Big Plans, big belly

One year has passed, again, the third year living my dream, working as an illustrator. Well, the first year I didn’t even know I wanted to be an illustrator, I just started to draw again after a really long time and things fell into place...so let’s say it was the second conscious year working as an illustrator. And this year I did not achieve everything I planned, as I did last year, because of a major life change: I became a mother.

As usual I made my yearly goals and plans towards the end of last year and I was pretty optimistic. I planned for my first written and illustrated book to be published before my baby was born (which was on May 30th). While still translating the book into German - i had originally written it in English but couldn’t find an English or American publisher - I planned to launch my first newsletter in January and my online course by March.

The online course was planned to be a simple PDF which I would send out to interested students, followed by personal coaching, which I planned for May. Then in May, I wanted to have the book release party.

I used the same planner from 2018, as I didn’t have a new one. It’s a free yearly planner by Johanna Fritz.

The second part of the year wasn’t planned out so much. I wanted to send out newsletters monthly and work on putting together and publishing my preggo journal, which I was drawing since day one I discovered being pregnant.

Reality bites

This time nothing worked as planned. First, the contract negotiations with the publisher I was talking to didn’t go well. We just couldn't agree on anything that would make both of us happy. So there I was, without publisher again and already losing time on my oh so perfect plan.

Secondly, I wasn’t sure about launching my online course as a PDF anymore and after talking to some fellow creatives, I decided that I should do something more substantial, like a video course on skillshare, which of course would take so much more time.

I started looking for a new publisher and to my surprise it didn’t take long to find one that would be interested. I needed to write an expose about the book, outlining my very detailed marketing strategy and point of sale which took me a short while but after that we both knew we would have a deal. So far, so good but it took us a while to negotiate the contract and the strategy for the book. Everything was taking a bit longer than expected and we planned to publish the book in autumn that same year. Shortly after I already began to work with my editor on the text and with the graphic designer on the layout of the book. It was all pretty time consuming. As I also got an “online team” which planned a newsletter, so I gave up the idea of launching a newsletter myself. It just didn’t seem clever to start two newsletters in one year.

Meetings at my publisher’s - Kamphausen Media

One step at a time

With my baby belly getting bigger and bigger I also had a lot of work preparing the babies room, clothes, preparing for birth, looking for daycare, doctors and all that stuff. Plus, it started to be more and more difficult to concentrate, work a lot and most of all to plan. I did have to do lots of things for my book still, as well as travel to my publishers across the country a few times for some meetings. I think I worked on that book basically till I started giving birth and again after a 3 weeks break. I just had to. But I didn’t even think about putting myself through other stuff, so the online course and newsletter were on hold for now.

I won’t get into details, but I had a pretty difficult birth experience and our poor baby had colic and was crying a lot for the first three months. It wasn’t an easy time. I don’t even know how I managed to function and to work, to get that book release-ready and to prepare a kickass book release party, but I did (with tremendous help of my wonderful husband). On September 23rd the book was out in the shops and I had an amazing book release and exhibition in Hallesches Haus.

1) My books are ready! 2) Book release and exhibition in Hallesches Haus 3) Book signing, like I’ve always dreamt of!

With the book release, the release party and book signing and the exhibition I had fulfilled three big dreams of mine and was very happy and blessed. I took a short break to recover and enjoy.

New Plans

Now that my baby is almost 6 months old, I want and need to get back to work. The ambitious plan is to work about 20 hours per week while my baby is still at home (he’ll be getting into daycare earliest in August 2020, if we’re so lucky and find a place.

How do I want to achieve this? First of all again: my amazing husband’s help. He’s taking care of our son in the mornings, and on his free days, so I could work. Secondly (once the boy starts to sleep for longer stretches than 30 minutes again - please, please let this be soon) I can use his nap times to work, which ideally would be around 3-4 hours per day (in which I do need to eat and do the housework as well, so maybe 1-2 hour for work left). And last but not least we are trying out to work with a babysitter, who could come for 3 hours twice a week.

I want to finish up what didn’t work out before my baby was here: the skillshare class, the newsletter, the preggo-journal and then continue working on business development, finding new assignments and contacting old and new clients.

It’s harder to plan for the new year, then it was in the past, because it doesn’t depend solely on me anymore. If the baby doesn’t want to sleep, is sick or needs to go to physical therapy for instance, this has priority over my work (because I decide so! My son will always be my priority number one!).

Dream on

Still I don’t want to give up on the way I was planning and visualizing and dreaming in the past, because it worked so good. I just need to be a bit more flexible and relaxed if things don’t go as planned. So I will make my yearly plan as every December. There will be some goals from last year, that still need to be achieved and some new ones and a lot of space for mistakes, changes, baby laughs and spontaneity. Sounds healthier and more fun that the rigid way I used to do, don’t you think?