2025: Inspiration, authenticity and embracing maximalism
a little tale of indecision, self-doubt and finding confidence hiding away under the dust bunnies behind the sofa
‘Welcome,’ to the many new subscribers, and ‘Hey there, did you miss me?’ to old friends. It’s lovely to be back in your inboxes; thank you for holding my place, while I dithered and dallied through the wintery1 months.
Back in the deepest dankest depths of December, I was entering my fairly regular bout of hibernation. Refusing most social invitations. Reducing my emotional load as much as possible. Generally keeping everything as low-key2 as possible. And I was surprised to find myself feeling the need to do the same with my Substack.
Perhaps it was because it was starting to feel more and more like a social space. Social media, almost. The irony there, though, is that, while I removed Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn from my phone, I kept Substack on there and ended up being much much more vocal on Notes than I had before. To the extent that I’ve had over a hundred new subscribers sign up to Illustrating Life during the time I’ve not written any new long-form pieces.
I persuaded myself that I was taking the break to reassess how I would be showing up on Substack this year. But really it was that I needed a break from here as much as I did from coffee or dancing with friends. So, here’s advance warning that I will probably disappear for a large part of December 2025 as well and probably a fair chunk of January 2026.
I did actually do a lot of reassessing and thinking and pondering. And even more changing my mind. If you’re a Substack Notes addict, you will probably know that I tried experimenting with Morning Pages, starting mid-December and going through to early January, with only a few days off when we were up in Scotland for Christmas. I boomeranged a lot there, too, but mostly I just didn’t like it. It did not provide calm or inspiration or anything much that felt really meaningful. Although, I do quite like reading back over the pages in the future. Just don’t like writing them in the present. It certainly didn’t calm me. It caused me stress and anxiety, both in terms of getting it done first thing3, and in the feeling that I needed to solve something every day. Perhaps that’s what made me change my mind every day, sometimes multiple times in a single three-page session.
Again, if you hang out on Notes which, I think we’ve established, I have been doing far too much, and will be trying hard to cut back on, you will already know I found a way with Morning Pages that works much, much better for me. I’m about a week and a half into doing these single-page, mostly drawing-only Morning Pages.
And they have provided me with calm, focus and even inspiration.
A little bit from this one, from last Wednesday …
… led to this fully fleshed out piece over the next few days …
The other thing I found joyful and I think will form a part of my Decembers and Januarys for a while, is a bingo card for the year. Not goals or resolutions. Or a word4. But 25 boxes of things I’d like to do this year. A mix of fairly simple things or things I know that I’m going to be doing and some others that are a bit more dreamy, but nothing too out of field.
Looking back at last year’s helped me think about what I did do. For example, while I didn’t go to Portugal, I went to France a bunch of times. I went to quite a few exhibitions and saw more than one play in the theatre. I made very little money from illustration last year. But that seems to have been the case for a lot of other illustrators, so I’m OK with that, and I can already tell this year is going to be a lot better.
And the thing about this is that I didn’t feel at all bad about the things I didn’t do. They provided me with introspection inspiration for thinking about what I might want to do this year. Whereas, when I make resolutions, I always hate that I don’t keep them.
And most of what I want to do is to be inspired and to fill my life with creativity – both creating it and enjoying it.
I already ticked one off. I painted the dining room. (And, yes I absolutely did put that on there so I could tick something off early in the year.) I also put a very low goal for how much to make from creativity. Taking the lead from my ‘get 10 substack subscribers’ last year, which I surpassed by a fair bit, it feels good to nail something quite early on. So, a decent-sized book illustration job, or a few editorial pieces would do the trick for that. I actually feel like I’ve gone slightly more feasible this year. And I’ll circle back next year to see if that was the right thing to do. Maybe next year I’ll be wanting to put some HUGE dreams in.
Of course, it’s already February, but in case you want to make one of your own, here’s a PDF of the blank version (with the flowery border, which you are very welcome to colour in if you like).
On talking back to and standing up to the doubt
A lot of the last half of January was about realising that I did have things to write here that people want to read and things to draw that people want to see (it helps that I’ve had such a lot of Notes engagement, because that gives me the validation that a decade of social media has taught me to crave5) and that both of these are things that will elicit an emotional response in people, whether just basic recognition, or a small smile, or a big grin, or a breath of calm, or sometimes even some righteous rage (hopefully not at me, but I get that sometimes it might be and I need to be OK with that).
And I wrote approximately five billion versions of a first post back, or started them, at least. And every single one of them bored the living daylights out of me while writing and when reading it back. Which brought a relapse of that big old self-doubt virus. But then I remembered that what I love most about writing here and to you (old friends and new), is just writing what feels right to on that particular day, in that particular moment. Not writing to a well-thought-out content calendar. Not writing with a very specific goal in mind. Just writing the things that I want to tell you about. And all of them.
So, that’s what I’m doing today. And that’s what I’m going to keep doing. But… on top of that, I’m going to add some paid posts here. These will be deeper dives into inspiration and process, including assessing how things are going.
If you like the sound of any of that, please do feel free to subscribe. Free and paid subscriptions are all gratefully received. New free subscribers elicit a smile and paid subscribers a squee and sometimes a little dance.6
Oh, and if you want to hear more about my embracing maximalism7, go subscribe to my new publication – Authentic Maximalism – where I will be sharing all the non-illustration and non-food things I think about, read, watch, listen to, fill my house with and so on.
Yes, I know it wasn’t hugely wintery here in the UK, but the short days are enough to make it hibernation time.
I have a feeling that means something different to the young people these days. I have no idea what, though. And maybe they spell it differently.
It was never first thing. Because there are cats to feed. And there were also the parts from my cPap machine to wash every morning. And frequently there were people coming downstairs while I was in the middle of writing, needing my attention or my help and that threw me off and made me feel grumpy.
I actually came up with two words. But I still haven’t made a big splashy hand-painted lettering of them, which I absolutely definitely want to do, and of course will share when (if) I do. But I did make a whole new substack publication instead (Authentic Maximalism – which will start filling up with posts this month. Promise.)
I am hoping that this year will be one where I train myself to crave that dopamine hit a lot less.
Don’t worry, I am not a video blogger – I will not be recording and sharing those.
Yes, I did just realise that I’d said nothing about Maximalism just before hitting publish, but couldn’t bring myself to change the title, because three things sounds much better than two.
I absolutely love your annual Bingo card practice— genius way of not feeling bad at end of year when not every last thing was ticked off. Thank you for sharing.
As a little extra incentive, for fun, you could plan a little prize for yourself if you get 5 in a row—BINGO!
Oh my goodness, the visual morning pages are such a great idea!