I had to be the other me as my artwork sort of took off which led to a bunch of art shows and orders and such.
It sounds great and all but in truth it was exhausting. I've actually had to stop creating (that specific) art for awhile now because I got so burned out.
Things got so hectic that I actually forgot how to do anything else but art-related things. For example, I have been a voracious reader for my whole life yet I found myself unable to finish a book for the last two years. Whenever I started to read it wouldn't be long before my mind drifted to creating artwork, posting it, talking about it, marketing it, making sure I was engaging with my followers on the Facebook page I have for my artwork, etc.
Whoa, that was bad.
It was almost like a....like a...JOB.
Heaven forbid. ;-)
Then there were these horrid art business people.
I could write a book about them.
and then you're chopped liver the next. Bunch of phonies.
I abhor phonies don't you?
Additionally, I had the misfortune of doing business with some art biz people who will nickel and dime you over everything.
At one shop they were passing the cost of credit card transactions to the artist. Seriously, I was being hit up for a dollar or two in addition to the 35% commission this place was making every time one of my pieces sold. Pathetic. (I agreed to this at first because in my inexperience with such things, I thought it was the norm. It is not. I beg you to not compromise your art worth if you are ever faced with something similar!)
That was actually the final straw for me, the whole nickel'd and dime'd thing.
The joy I had once found in my art was mostly gone.
I didn't want to keep forcing myself to proceed because I knew my work would suffer. The best thing to do was to step back for as long as necessary.
Once I decided to put everything art business-related on the shelf, it was time to get back to my real life.
I found that because I had been so heavily enmeshed in my art life, that getting back to my real life wasn't so easy.
There were panic attacks and many nights of insomnia. Terrible self-doubts about having regrets, guilt over turning my back on opportunities that other artists would love to have.
But integrity matters more than any of those things.
I've always heard people say "I owed it to myself to..." and never really knew what that meant until I owed it to myself to do what I needed to do.
So now I'm mostly back to normal (whatever that means), back to doing all the other things I love and missed; in other words, back to being Kissy.
