Panic makes the heart grow manic

The beginning of this week was hard, made possible by me. I had a dream that my book was being picked up by McMillan, but it had a different name for some reason. I was overjoyed and then I woke up anxious and sad. I am working less at Joe because summer staff is cut by our business going down due to students being away. I do not mind working less to focus on freelance, but sadly I still need a paycheck from Joe. Also freelance comes and goes freely so I find that I am not sure if will fill in the gaps until someone asks me to do a job or to buy a painting. I know it is something that I will have to get used to being in business for myself, but I have a hard time not focusing on having enough work, constantly. I dwell and dwell and dwell...its compulsive and completely unproductive.

So, having spent most of the week worrying about money I felt really dumb when four jobs came up. I guess its the worlds way of making me feel dumb. I was stressed because I did not have enough work and now I am worried about getting it all done.
Now the goal is to keep things in perspective and if I do not have a freelance project lined up, but free time I should just make some work for myself. I also do have savings, but I am so used to pretending that they do not exist that I forget the rule of a freelancer; which is to prepare for the lean times by saving up for them constantly. Currently, the big corporate project I have going on, which we shall call Corp. is going slowly, but they have not run the other way (yay!). I have a freelance job coming in at some point of an animal portrait, I just finished the illustration above of Kenzo, Ming, and Mulan, another possible piece for a friend...which I hate doing because I feel guilty about charging for my time, and a project that is illustrations for a book project.

The book project is nonpaying currently, of course, but it has a fair amount of potential. It came up this week and the woman wants to submit samples and the manuscript to her agent this week. I really like that she wants to act fast, has an agent (who is kind of a big deal), she has three novels that all did well, and has a fourth that is coming out in September. In addition, this book has legs and is completely series material. All signs point to yes, but I have doubts in my own ability and of course doubts that a publisher will take me if the book gets picked up. Luckily, I am a doer and I am going to do the crap out of this project and I will channel my idol while doing it.