Starting in July, I'm going to be taking what I'm calling a 'semi sabbatical,’ when I will not be taking on any client work. I will finish a Skillshare class that I postponed from this spring and do enough to keep my business ticking along quietly. This semi sabbatical will last until the end of this year and will likely involve a small loss in income as a result. I have factored in this aspect, but will have enough passive income to tide me over.
Photography by Nat Aubry
I made this post because so many of us feel bombarded by idealized representations of others' lives on social media, and it's important to me to not be part of that. My aim has always been to be honest and transparent about what it's really like for me as a working artist. It has involved an incredible amount of hard work, silly hours, and sheer bloody-minded persistence when tackling tasks I’m not keen on. And repeating that over and over.
Make no mistake, I’m tired—really bone-ache, brain-ache tired. There's a tiredness that no amount of sleep or rest seems to fix. I’ve been on the go for the last nine years, hustling and building an art business with few boundaries in place. I’ve gone through a divorce, become a single parent, and both my kids have now entered their teens. I’ve shared so much and spread myself quite thin for a while. The pandemic overloaded my responsibilities and inflamed my already irritable emotions. I’d like to get off the merry-go-round now, because I’m not prepared to go through another decade where overwhelm comes knocking every few months.
Don't get me wrong: the route I took and decisions I made have landed me with a highly successful and profitable business, and a strong brand to boot. But the path I’ve been on is highly unsustainable and comes at a cost to my mental and physical health. I’m a bit overweight through comfort eating, my sleep cycle is not the best, and I dealt with bronchitis and Covid last fall.
Giving myself a leave of absence has been on the agenda since last summer. After crying my eyes out in front of my daughter at a luxury hotel car park because a client emailed to say I’d set up an artwork wrong (she was looking at the wrong dimensions), I vowed to give myself a long break.
Long walks, daily journaling, and taking weekends off are no longer enough. After shouldering many responsibilities for so long, my creative cup is depleted. As I see it, any creative activity requires energy. I can expend only so much energy before I’ll eventually run out. I must stop running before I hit the wall.
To begin with, I’ll be taking a step away from social media for extended periods over the course of this year. I’ve already done this a few times, as it's been very beneficial. The time I gain from diverting my attention from Instagram will be spent on learning from other artists, taking courses on watercolor painting, urban sketching, and gouache. I’ve also enrolled in a ceramics class.
I’m now at a place where I understand that my business will not collapse if I don't show up every day. In the past I was conditioned by anxiety, but now I’m more inclined to make decisions based on intuition rather than fear. My gut feeling has been saying I need to pay attention to all the red flags telling me that constant productivity isn’t the right path at this stage.
We can optimize our days or prioritize some choices over others, but we cannot create more time or replace the time spent on activities which add little value to our life. Our attention is a valuable resource. So I need to be mindful of what I choose to focus on and what I decide to ignore.
Photography by Nat Aubry
Right now my focus is on becoming a whole artist, reflecting my core value of supporting my creativity—and not sitting hunched over Google docs for days on end! I pledge that this time, my relationship with time off will not be riddled with guilt. As a single parent, I aim to stay healthy to guide my children for another decade. This sabbatical is not a stop-gap measure, but part of what I hope will be lasting life changes to reduce stress and change my relationship with self-worth and productivity.
Towards the end of 2022 I will be better placed to assess the impact of my semi sabbatical, and it might even extend beyond that. I’m excited by all the possibilities to carry on exploring under my own steam.