Overwhelmed

I was incredibly excited to start Immersion. I would finally be able to tackle Illustrator. Having played around with the program before, I didn’t have even an inkling as to how to navigate it. Learning Illustrator would not prove to be a problem as I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to technology. It would take a few tries, quite a few tries, to really figure it out (and by no means have I really mastered it, but I’m getting there). but I would eventually work it out, cross the first hurdle, and making my very first illustration and my very first pattern. It was an amazing feeling. 

My very first repeating pattern in Illustrator.

But amazement would soon give way to a feeling of incredible overwhelm. You see, learning Illustrator would not be the hardest part, not by a long shot. What I would soon find to be completely overwhelming was what to do after I learned how to make a pattern. I had the tool to do this thing, but what would I do with that tool? You can have a hammer and a saw, but if you don’t have a project in mind or plans to follow then you’re pretty much just cutting random boards in half and hitting them on occasion. This was the first moment I learned being a surface pattern designer really meant I would be going into business for myself, by myself, and that was the moment I started to lose it.

Because to become a working artist, and not even a successful one, requires more than just being able to design. I needed to not only design patterns and collections and make illustrations, but I would need someone to actually be willing to give me money to do it if I wanted to, you know, work. I would need to become a brand, and, fun fact, if you’ve never thought of yourself as a brand, give it a try. How would you sell yourself as a brand, right now? I didn’t think anyone would be up for buying the “stay-at-home-mom in sweatpants and avid Netflix watcher who happens to doodle” brand, you know? I would need to refine my brand, my style, and what I was about. I would need a website, and a spot-on Instagram feed; I needed professional pictures, and mock-ups, and an online store, and to order inventory or consider drop shipping options, and would need to design projects, and…and…and…The other stuff quickly felt overwhelming and it was like I was facing a thousand things that I would need to do and I found myself adrift, yet again.

But, but…I had put that behind me. I had taken the first step. I was making things happen. For some odd and ridiculous reason I had not anticipated that everything would not be smooth sailing. There’s a reason that people do not start their own businesses and that’s because it’s hard.

The feeling of having so much more to do beyond just design and not knowing where to start made me want to give up so badly, but I had committed so much to this endeavor already and I knew that giving up wouldn’t look good. So I persisted, but I also felt like I had 20 different fires and I didn’t know which one to start with first.

But then suddenly things clicked. I realized I was just spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere, feeling like I was drowning with too many things to do, but then I developed a plan that seemingly came out of nowhere.

Have you ever had a thing that seems to work for you, but you always forget about it as a solution? Mine is making a master list, which is ridiculous that I wouldn’t remember this, but hey. I make small lists that promptly get forgotten and ignored, but one catch-all list seems to work for me and I finally realized it would help me in this situation too. So I took all of the lists naming everything I had to do, and there were many, and I made my master list. I made a plan. I listed everything in order from what would need to be done first, what was foundational to starting my business, and progressed to what I would ultimately like to see happen in my first year as a designer. I planned a list of realistic goals that I could accomplish, and I established a realistic expectation of what I could get done. 

A screen shot of the master list. I want to have a written copy too, but this was the quick and easy way to get it down now.

It’s not perfect, and there will be changes along the way. Additions here and there, shifting of priorities, discovering how the industry actually works and such, but an excellent base from which to start. And it was this development, perhaps more than anything else, that has made me excited again. It feels like my dream is achievable once again, but more so than before. Because I’ve overcome my first real hurdle. I pushed through the thing that would have made me quit in the past, and THAT is what is the best feeling yet.