Hello everyone,

As you all know last week I welcomed my daughter into the world, and I want to just flag that this will not become the Dad newsletter. In fact, I’m really hoping to stay focused on my core writing around creativity, small business work and art.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m running three races, sort of like some weird relay, and if I can manage energy, income and timing I will succeed, but there’s also a lot of running going on.

One race I’m running is financial: trying to ensure that enough cash flow comes in at the right times to pay the big bills. For example, I am waiting on two books to arrive. When they arrive I will have to pay import tax, then I will need to post the 100+ people have pre-ordered, so that’s a big shipping bill. But, when they arrive I can do more marketing and sell more. However, I still have NEW printing bills coming in!

Another race I’m running is logistics. I have tight deadlines and even projects launching in July or September feel almost too close for comfort (they aren’t, but still, I feel that way). With seven books coming this year, two exhibitions, dozens of workshops, a baby, and also trying to have some relaxation time, trying to get everything across the time in some sort of a timely fashion is, in of itself, an undertaking. I have like 3-4 project plans open each day.

The final race I’m running is events and sales. These big selling events make a huge difference, and often planning, applying and attending is a big part of the year - as it feeds me literally and metaphorically. Yet many of these seem a long way a way.

So how have I worked on running these races this week?

Over the last week, I had a lot of great things happen creatively - I had an excellent meeting with someone who has become something of a close collaborator and I failed to get her to move to Melbourne. Sometimes there are folks and you think ‘in a different circumstance we’d probably work more together’. I have a similar friend like that in the UK - someone who I really love her design and book making work and, if we lived closer, we’d probably do more stuff. Still, it was a good meeting.

I’ve also been just churning through proofing my upcoming Dingo book. I’ve been looking at drafts and getting the colours right. Interestingly this is often the most stressful part with artists I work with. Getting colour printing bang on is quite laborious and technical and often we’re working with printers on the other side of the planet. I can admit that I often really feel nervous trying to make everyone happy and have failed a few times to do so. It’s refreshing, therefore, to just be the only person handling it and finding things way, way easier.

We returned from he hospital on Monday and I jumped into emails and feedback. I’m currently running an Open Call where folks can pitch projects to Tall Poppy press for publication. I aim to give everyone feedback, regardless of whether they are the winner or not, and I find it easier to do this a bit each day. So I tally feedback and look at people’s work and I’ve found that great.

I also needed to try and shift some stock - I’m waiting on getting paid for my book fair in Japan - and my little promotion with the arrival of my daughter worked quite well and I have to thank many of you on this newsletter who also purchased things, thank you. I also should start getting parental leave payments from the Australian government soon, but there was another form to complete to get that done, so we’ll see - hopefully this starts by this time next week.

My mind is starting to turn to the ‘what’s next’ question - and I feel that may be a good thing to write about for next week, so I’ll park that for now.

Finally, today I was stuck into design while the baby fed or slept and my partner didn’t need me. I managed to draft 248 pages of a book in one sitting (I already had the layout designed so it was a bit plug and play) - though I now need to edit and add text which will take 3-4 days on its own). I have three big design projects to complete and I want them all done by March - just so I can focus on other things.

I’m sure everyone’s life would look packed if they wrote it all out like I did. Sometimes I see friends who say ‘I read your newsletter mate life’s busy’ and I do feel busy, but I also took my daughter for a walk today, slept in, etc. I only write about the things that are active, not the rest or quiet parts of the week, so please don’t read this and think ‘shit Matt is TAPPED OUT’, as that would be a touch misleading.

Till next week,

Matt