In retrospect, it was a long winter: Wes and I are finally walking away from our first full season with drastically reduced income.
A quick recap: we made our big life change last May. We sold our house and left Alaska, moving full-time into the 19′ Airstream Mobile Art Studio and switching up work so that instead of both of us holding down stable and salaried jobs, I am doing art as my primary focus and Wes is guiding seasonally. We saved up as much as we could in advance, knowing our income would fluctuate and we didn’t yet have a clear idea of exact daily expenses living full time from the Airstream.
This Facebook memory from two years ago gives a sense of all that went into Wes/me preparing for this big life shift.
But you know how life is – it happens, and we pretty immediately flushed our savings into replacing our (now former) truck’s transmission, and then emergency replacing said truck this winter. Wes and I agree that we don’t like to think too much on how much money we spent on that damn truck. If anything, I suppose it’s a testament to our ability to scrap, save, and come up with the cold hard cash when necessary.
We’ve known that spring would arrive, and with it Wes’ work would tick back up and we’d have two incomes once again. But now that it’s finally here the feeling is less one of elated triumph that we have emerged unscathed, and more a cool, informed placidity that comes with the many ups and downs of simply making it through. We have had to watch our savings and income dwindle to the point where we’ve gamed out groceries for the coming week, and braced ourselves to switch from cash to credit cards, knowing that the income is on its way but still hating to go into debt. At times it’s been scary.
Now that we’re just about through, I feel like that meme of the guy walking calmly away from a fire.
To some extent, I have had to simply trust that opportunities will arise. I do not have control over who buys my paintings, when; who’s interested in my writing; how many guided trips Wes will be assigned in any given season.
But kind of like in exercise when you switch from the easy-burn glucose fuel over to drawing on fat stores, as a result of this winter I have adapted. There’s been a subtle, slow, and profound shift into how I view the bigger picture context of my work and how that informs my day to day.
As you may know, my word going into 2024 was “discipline”. Not onerous or too much, but just a tick up of buckling down, focusing, working more, and playing just a bit less than in 2023. Last year was a glorious free-fall into this new mode of life; this year is dialing that in just a bit.
My choice phrase to help me stay focused? Every morning I wake up and think: Make your own luck.
No, I don’t have control over who hits “buy” or wants to pay me to write stuff. But I do have control with how I present my art, how much I paint, how easy I make it to purchase paintings or commission me, how creative I am in my outreach and partnerships, and how consistent I am in my use of social media, email, and my website to help connect to people and share my process and artwork. I have control over how much I sit down to actually write, how much I keep my potential audience in mind, and who/how frequently I send pitches over.
Again, it’s a slow, step by step, daily process of “making my own luck”. I can’t control who hits go. But I can continually show up and put myself out there in the best and most earnest way possible. And that, my friends, contributes back in a positive feedback loop of creating the kind of meaningful work I aimed for when we made this life shift. My days carry purpose and meaning, alongside the fresh and also scariness of life threading itself through with uncertainty and possibility.
