, anger, and self pity than I have experienced in years.

But it’s also been amazing. Some things feel the best they’ve ever been. I’ve drawn pictures and created characters that have surpassed anything I’d dreamed I could create. They were not on The Plan. I have made amazing new friends and reconnected with old ones. I started a new job in an old place and I feel like I could love my day job again. I created While I Was Drawing and have written over 18,000 words across 32 letters that have been read by hundreds of you. I set up my Mini Illustration Market to share illustrations and designs with you.

After deliberately stepping away from business illustration work and putting any thoughts of learning animation on the back burner, I accepted a commission to illustrate and animate a series of reflections for Lent. And I loved it.

And this morning, I am entertaining the idea of making some behind the scenes posts in 2024; sharing some of the things that I’ve picked up drawing and writing, designing and most recently, animating!

I have felt a freedom to show up and be and do and share what lights me up, whatever that its, however capricious and contradictory it seems on the surface.

And what I thought I wanted at the beginning of the year doesn't feel right anymore, so I’m letting it go.

Does that make 2023 a success or a failure? Does it even matter?

Opting out

I am opting out of the whole success/failure thing. I’m opting out of extremes. I wont be deleting social media from my life and burning my accounts to the ground, but I also don’t have any particular plans to be posting on them with any level of consistency or regularity.

I’m jumping off the band wagons with no plans to jump on any new ones. But I am endlessly curious, so I’ll be avidly reading anything and everything that piques my interest.

I’m opting out of making A Plan or New Year’s resolutions. Not that I don’t have plans. I do. I have a head brimming with ideas and overflowing with inspiration. Things I’d like to draw. Things I’d like to write. Things I want to do. But I am choosing to hold those things lightly. And let them go if necessary.

I’ve realised that there’s a lot to love in just allowing all the ideas to flow and mix and reshape, appear and disappear. Though many of them will never alight with me, there is still joy in letting them light up my soul and fill me with excitement at the endless possibilities. I can allow them room to fill my mind, to daydream of things that might never happen. To let them alight when they will. If they will. At the right time.

But while I have no Plan, no Resolutions, I have a word that I’m taking with me into 2024…. Free.

Free to draw and write what lights me up. To take commissions or not. Free to fail and to succeed. To have plans, but not have A Plan. Free to change my mind. Free to be and to do what feels right.

Free to absorb others views, enjoy their work, understand their perspective and motives and make my own views from my own unique nuanced, complicated, contradictory experience of this life.

How about you?

If you’ve enjoyed reading, send some hearts (click the ❤️), comment 💬 or restack🔁 on Substack or share on social media.

When you subscribe, you’ll get a beautiful bundle of illustration assets in my Welcome Letter or upgrade to access my every growing gallery brimming with gorgeous illustrations to create beautiful things for your home, your life and online spaces.