Planners, Goals, Failures?
I love new planners... like old-school, paper planners. I love gathering up fun colored pens and getting a cup of tea and opening up my (THIS will finally be the perfect ) planner to start looking ahead to the next year. Like this new plan of mine will change everything somehow and I will reach all my goals. But guess what. I didn't reach any of them this year. Nope. Not a single one!
Now on some of them, I got pretty close. I wanted to paint 3 weddings every single month in 2021 but I only ended up with 26 of them for the year. Looking back on it - each and every one of them was a huge blessing and I probably couldn't have handled more of them anyway!
As a matter of fact - I still get SUPER NERVOUS before every single wedding that I paint! Yet - I love painting them. Live weddings have been the single most challenging artsy thing I have ever done - more than teaching painting classes, more than pottery, more than tattooing, crazy, huh?!
I also wanted to get more followers on Instagram. I was aiming for 1000 but just made it to 600 or so. Not bad (I know - some people have kajillions of followers but you gotta start somewhere, right?).
On other goals, I missed the mark by way more than a mile.
I have been saying for years that I wanted to offer an online art course and a monthly art membership. That still did not happen.
Here’s the thing though…
In life and in art, there are no failures. There are lessons learned (and some happy mistakes along the way).
But I’m also stubborn, which means I want to take what I’ve learned this year to make next year even better.
In fact, I am hosting an online workshop (The Artsy Attitude) starting in January. It won't be perfect. It will be a learning process for me but I am doing it anyway!
While I haven’t yet reached all my business goals for the year, I do want to say THANK YOU because whether you and I know each other from a wedding, or a painting class, or homeschooling, or (fill in the blank) I appreciate you. One of my biggest goals for 2022 is to paint more myself and support my artsy friends who want to learn to paint more.
Recently, I had the privilege of getting together with a few friends and painting a cute little Nativity scene. It made me realize how much I miss painting with y'all!
So, I’ve decided to give you FREE ACCESS to my Nativity Painting Class. This will be LIVE via Zoom on Monday, December 20th at 6:30pm CST. Don't worry - a recording will be available to everyone so you can do it on your own schedule. Help me spread some Christmas cheer by forwarding this email to friends.
~ Jessica Stuntz
P.S. - Wedding painting goals for next year - I am so happy with the progress and improvement that I am making that I am going to set a more modest goal of 25 for the year - most of which is already booked!
Thank you!
