Jul 30, 2017
I’m my best self when I’m actively making and perusing my creative interests and endeavors and I haven’t been lately.
Obviously life is different with a newborn and kids home all day during the summer and all that. It’s never really convenient to be creative. There are chores to be done and kids to feed and toddlers to potty train.
And the times when it turns out I did have an hour or two to myself I usually don’t realize it until afterward. Instead I spend the time sitting in the rocking chair scrolling through things on my phone or maybe hurriedly eating something or picking up the mess on the floor.
If I knew ahead that I’d have a worthwhile chunk of personal time… goodness what a gift.
To be honest I’ve been feeling pretty discouraged lately about how little I’ve sold of my quiet page patterns and kits. I worked so hard and invested so much of myself into that endeavor and now it feels like a complete flop. The word failure keeps rolling over and over in my brain. Not even in a self-pity way, I’m just bummed that I didn’t do certain things differently or better.
The products themselves are great; I stand behind those no problem. The kits have crazy good quality materials and the instructions are good and the finished pages are so charming and fun to play with. I just wish I’d matketed them better from the get-go or taken into account what a small niche my target market was or… I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll at least be able to sell them slowly over time and they won’t just sit dead on my shelf forever.
Anyway I bring it all up in the middle of this post because sometimes the feeling of failure can push us to try harder and do better and sometimes it just kills your momentum. Like a very literal metaphor, for weeks I had all the kit boxes stacked up on my sewing desk, blocking all future potential projects. I’ve since moved them to the closet and I’m working on it mentally too.
Goodness, being really honest and vulnerable is humiliating.
But much as I want to sell all those kits and turn a profit, what I need is to have good work to do, work I enjoy. Projects to work on, even (and perhaps especially?) if just for myself.
Ideally I’d love to set aside a few hours each day as Work time. Time I can count on to work on sewing a quilt or knitting a hat or designing something on Illustrator. Time where I can focus on my strengths and improve my talents and feel mySELF and self worth as an individual renewed.
I don’t know if that ideal situation will ever be my reality, but I think knowing what I want is a step in the right direction. Not in a selfish way I hope, but just to have ideas about how to bring my best self to the table for life in general.
Baby’s crying. Gotta go, but I’m gonna keep thinking on this.
katielewisstudio.com 
Thanks for being willing to be vulnerable and put yourself out there. Although it’s almost impossible not to tie the reception others give your work to how you feel success, try to remember that the only marker of success that ultimately matters is what is in your own control (which sales are not). You had a great idea, you put your blood, sweat, and tears into making it the very best product that you could, and you turned a dream into a reality. You improved yourself and you learned valuable things, and ultimately you have grown because of what you did. It totally sucks that all that work doesn’t equal outward (financial) success too, but what you got personally will outweigh what good sales alone would give you. I think your ideas were great and your product is absolutely so cute. If I didn’t already have my own ideas and all those supplies for the quiet book I am already making I would totally buy one. As Charlotte says in Charlotte’s Web (or at least the movie version), “rise up, wise up, let a little smile begin. You’ll be happy hearted once you get started. Up with your chinny-chin, chin up!”
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