Starting Over at 54: My Journey to Becoming a Surface Pattern Designer

Over the last 30 years, I’ve pursued many different paths in both my personal and professional life.

I’ve been (and still am) a stay-at-home mom to five kids (four still at home), married to an executive who works long hours and travels frequently. We’ve lived in three different cities and moved six times.

I homeschooled for a few years.

I was a full-time caregiver to my grandpa for 15 years.

We’ve weathered the loss of seven precious family members (my mom, my grandparents, my aunt, my brother-in-law, my father-in-law, and my own miscarriage).

We’ve also opened our home to many people over the years, with anywhere from 8 to 14 people living here at one time.

Today, I still oversee a household of 10 people.

I started my career as a Registered Dietitian at a hospital in downtown Toronto. But once we had kids, everything changed.

Having been raised by nannies, I didn’t want that for my kids. That’s why I chose to be a stay-at-home mom. But despite knowing it was the right choice for our family, I have always had dreams and ambitions of my own. The biggest of those dreams was wanting to have my own business.

What kind of business? I had no idea.

But that didn’t stop me from trying things out.

After moving to St. Catharines with our two kids (6 months and 2 years old), I ran a home daycare during the day and a private nutrition coaching practice at night when Todd was home.

After our daughter was born, we moved to Cambridge, Ontario. And that’s when one of my hobbies bloomed into a business teaching people around the world how to make handmade greeting cards and other paper crafts.

At that time, I had a great support system in place and was able to successfully run that business for over 10 years.

But then my support system crumbled, family demands intensified, and my business no longer fit my life.

So in 2016, I shut it down. I knew it was the right decision, but that didn’t make it any less devastating.

At the time, it felt like everything I had worked for and poured myself into was gone. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that without that ending, I would have never made room for a new beginning…

Within months of shutting down my business, I started to feel the itch of wanting to pursue something new. But I knew that whatever I did - it had to fit the ever changing nature of my life.

It wasn’t easy.

I’ve always been passionate about the handmade arts, investing a significant amount of time and money into learning and developing my skills in paper crafting, mixed media painting, pottery, stained glass, laser cutting, and fiber arts (sewing, quilting, embroidery, punch needle, weaving, and spinning yarn).

But because I never considered myself to be creatively gifted, I hesitated to pursue art as a career.

So I tried to be practical. I tried a variety of different things - things I had experience in, things I knew I was good at - but none of them really stuck.

It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with ADHD this year that I began to understand why making a decision had been so difficult.

My brain gets overwhelmed when there are too many choices, gets hyperfocused to the point of burnout when something captures my interest, and gets bored when there isn’t enough variety.

I struggle with anxiety and perfectionism, and I carry some leftover trauma from being bullied in school for being different and not “good enough.” So for a long time, that was the biggest reason I was afraid to pursue art as a career.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I decided to put a pause on my business-building pursuits, and start facing the stories that kept getting in my way. I had carried those stories for so long, and had buried them so deep, that it took a lot of time to untangle them.

But rewriting those stories was only part of it. It wasn’t until I understood the challenges of a neurodivergent brain that I realized it wasn’t enough to find a business that would fit into my life. I also needed to find one that would work with the way my brain was wired.

Which brings me to today.

I finally feel like I’ve found the right fit as an artist, illustrator, and surface pattern designer.

There’s enough variety that my brain doesn’t get bored. There’s always something new to learn, which keeps my brain engaged. And you don’t have to be artistically gifted or even super creative - you simply have to learn the skills and the techniques.

Best of all, it fits my life now, as well as the life I want to build as Todd gets closer to retirement.

You know, I often find myself wishing that I got here sooner, because starting over at 54 isn’t easy. At the same time, I wouldn’t have the skills, the experience, and the perspective that I now have if I hadn’t walked that winding path.

Which brings me to the picture I shared at the beginning of this post….

A beautiful desk scene, gorgeous flowers, a delicious snack and an iMac featuring my website and artwork.

I’m sure you’ve guessed that image isn’t real.

It’s what’s called a mockup - which is essentially a visual representation of how something might look in the “real world”.

That mockup looks NOTHING like my desk.

THIS is what my desk actually looks like right now….when it’s been all tidied up of course

It’s a tiny table against one wall of our master bedroom.

The pegboard? That’s my inspiration station. It’s where I collect bits and pieces of things that relate to the collection I’m envisioning - in one way or another. Color, texture, pattern, smell….sometimes it’s not even about what it looks like, but how it makes me feel.

Anyways….I digress. I’ll talk about my process in another post.

The point is, that where I am now - is just a stage in my journey. That beautiful desk in the beautiful room I’m picturing in my mind? That’s where I’m headed.

But until I get there, I do the best with what I have.

And right now that’s my little desk as well as a little sitting area we’ve set up in a corner of our bedroom.

My little desk….and the little couch in a corner of our bedroom (where I actually end up sitting most of the time).

See this picture here?

Todd and I sitting on the little couch in our room, with Ginger between us. I’m working on a collection. Todd is playing a game on his computer. We’re each doing our own thing, but we’re doing it together.

This picture represents the life I’m living right now.

Unfiltered. Unpolished. Ordinary.

But that’s why it speaks to me.

For a long time, I held off on pursuing my dreams until life settled down.

But spoiler alert…

I’ve finally learned (and accepted) that life never really slows down.

Our dreams will never happen if we wait for the other side of busy.

Instead, we need to find ways to carve out space for them right in the middle of it.

And that’s what I’m finally doing.

For the first time in a LONG time, I am grabbing hold of my dreams, one small imperfect step at a time.