Start Where You Are (& Where To Start)

I wanted to share with you more about my artistic and creative journey that led up to me finding Etsy. It goes back as far as I can remember. If you had observed me as a young child, my creativity would have been obvious to you. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my reply was quick, simple and without hesitation - “an artist.” I have from my earliest memories, simply loved to create.

But a strange thing happened as I grew older. Voices of comparison began to creep in and being an “artist” became more of an earned title than the birthright it had been to me as a girl. I felt unworthy of it in the company of others who were “better” than me. And so I stopped creating. As I type that I feel like it’s one of the saddest sentences I’ve ever typed. But I did, I stopped creating and shifted my focus to getting an education and building a career that would pay the bills.

Creativity still called to me though, and I found it at times even in corporate America, as I took on every nook and cranny of running a small hospitality group in Chicago. In small businesses you get a lot of exposure, perhaps overexposure, due to a lack of resources. There’s no “marketing department”, so you learn to market. There isn’t a “customer service team” so you learn how to handle customers. As the director I oversaw every aspect of multiple venues and hopped from project to project, but it was in the creative gaps that I found myself most satisfied and at my best performance. While I wasn’t picking up a paintbrush, I was learning that creativity could be found brainstorming a business, considering how to create visually enticing experiences within our venues, and even how to creatively problem solve everything from human resource issues to effective company communications. I realized that my sweet spot was actually in design - because design isn’t simply creativity for creativity’s sake (although that is a wonderful thing) but instead offers creativity a hard hat, to problem solve beautifully.

After doing this problem solving creative dance a few too many times I realized I wanted to be trained in design, and to think like a designer thinks. I decided to attend night school while working full time to pick up the graphic design and visual communication skills I needed to execute so many projects that would come my way over the next 10 years in that role. Creativity was calling and leaving voicemails, and I, while not yet picking up the phone fully, was listening and relistening to its message that I desperately wanted to hear, but still had a very hard time believing:

You Are An Artist. Start Where You Are.

Of course how could I be an artist? It was absurd to me, I simply didn’t have the skills or experience. But that 2nd part, the part that whispered it might not be too late, that maybe, just maybe there was in fact room for me inside of a truly artistic creative life - that’s the part I couldn’t let go of. It was a back thought, some might even call it a dream, but for me, it was something less tangible. Dreams are spoken and said aloud. This was an inaudible faint whisper of my deepest heart.

I’m convinced now that God must have known I would have never actually taken the leap into a fully creative life on my own, so Etsy was sent in disguise as a great “financial planning” tool. If you’ve read my story then you’ll know that I opened my 1st Etsy shop on a whim, on the advice of a financial planner I was following who suggested developing a “side hustle” as a best practice for achieving financial independence. By this time I was a new mom, and my tolerance for corporate America was running thin. Those whispers were getting louder and I felt split in two with my desire to be home with my daughter yet having a very demanding job that pulled me away from her. I longed for more. I didn’t even really know what “more” was at that time, but I knew I didn’t want to stay where I was.

If You Don’t Want To Stay Where You Are, The 1st Step Is That You Have To Take The 1st Step.

Obvious right? Yet difficult. Taking the 1st step to envision a new life for yourself can literally be terrifying. What if you fail? It takes courage to pursue what you really want from the vantage point of where you truly are. The gap between the 2 can feel impossibly wide. And yet, if your feet never move, your life never changes.

I was lucky, I’ll admit it, that I didn’t have to deeply contemplate that 1st step, it happened when I wasn’t paying attention. The next 5 years were nothing short of incredible to watch unfold. I designed a creative life for myself. I took thousands of steps, one day at a time. I started with what I knew and designed nursery artwork in the programs I was familiar with - Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. A couple years ago I picked up my paintbrush again and decided it was time to really pursue my dream of learning watercolor and all of the beauty within it. My journey’s not over, far from it, and I still have so much to learn. But you know what?

I’m An Artist.

I can say that with confidence and clarity of what it means. It says more about who I am than what I do and it is 100% free of comparison, competition or fear. I tell you all of this because I’m a 2nd lifer. My life had to twist and turn to bring me to the point where creative entrepreneurship was on the table for me. The career and passions I have today weren’t what I started with, but the point is that, I started.

Wherever You Are In Your Own Creative Journey Is Where You Are.
Just. Start. Walking.