10 year art anniversary… not for me!

Me working at my desk - of course, completely staged image showing a painting I’m actually proud of ahah

So lately I've been seeing a lot of artists and mutuals on Instagram celebrating their 10-year career anniversary… which made me realise that's not gonna be me for at least another two years. These are people I've been following and chatting with over the years, so I always see us as being 'on the same track'—but we aren't. And this isn't because I'm younger. Actually, they're often younger than me by a couple of years. It's because I started late.

I'm 35 with two kids, but my 10-year anniversary in my chosen career won't arrive until 2028. At least, 2018 was the year I first got paid for an art job, so that's when I'm putting the starting point (it was a very questionable animation clean-up job for a series of biblical cartoons… yeah).

The thing is, I don't think I'm even the same type of skilled artist who's worked in the industry for ten years. I'm more of a hustler.

I've hustled my way through different industries, situations, and professional role configurations. I'm always looking for the next thing that combines my art with something else. Maybe because I'm too scared to find out that even after ten years doing the same thing, I wouldn't be as good or accomplished as I wish I'd be—so I run to the next job, which causes disruption and means relearning half my skill set. Maybe it's my neurodivergent brain. Maybe it's a bit of both, and the fear that this industry, these jobs, aren't here to stay, and I don't wanna be sitting on my arse at 50.

But also: I started at 27, and not by choice.

I finished uni at 23 with a degree adjacent to illustration (Magazine Publishing at UAL), then spent years in a spectacularly toxic relationship that basically consumed all my energy and decision-making capacity. In 2013, instead of building a post-uni career, I got a CELTA and moved to China to teach ESL—ostensibly to pursue adventure, actually to manage someone else's mental health crisis full-time. By 2016, I'd finally extracted myself from that situation (bought him a one-way ticket to Taiwan, kept the dog, lost a 2014 MacBook Pro). I was 26, broken, and starting from scratch.

So in 2016, is when I actually got serious with art. I was really bad at it, but I poured all my energy—energy that had been directed at uselessly trying to fix someone who didn't want to be functional—into drawing every free moment whilst working as an ESL teacher to support myself.

A little more than a year later, I'd landed shitty animation gigs, art directed a short film that won Best Movie at Bristol Science Film Festival (which brought me loads of science communication work), and signed with Advocate Art. By 2019, I was supporting myself entirely through book and animation jobs for the first time.

But here's the thing: even when I was getting paid, my art skills were actually pretty bad. I was working low-paid illustration gigs and sci-comm explainer videos, but my speed, the sheer amount of work I'd say yes to, and my really well-honed ability to fake it till I made it still made it viable. I was a hustler, not a craftsperson with a decade of focused skill-building.

And I'm still hustling.

I've done sci-comm animation, educational publishing, Instagram content creation, sponsored partnerships, and international teaching gigs. I keep adding streams, pivoting, and combining things. Partly because, as a freelancer, you never want all your eggs in one basket. Partly because I genuinely get bored and curious. But also—if I'm honest—because I'm terrified that if I commit to one path for a full decade, I'll discover I'm not actually that good at it.

The people celebrating their 10-year anniversaries? They stayed. They went deep. They have a body of work that shows clear progression in one direction. I have… a CV that looks like I've been playing career bingo.

So, will I ever have a 10-year job anniversary? Maybe not in the traditional sense. Maybe my version is '10 years of making it work somehow, across five different job titles and three continents'. Maybe that's adaptation, not avoidance. Maybe industries aren't stable enough anymore for the traditional model to even make sense, especially if you're neurodivergent, especially if you had a disrupted start.

Or maybe I'm just very good at justifying why I keep running to the next thing before I have to properly commit to being excellent at one.

Who knows.

Oh, by the way, if you’re like me and have 37 tabs open in your brain - here’s where you can download my Focus Year Planner for neurodivergent creatives for free.