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My New Year’s resolution this year was to listen less to all the different voices from outside of myself, and tune more into my own inner guidance.

As much as I appreciate how today we can get valuable advice from mentors with a click of a button, I reached a point where I found it to be overwhelming and somewhat paralyzing. And honestly, I started to feel quite annoyed with the constant input of how other people went about their path, making things happen for themselves with “tried and true methods.” Even though, these methods may work, it felt restrictive, robotic, uncreative. There was no joy involved for me, and that’s not what this is all about.

I realized that trying to follow someone else’s pattern feels quite dull. And I believe when you put these kind of feelings into what you’re creating, the result will mirror that.

Even if we wish for the same outcome, each of our paths are unique. And so I decided to allow myself to do what feels right for me. This inevitably leads to change!

I admit, it made no sense at first, but I strongly felt that I wanted to create a new website. A simpler format. Something that I could entirely handle myself.

At that point, I had also started to learn a ton of new skills. It was like going back to college (only that I was my own professor, and I made my own curriculum).

And before I knew it, one step empowered me to move to the next:

First, I purchased a new computer, because my old one wouldn’t agree with any photo editing program (it would freeze every time!). With the new computer, I was enabled to:

learn Photoshop, which led me to:
release my stubbornness (“I only draw by hand!”), and so I bought a Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet on Ebay to learn some digital drawing!

This is how I created some of the elements you see on my website, for instance the new & revised bird banner on the contact page and newsletter. It also enabled me to create patterns, which happened quite spontaneously (as a by-product so to speak). You can find those at the bottom of my portfolio.

And to my amazement, I discovered how beautiful hand-drawn & digital work can merge, complement one another, make each other better - the perfect match!

By being able to use this technology, I was then ready to:

build a brand new website by myself!

Hurray!

Yes, I’ve spent countless hours of learning (emotional roller coasters included), but in the process I also learned that only with patience I can eventually figure it out.

This might sound corny, yet it’s true that if we’re committed & resilient, we can always figure out whatever it is we put our minds and hearts to.

Most of the time, our intuition might be a very small voice, but the more we learn to listen and trust it, the more amazed we will be at where it guides us and how things seem to come together in miraculous ways. It’s quite powerful.

With much love,