Where do you see yourself in 5 years? It's one of those questions that is asked on almost every job interview. I started thinking about that question today in terms of my artwork and my art business. Where do I see myself in 5 years? How will my business have changed in 5 years? Of course I have lots of goals and hopes for the future, but there are two things that stood out to me: being able to paint more frequently and being able to travel more with my artwork.
It may sound weird, but painting is a luxury to me! If you made a pie chart looking at the amount of time I spend on various aspects of my art business, painting would definitely be one of the smallest pieces of the pie. So much time is spent on other tasks like maintaining my Etsy store, making inventory, fulfilling orders, email correspondence, bookkeeping, etc... I'm definitely not complaining, because I feel very fortunate to be able to make money at something that I love doing. But in the future, I would love to see painting become the biggest piece of the pie.
So as I think about where I will be in 5 years, I hope that I will be in a position to have an assistant to help me with various business aspects so that I can concentrate most of my time on creating artwork. I know that is probably a huge dream of a lot of us artists. What artist wouldn't want to be able to paint all the time and have an assistant to handle everything else? That would be fantastic! A girl can dream right? Actually, I enjoy all the various aspects of my art business, so I would be happy if my "painting pie piece" was simply larger in 5 years than it is now.
The other thing I see myself doing more of in 5 years is traveling more with my artwork. I would love to go to all the big sci-fi/fantasy conventions and fairy festivals around the country and sell my artwork. I have done a few shows local to my area and I met fantastic artists who travel all the time! They have at least a couple conventions lined up every month and they live almost a gypsy lifestyle traveling from one show to the next. I couldn't see myself traveling all the time, but I think it would be so fun to have at least a few that I would go to every year. I love the whole convention/fair atmosphere and getting to interact with all of my fans and artist friends that I know online would be fantastic!
I think it's important to keep looking forward in life to set goals for yourself. I am a big goal-orientated person. I always have to have something to reach or strive for. If I'm not working towards something, I am not content. I always want to be bettering myself, my artwork and my business. I try not to become complacent with where I am at right now. So, it was interesting to think about this 5 year question in terms of my art business. It helped me to set some new goals to work towards.
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