To the creatives feeling a bit lost lately...
Realizing the power of four years
Hi, I’m Laura, the founder of Gooseberry Studios (est. 2013). As a photographer, brand strategist and writer, I build visual stories and strategies for brands who want to become beloved and help people embrace their own creative everyday way of work and life. Let’s turn inspiration into action because so – much – is – possible!
Dear Creative Adventurers,
It’s that time of year again when it can feel a bit like being in a snow-globe of glittering inspiration. However, beneath the seasonal sparkle there can also lie a sense of pressure to make the next 365 days “really count” – whatever that “really” means… especially now that we’re officially into the new year.
This is why, although I will forever adore detailed goal lists, I now try to think of a brand new year not as a twelve month race against the calendar, but rather as a steady stepping stone in my current four year chapter.
The power of four years
Reflecting on life as four year chapters has helped me gain and maintain valuable perspective as I move further into my creative career and life.
It’s just the right amount of time for substantial change to take place. Think about how much happened during your high-school career (4 years) or how much you grew during post-secondary if you went for a degree (typically, 4 years again). The gulf between 21 and 25 feels vast once you’re through it and the difference in ourselves from 26 to 30 isn’t a gentle gap, it’s a chasm of character development and lived experience.
Whether we try to plan for it or not, in the span of four years we emerge as different versions of ourselves due to the sheer enormity of life that happens to and around us. We try new things, we endure the unexpected, we meet new people, we make mistakes, we learn from those mistakes and as a result we’re catapulted into directions that we never saw coming.
The power of four years is something I talk about a lot with my brand management clients. Generally speaking, in my experience it takes about four years for a new creative business to really click (when there’s not a horrible global pandemic, of course).
Essentially, we need one year to build out a creative venture, a second year to launch it and test the waters, a third year to run it while working out glitches, and then a fourth year to really, really run it.
It takes time for creative projects to take shape, for audiences to gather, for products to resonate and for a brand ecosystem to flourish. Building a creative career (or lifestyle) from scratch and growing it into something that stands successfully on its own tends to take longer than one single year.
A few examples in my own work and life… It took about four years to:
turn the photography studio I opened in 2013 after being laid off into a reliably profitable company that was ready for expansion
to feel really at home in a new city after moving for a job
to establish my limited-edition art print shop, Gooseberry Prints
to be confident with my shooting style after picking up a camera for the first time
Can these sorts of things be accomplished faster? Yes, absolutely and it’s amazing when they are! Can one year usher in a lot of change and growth? For sure! But the point is that it doesn’t always happen quickly for everyone.
Recognizing, even celebrating, the slow and steady build toward creative goals can be a game-changer because it helps to reduce stress and as I always say, from calm comes magic.
It’s not about fate vs focus
Now this isn’t to say leave it all up to fate (sorry fate). Choosing a focus each year and actively working toward that focus is a powerful tool and something I personally love to do. This is simply to suggest that while the excitement of a fresh 52 weeks can be intoxicating, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that big, sweeping change tends to take more time than we think it will.
And that concept isn’t something that our society (in general) likes to admit. We want it now, we want it faster and we want it as smoothly as possible – and we’re sold goods over and over again that promise to deliver massive transformations on tight timelines.
We rarely acknowledge that change and growth comes with the option to unfold more gradually while being just as profound.
Perhaps we can loosen our expectations around a brand new year and give it permission to be enveloped by something greater – by a life chapter that is building little by little, day by day toward a lasting creative career and way of living.
Keep creating wildly,
Laura
Three calming exercises I also love to do when facing a brand new year
1. Write a letter to my future self
Pretend that it’s December 31st, 2023 right now and you are writing a journal entry reflecting on the year you’ve just lived. What was it like? Write down all the things you loved, what was memorable, how you grew etc as if those things have already happened.
This will be my fifth year writing a letter to my future self and it is by far my favourite brand new year tradition, because it helps me envision what I hope the year will look and feel like. And when you can picture something, you can move toward it with greater focus. (I discovered this idea through a blogger once upon a time, but I can’t for the life of me remember who it was...)
2. Embrace The Fun List
I’m swapping a personal goals list for The Fun List this year. It’s not about crossing as many things off as possible, it’s about not forgetting to have as much fun as possible.
3. Write Down Hopes for the Year
Goals, ambitions, resolutions, dreams, intentions, themes, word of the year – at their core these are all manifestations of the same thing, hope. My 2023 hopes are here.
A read that I loved this month
One of my favourite book finds this month was We All Want Impossible Things by the brilliant Catherine Newman. It’s an exquisite exploration of how beyond beautiful and heart-breaking life can be and how those two intensities more often than not become tempestuously muddled together.
That sounds heavy, I know, but this book also somehow manages to stitch humour into its narrative in a way that leaves you moved and comforted. I tore through this book and loved every line. It reminded me how precious the mundane parts of life really are and how the big things pretty much always end up being the small things.
I’m not doing this novel justice, so read the full synopsis via the link above if you’re looking for a fresh read (that’s not an affiliate link by the way).