Where did my mojo go?

or actually how much mojo do I even have?

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We had a WHOLE WEEK OFF work. We spent a week in a beautiful apartment (not sure you could even call it an apartment, since it spanned three floors, including a gorgeous roof terrace) in a beautiful town with beautiful views. It was stunning. It was super relaxing. We fully embraced travelling as a couple, rather than solo or as a family, which is a whole other experience and one that we don’t get to do very often, but presumably something that will open up to us much more within the next few years (our youngest daughter turns 15 this month).

And then we came home. Chris picked something up during the travels, and was full-on ill the whole weekend when we got back. And I… well, I worked. I had always planned to be working that weekend, though originally the idea was that the week after would be much lighter, when it has been full-on, too, due to a big project pushing on a bit further than expected (and, in fact, I still have about three hours to do on it this weekend, which is also pushing on further than planned). And then next week I think I’ll actually have a fair bit to fit in, though it should all be fit-in-able within ‘normal’ working hours, so that’s something at least.

So, I suppose it’s not a huge surprise that I have rocked up to this weekend, expecting to be full of writing and drawing energy because for the first time in a long time I have a (oh, not quite, but almost) FULL WEEKEND OFF. And I was expecting to fill that weekend to the brim with catching up on literally everything.

• Writing and drawing Substack posts (I am one paid post behind on The Illustrated Plant Kitchen and a couple of free posts behind and I thought I could get that out of the way and also pre-write and pre-draw at least two more paid posts, and at least three more free posts, plus I could also pre-write one or two for here, as well)

• ‘Daily drawing’ – I completely dropped the A to Z Furniture ball (I got up to K is for Kotatsu, which is almost half way through), plus I am doing #theydrawtober2024 and I had been drawing the night before so I was slightly ahead but now am not (not yet behind, though) and I thought I could spend a few hours this weekend drawing maybe four or five pieces of furniture and four or five pieces for #theydrawtober2024. And THEN I saw people posting #peachtober drawings and got some FOMO feelings and thought maybe I could catch up with that and then join in with that October drawing challenge too, because it looks so cute and fun and it would be so good to have some cute and fun drawings in my feed, especially because cute and fun is good for kids publishing and I want to send out emails to kids publishers this month (well, last month, really) and THEN I looked at Facebook Memories or One Drive Memories or something like that which showed me my past #inktober pieces and then I felt really sad that I can’t remember the last time I got my dip pen and out drew with actual ink so I thought perhaps I could catch up with those (not the actual prompts – I NEVER do the actual inktober prompts for some reason, but usually pick my very own theme – my favourite was when I did positive decorative words, which apparently was in 2016 – what the actual?

tashagoddard.illustration

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• Illustrators for Hire profile – I signed up to join Illustrators for Hire and then went on holiday without getting my profile set up and picking the pieces I want to share. I need to do that this weekend. I actually did a bunch of it while I was away, so it should only take me maybe an hour to collate it all.

• Courses and challenges – I am doing Make Your Mark Bootcamp with the InkyGoodness Collective and I have dropped all the balls and then some due to work overload. So I need to dig back in and decide which briefs to focus on and get them done (it’s fine that I’ve missed deadlines, because the point is to use it to build some focused and useful portfolio pieces and improve my practice and learn new stuff – but it’s way more fun when you do them live along with everyone else). I completely failed to join in with the latest Good Ship Illustration Picture Book Course run (by the way, I absolutely love that you get forever access to these, because digging back in and doing bits and then redoing some or all of the course along with the new and old students is bloomin great) which I think may very well be over, or at least close to over by now. And then I also signed up to do this run of Steph Fizer Coleman’s Lets Make Picture Books Portfolio Workshop (which I’ve done before but again love to do a run-through again) and I have so far done approximately half an activity and it’s almost a third of the way through already. So I thought I could catch up with those.

• Outreach. I did finally send some emails out last week (while on a Zoom call for the 100 rejections challenge, because frankly if I didn’t do it then, I was just going to put it off some more). Plus I have made notes from the Children’s Writers and Artists Yearbook (it’s the 2022 version, but I’m hoping it will still be current enough!) of publishers to look up and reach out to, so I was going to make an Airtable sheet and start checking their websites and submission guidelines and see if I have any contacts there already – in the various contact lists I have, plus a fairly wide Linked-in network (particularly in publishing) and then I would be ready to send more emails out next week (except it’s almost, or actually, maybe it already is, Frankfurt, so that would be a really silly time to send emails out and I should wait, but at least I could get things ready).

Ah! You’ve probably got what happened to my mojo, too, right? It got buried under a huge massive pile of ridiculously unrealistic expectations. Which is a VERY common theme for me. I get so busy with work (and usually that’s not especially creative publishing work, rather than illustration work, because… well, that’s a whole other story, why do I overfill my schedule with that work so there’s no time for anything else?) and while doing that work I fill my head – or notebooks, or Trello boards, or Airtable spreadsheets – with all the things that I will do when I’m not busy. And I want to do so very much that I pretend to myself that I can fit it ALL in on that one free evening I have, or that actual whole free (not actually quite) weekend that I have for the first time in months, or that holiday that’s not actually a holiday because I’m taking a bunch of work (oh look, somehow I have 12 hours work a day to do while I’m on ‘holiday’) with me, or that WHOLE CALM VERY LIGHT OCTOBER when I will only have to work three days a week and then a couple of days a week here and there on other projects (and, oh look, that’s not actually a calm, almost work-free month, is it, but actually a month of what a normal human being would call full-time work). Plus there are birthdays. And I was supposed to go and see my sister. And…

So, November then? When Chris is away for two weeks, so I will have lots more time? Or maybe less time, because I will have to do all the cooking and cleaning and parenting and quite possibly some extra work, too, if he’s mid-project and needs me to pick up and cover some things for him. But I was going to paint the whole house while he was away as a nice surprise. Is that not actually feasible?

Ah… Christmas... Christmas holidays are the only holidays that we tend to fully shut down and not work over (despite my plans for the last 18 years to take the whole of August off every year – that has never ever ever happened). So, Christmas then. There will be TIME to do things then. Except, we will be going up to Scotland for about a week, and then the time around that is getting all ready and wrapped and packed and then completely collapsing after. So, then it will be January, when I will do my usual thing of expecting to write a plan for a whole year and do it all in January because somehow January is a magic month when you can give up alcohol and cheese, and do all the exercise and all the self-care and start five hundred new projects and…

What I need is a personal assistant or, actually, a project manager (oh, the irony, because I spend large amounts of my working time being a project manager) to tell me what to do. To organise me. To say ‘You can’t do all of this. You need to work out one or maybe two of these things you are going to focus on and just focus on them. And NOTHING ELSE.’ To say ‘This is how you are going to make the money you need to make this month. You are not going to take any other work on. And you are going to focus on those two things during these moments of time. And NOTHING ELSE’ To say ‘You WILL NOT start a brand new project or challenge or course or decide to pivot from the focus you have chosen.’ I need someone to make me a plan and a timetable, because I am soooooooo good at doing that for other people and completely and utterly useless at doing it for myself.

OR I need to find a way to become good at doing it for myself. I would be eternally grateful for some tips on how to trick a brain like mine (almost certainly neurodivergent in many ways, but not diagnosed and so really no idea what exactly a brain like mine is) into organising itself and accepting that organisation. And actually that would be far more useful because I hate being told what to do and when to do it and being constrained by timetables and minute schedules and so on (I’m good with deadlines, as long as there aren’t multiple mini deadlines in a day or a week – when that’s the case I am on constant edge and jampacked full of anxiety and stress hormones which my body does not enjoy), which is why I have been self-employed for almost all my working life.

So, today, I have written this Substack post (how do I ever imagine I could write four or five of them in one weekend?). And I will do the 2-3 hours of work that I need to do before tomorrow morning. And I will collate the pieces and profile for IFH. And I will draw today’s #theydrawtober image. And that will be all. Apart from that, I will also cook dinner, walk, shower, tidy the kitchen, read, maybe watch a bit of TV and possibly interact with my family in some way or other. And that will be all.

And maybe I will try to do some actual journaling (the private kind with pen and paper in a notebook, not typing onto a screen to be shared publicly with 100+ people!) to work out a realistic focus and plan for the next few months. That doesn’t have me doing absolutely everything, but does have me progressing and, most importantly, doing the things I need to do to get the illustration work, and NOT filling my every single waking hour with publishing work (just enough to keep the wolf from the door).

Because I don’t have a time turner. Or the ability to survive without sleep.

I am very grateful to have an October challenge to draw, though. Having an excuse (or a push, maybe) to finish something every day is very beneficial.

Designery note to self: You changed the background colour and now some of the colours you use for the hand-lettered headings don’t work. Stop using them and go back and fix them so they look OK on old posts. (But not today.)