It’s Been Another Crazy Year
When I first opened my website in 2020, I did so during the height of a global pandemic. Everything within me was screaming “why” - at first I felt like it might be completely doomed from the start. Back in 2019, I had planned out the next 3 years with a goal of my 35th Birthday being the deadline for when I wanted to meet those goals. When the world got shut off and we all got isolated away, I had to put those dreams and goals on hold.
As the year continued, I wondered why I was still pursuing something that seemed so unwilling to succeed. But I persevered and opened my website. Sales were understandably slow at first. But with every week that went by they increased. But I was still faced with the unpredictability of the virus upsetting my shdedule. For months I played a constant game of chicken: as soon as thing started to pick up within HWA the pandemic closed the schools again, or the children got sent home, or someone caught covid, or we were put back into lockdown. Every time this happened it set me back. But still I continued.
Fast forward to Christmas 2020 and what I consider a successful couple of month of sales. I had a new lease of life and motivation and a promise from the government that things were going back to normal. So I rewrote my plans. Planned new collections, new mediums and new ways to get my artwork out there. I felt so optimistic going into 2021, I was finally going to really make something of what I had built the past couple of years.
But you guessed it, I was once again set back by yet another lockdown. Devastated didn’t even cover the emotions I felt at that point. I felt like everything was being taken away from me again. I had so much going on within my family too; my daughters GCSEs got cancelled and I was back to home schooling my children. The artwork would have to wait again.
Now and again I would go silent on social media. Every time I logged in I was heart broken. Many other artists who I had started out with were now miles ahead of me because they were able to use the lockdowns to fully concentrate on their artwork. I couldn’t find one single moment to even look at a paint brush. I was completely crushed.
But, yet again, I picked myself up and brushed myself off and made new plans. This is it. 2022 will be my year. I knew I wanted to release a Christmas collection, play around with watercolours and expand on my skills with oils and acrylics. So I planned it all out and went into 2022 with new hope. Everything was going well.
…and then, I died.
I unexpectedly became ill in late February 2022. For two month I struggled with excessive, unexplained bleeding until everything came to a head in April when I lost so much blood I went into hypovolemic shock. It took nearly 3 months to recover but still not fully. That was another 7 months of yet another year, gone.
By this point I am very nearly on the verge of giving up completely. But then I remembered something: my customers. My customers who have stuck by me through everything, who have supported me through a pandemic, who check up on me when my social media is silent, who ask when I will be releasing new artwork. It’s those people that keep me going, because it’s them who made everything I do have, possible. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to call myself an artist. So now, when I hit a stumbling block I remind myself of the sales I have made, that my artwork has been collected all over the world and that people do support me, even when the universe is completely against me.
On Monday 3rd October I’ll be 35. I may not have reached the goals I made back in 2019 but I am not defeated, the goal posts have just been moved up to 40
;)
Hayley Webster
