Money mindset, digital nomading, creativity as work, travelling, sketchbooking, and a NEW Substack coming soon
A collection of introspective thoughts from being away on my own for a week
I am late posting this week’s Substack article / post / piece / newsletter / blogpost (What do you call them? Maybe just ‘this week’s Substack’ would do?) because I was away all week and got back yesterday and, well, I wanted to hang out with my family in the evening, rather than sitting writing and scheduling a Substack (there you go, that’s what I’m calling them, apparently), and then this morning I was enjoying having a cat sat on my lap, going down some (interesting) internet rabbit holes, and then pootling about in the kitchen and then some more chatting with family. But, actually, also because I couldn’t decide which of my list of things to write about I was going to write about, so… instead of one Substack about one thing (and the many tangents I will inevitably go on), here are a few little thoughts and nuggets and next week you’ll get a more specific one. Probably.
Money mindset and creativity as work
One of the interesting internet rabbit holes I went down this morning was doing a quiz about what my ‘sacred money archetype’ is. To be honest, usually that kind of language has me running a mile in the other direction, but for some reason I was pulled into this one, and did find it interesting. So my top three are: nurturer, romantic and ruler. It hit some nerves and I even got a bit tearful at some of it. Burnout… giving far far more than what you’re being paid to do… assuming that things will just work out… and then the conflict between nurturer and ruler (and my bottom one was accumulator), where I have soooooo many really good ideas for new business offerings, but I don’t end up bringing them to fruition because I’m too busy giving too much in various ways. It mostly gave me a lot of lightbulb moments and insights into my educational publishing business (that will be 25 years old this year), so I am going to think some more about it in how it relates to the illustration and pattern design business (which I would like to become my main work over the next 25 years). I just read this Substack I wrote about money mindset and creativity a couple of months ago and it was interesting and I definitely need to do some more work on this.
Here are two things (I have a bunch more, but actually changing a bunch of things in one go is really unsustainable, especially when you have a tonne of other commitments and then I will just not do them at all – it would be like New Year!) I’d like to change in the more immediate future:
Pick one thing to draw per month (or week/fortnight if I find myself getting bored) and start with gathering references, then sketching to get to know the subjects and then draw one icon per day and upload it to microstock sites (and don’t think about all the many other applications they could have, but just do it; another time will be fine do other things with them). This should both build more muscle in specific subject matter and also get some productivity in there that may lead to perennial income down the line.
Take some dedicated time for physical media creative exploration with no purpose. Purely to feed my creative soul. (And I can post it on social media, but it’s not be created with that purpose in mind at all.) This should help me build that creative time that I really need for mental health and background style building and various other reasons, so that the productivity kind of creation doesn’t have to feed that as well.
A life that’s worth putting your phone down for
Oh my goodness! I read this last week and it really really called out to me! (Though I think I still spent more time on my phone – and not just taking some bloody gorgeous photos – last week when I could have been out soaking up Antibes.)
I loved the idea of switching the usual phone bans and phone limits to just making sure you have things you want to be doing more than picking up the phone. For adults as well as teens – absolutely! Things I want to make sure I do more of that I will love and make me not want to pick up my phone for a while:
walking
painting (like, actual, physical painting – not on the iPad)
reading novels
playing games with family
cooking mindfully
reading interesting non-fiction
consuming literature, television or film in some of the languages I know or am learning (not just doing Duolingo)
sitting round the dinner table eating and chatting (with family, or with friends)
looking at art books (and other visual inspiration)
going to art galleries
going to the theatre*
going to the cinema*
doing yoga
swimming
going out dancing
DIY and tidying and making the house pretty
and, of course, travelling (thought most of the above are more easily done on a day-to-day basis.
Sketchbooking
I posted this video as a note response to Kyle T Webster’s recent post about sketchbooks and ‘perfect sketchbooks’. It’s a flick through the sketchbooks I had with me while I was away which gave a glimpse into the different kinds of things I do in my Sketchbooks.
I am not sure if anyone saw it so, since it was quite a big deal for me to just do a ‘talking to my phone’ kind of video post I thought I should share it here as well so more people could view it.
I have written more about my sketchbooking practice here, including:
Digital nomading and travelling
My previous digital nomading foray was not brilliant.
I did way way too much work and way way too little exploration and inspiration soaking up. Plus the food was awful. That was a trip where I wasn’t on my own though, so I was keen to see how I found this solo trip to find out how I feel about the whole working while travelling, in order to be able to travel more mindset.
So, how was this last week, in Antibes?
Well, here are a few of my Notes, from while I was away:
You can also read daily notes (or footprints) about my trip on my Find Penguins page.
I loved a lot about it. I loved the space to myself, which I genuinely feel I need on a regular basis, to be able to remember who I am and to just get to be. I loved Antibes hugely. It is 100% somewhere I will go back to more than once, I am certain. I really appreciated the ability to go and have a stroll through beautiful narrow streets (that’s a thing for me) or down to the sea to feel the sea breeze in my hair and hear the sound of the waves lapping or crashing against the rocks, after a hard day of work. I felt fresher in my work for being there. I loved walking around barefoot on the cool tiles in the apartment and eating baguette and salty butter and cooking myself food that was just for me, so I could include things that other people in the family like in the sauce, rather than having to add them on the side. I enjoyed washing up before bed every night (or sometimes sooner, actually. I enjoyed having a living room to myself and being able to watch what I wanted, though I didn’t watch very much. I enjoyed calls home to Chris and hearing about a variety of things and telling him a variety of things, too.
But… I definitely would have enjoyed it much, much more if I didn’t have work with me. And, when I say work, I am talking about the educational publishing work, not the creative illustration work. The only time I have been away while needing to do that was Christmas in the middle of the List Happy book. And, actually, while I think that was more enjoyable and more doable, because I could draw on my iPad while sitting chatting to people in the same room, or while watching a Christmas movie (not so much while eating Christmas dinner!), I still would have rather have been work free.
I think there are different ways to approach this and I’m definitely not giving up on it as a concept, because the more I get to the travel, the better, frankly! But I would like to ensure, next time, that I’m away for more non-work days, if I’m doing editorial/project management (so weekends and bank holidays or booking actual days properly off) and / or that I am either only doing editorial/project management or only doing setting/design/editing and don’t have some of both on (or only doing illustration/pattern design, of course, but my current bookings are leaning very much on the educational publishing side). And then I will look to do 4-5 hours work per day maximum as well as have some full days with no work at all. Then, I feel, I will get a lot out of it.
That said, if I can wangle a trip where I don’t have to work at all, I will absolutely take it, and I think I probably need to try to give myself at least one of those a year.
Coming soon, to a Substack near you
I have had a few ideas for new, separate, Substacks to create, for a while. I’ve been reading a lot about Substack and different ways to approach it and, while I’m loving this one (and not about to stop writing it) I feel I have some nichier Substacks in me and they want to come out! I’m not going to do the rather mad thing of starting all of these ideas up at once (though, of course, I did consider it – circling back to the top of this post and that’s the ‘ruler’ archetype speaking, I think). I am going to start with one of them, and I am planning to get it started in June.
And it’s going to be called… The illustrated plant kitchen, and it’s going to be about plant-based cooking and eating as well as generally looking for a healthier nutritional lifestyle. And, as the title suggests, it will be illustrated. And it will start off with a paid option. The free option will have a bit about a particular topic, with a handful of spot illustrations dotted about. And the paid option will include either an illustrated (printable) recipe or an illustrated (printable) fact sheet or something else, food related (and particularly plant-based/vegan) that you can print out.
Here are a couple of my (not specifically designed as printables, though) illustrated recipes and illustrated fact sheets, as a bit of a taster:
And here’s some of my food writing from the old parenting blog (with apologies for the truly awful photos!). Mostly vegetarian, rather than vegan, though there are some vegan recipes there. But it will give you a feel for the kind of thing this new Substack will cover.
(As you can see this definitely an old blog and hasn’t been updated in, oh gosh, over 10 years, but there’s still some interesting stuff on there and it’s a very big part of my first decade as a parent, so I don’t have any plans to delete it. I may use some recipes from there, or adapt them, but I’ll probably mostly be providing newer ones, especially on the journey toward a much more plant-based diet.)
I might occasionally talk about the act of illustrating food, but mostly it will just be a Substack about food that happens to be illustrated. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read it as an illustrator – you might well like it purely for the illustrations – but it hopefully means that there will be lots of other non-illustrator people who will get something from it, too. Which is why I want to make it a separate Substack.
I’d love to know if this sounds interesting at all to you (and it’s absolutely fine if it doesn’t – I think, while there will be some crossover, it will probably largely be a different audience).
That’s all folks!
And that’s all this week (and it was really quite a lot, so congratulations if you made it to the end, especially if you clicked through from email to read the whole of it, because I, again, wrote too much for email, sorry)!
If any of the above sparks anything in you, please feel free to comment, share, etc.