It's Gonna Be a Good Year

It’s a new year and a new week and again I haven’t written much of anything on the ol’ blog.

Haven’t done a redesign yet, obviously, but I’m thinking about it.

New Year’s Eve was mellow, again, which is fine by me. Pete and I and the kiddo and our friend Siobhan went over to Charlie and Cecily’s to hang out, eat pizza and junk and play Texas Hold ‘Em for imaginary money (I have a big box of poker chips). My daughter is now in love with the game and made me play with her a few more times the next day and night. It isn’t as fun with only two people though.

2007 is starting out beautifully for me. I love that I have spent the past year cultivating my photography love and exploring myself through self-portraits. I love how nobody has yelled at me for being narcissistic yet. I am in the beginning stages of working on an idea so that I can put these self-portraits to some use. Everyone keeps telling me I should do something with them and I’m going to make it happen.

I also had the honor of contributing some of my experiences in addiction to a cousin who is co-writing with a friend from Columbia. It is a combination of his autobiography with his experiences as a psychotherapist and an activist. It focuses “on the idea that we sometimes find our greatest gifts when surviving a crisis or faced with a challenge” according to her. I have found this to be true. Anyway it felt great to be asked and to be able to email back and forth with her about some of my story.

This morning I got an email through work (my husband and I have a medical illustration business, for those who might not know) from the woman I had do our taxes last year. Turns out her husband is partners in a company that does all sorts of production and development work, and are in discussions with a publisher of a dentist magazine to do illustrations and layout for an educational booklet (140+ illustrations!), and she gave them our info. The partner emailed right after and after a bit of discussion he asked to come by the house to show me the work. It was a great discussion and has the potential for a lot of future work, and a nice chunk of change for this initial project if it gets the green light. It was invigorating, I have to say…we’ve been really lax on the whole business and to be honest just scraping by each month. Pete has been tired of drawing and is desperate to find another way to make money, but nothing seems to pan out. So this is good…it’s straight-forward work he can do easily, and it will put us ahead for a change!

I think this is a good omen for 2007. This is the year we are going to get off our butts a little more often and make things happen. It’s lovely being lazy, but it makes it difficult to make any money. ;-)

Comments

[Lisa O]

Happy New Year! I haven't commented in awhile but read all of the time. I hope 2007 is wonderful for you and your family.

[Heather]

Congrats on the new opportunity!!
It's always great when you get a referral like that. My husband does graphic design, and all of our business comes this way.
Happy New Year!

[san]

That sounds like a wonderful start into the new year to me :)

[Joy]

Sarah, I have to say that I'm not a real big fan of Flikr like a lot of people are, for some reason that particular bug hasn't bit me yet (and I actually love photography), but ... there is a compliment in here somewhere, I promise ... I find myself coming back to your site just to look at your 365 updates on Flikr. You are so good! I've enjoyed watching your photography eye change over the months and you've really done some magnificent stuff. If only I were so brave! Anyway, I don't comment on Flikr so I wanted to say it here. Good job!

[ben]

RE "find another way to make money" - If he can do web design I need designers fairly often. If he'd be interested I need a portfolio (preferably online) that I could show potential clients (I seldom choose the designer but generally find the clients and the work and give them an option: "these are the designers I work with - pick one"). We can generally pay $1500 per layout (unless it's a big fish like starbucks, microsoft, etc.) with most sites requiring 2-3 layouts. If he can do logo work that'd also be a huge help.

I'm also working on/with a few startups if he'd be interested in doing something for a cut of potential profits later on.

[Elise]

Happy new year - always nice to start out a new year on a promising note. We are hoping to have a good year too - certainly the arrival of a new baby will help with that! But I hear ya on the money stuff. I hope it's not too tough for all of us this year!

[Heather]

I SOOO hope that new opportunity works out for you and Pete! Awesome!!!

[Sarah]

Well, it's national de-lurking week, so here I am. ;-)

I love flickr (my acct name is saucyg1rl).

I'm about to start the 365 project. I should have started on 1 January, but well, that would have required planning on my part.

I'm glad to hear your year started out so good. My year started out well also, I hope it continues to go well.