An acquaintance of mine is a very prolific and successful artist. She is hard-working and professional and I’ve always admired her dedication to her career. The other day I was chatting (oh alright, gossiping) about her and a colleague said “Well, it’s fine for her – she’s already made it.”

This got me thinking about how easy it is to assume that because someone is more successful than you, they have nothing to worry about and, more to the point, that if only you could get to that stage in your career too, then all your worries will be over.

I think we all have the same concerns – for example, either working hard to keep that high powered London gallery instead of trying to get a foot in the door in the first place, or perhaps fighting to maintain sales levels compared to those early days when every sale was a novelty. And even an international artist with gallery representation in every major city might find it hard to keep the focus on their work, when the marketing side takes more and more time (although having just typed that, the thought that I should be so lucky, popped into my head momentarily…..)

And I suspect that those early worries – how to get your work seen, desperately hoping for sales, the best way to approach a gallery – only change and multiply in ways we can’t imagine until we climb that ladder and get there ourselves.

So I guess that appreciating the here and now is a good resolution to aim for, even if the here and now is a bit crap….

(By the way, Tina Mammoser has a good post on her blog – she’s not having resolutions this year, just a motto and in two words, she says what I’ve been trying to say rather more wordily here.)