Keeping promises to myself

February - it had ups and downs, both to be remembered

February - Keeping Promises

Hello, dear reader,

In January’s dispatch, I promised to tell you how my month of discipline went. And here I am to tell you that it was very intense. I would rather say that I succeeded in keeping my own promises.

Let’s quickly recap. I have two main goals at the moment:

• Building up awareness among people that I do photography and can be hired.

• Uploading YouTube videos on a weekly basis.

(scouting for new filming locations)

So far, I have uploaded four videos, so it seems that I did a good job. I have a plan for videos for March, and I am excited. I love filming and editing, even though my main struggle is still real—I have too many passions and too much curiosity about too many YouTube genres. Thus, my channel is a bit all over the place, and it grows slowly. But I hope that if I manage to continue a weekly upload schedule, I will finally understand which videos bring me the most joy and views. Then I will choose one or two and live happily ever after. Anyway, that’s the idea.

Meanwhile, my photography promotion brings me interest and questions but no client jobs yet. I try to post something about my photography on social media and bring it up during conversations. It is a slow start, as it was a very slow stop. After I stopped taking photography jobs, word of mouth brought me clients for at least three years afterward. So I guess it will take some time for people to connect my name with photography again.

And then there’s lettering. I would love to do some lettering for books here in the EU, but I’m not sure how to get to publishing houses. I have a couple of contacts that were provided to me, and I am in the process of assembling a PDF portfolio of my best work. I think I would love to do some fan art book lettering and also film it, so it would be both a YouTube video and lettering promotion. How does that sound? I need to think about it.

Everything feels like too much, and everything is very slow. I mostly stay at home, make to-do lists, and tick off line after line. It is very mundane. But the only way to get where I want to be is through actual doing. The magic is in the doing.

One week in February was hard. You know those weeks when you make a mistake, then blame yourself and feel just soooo miserable? And then PMS comes, and then the period itself. Now that it has passed, I can barely recognize myself from that week. I felt so miserable. I literally cried behind my sunglasses while shopping for veggies at the weekly market because I wholeheartedly thought there was no human in this world more useless than me. If you’ve ever had such moments, I know how it feels. It sucks. I’m even thinking of making a video about it.

There’s even a story connected to that. I was about to buy my son a second-hand collection of Harry Potter books. Obviously, I wanted to get them a bit cheaper, and they are cheaper if you buy the whole collection and buy second-hand. I also don’t feel comfortable buying new Harry Potter books because J.K. Rowling’s bigotry is just too much. I don’t really like the books much either now. But if your 8-year-old gets obsessed and asks for those books in Spanish (not his native language) so he can read them at school together with his classmates, you kinda don’t want to say no. Because it could ruin his motivation for reading books and for building meaningful connections with his classmates.

So, I found the books and negotiated a meeting (in Spanish). It was in a nearby town, but it’s about a 1.5-hour commute by public transport. Can you imagine how I felt when I arrived in the aforementioned town on Monday and realized that I had actually arranged the meeting for Tuesday? Because my Spanish is still not very good, and I did not double-check that “martes” is not actually Monday but Tuesday. I know that, but not by heart. So I spent a couple of hours in town, hoping that the seller would see my embarrassing messages and that we would be able to meet. No, he didn’t see them until the evening when I had already left. So I had to go the next day—same 1.5-hour commute one way—and buy train tickets again. I felt so, so, so useless and stupid. I wanted to spend less money, but it didn’t happen because train tickets for two days and a coffee (so I could use the restroom in cafés) made it cost as much as buying a new book set. I also spent eight hours of my working time not actually working. Of course, I did some admin work on my commute—answering emails, writing, and doing social media. But my butt and back hurt because the train chairs weren’t comfortable. The train shakes a bit, and my eyes got so tired. And I hate writing big pieces of coherent text on my smartphone.

I think that, because my period was approaching, I felt extra vulnerable about my stupid mistake in Spanish—three years of immigration fatigue catching up with me. Also, the third anniversary of the invasion and the scary news swarming all around. We live in such an intense and complex world. The goal of this writing is not to bring pity upon myself. I think I write to get it all out. Because when it’s out, it’s easier to see that I really am not useless. That I do my best in the circumstances I have. And you, dear reader, do too, wherever you are. You really are doing your best. I bet your story is also very nuanced and multifaceted. But we can all try to be kinder to ourselves. That is my main takeaway, I suppose.

If you’d like to support my work on any scale, you can Buy Me A Coffee. It would help me greatly to spend more time making art.

See you in the next one,

Vera

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My curiosity got caught by:

• I play D&D now with my friends, and it brings me so much joy. I’m not watching any Critical Role just yet, but this teaser caught my curiosity:

• We finally managed to understand and learn the rules of Wingspan board game, and we spent quite some time playing and learning funny bird names. This game is just so unpredictable and rich.

• I finished reading Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo, and I loved it so much. The growth of her writing style and skill is just palpable. I definitely will read everything she has written so far. A special treat is Six of Crows—I just cannot wait.

• The latest videos from Kelsey Rodriguez are just jewels. I’ll post here one on marketing strategy, but the others are also very good. I know that I struggle with marketing myself so much lately, but I’m learning a ton from Kelsey:

• Combined with my thoughts on work and marketing, I took in this video by Jared Henderson. As much as I love my work, I definitely see a pattern here: