Hello.
At 18, a test told me my talent was in art.
I spent the next twenty eight years in the business world. Here’s the short version: I’m a finance manager teaching myself surface pattern design, and writing down everything I learn so you don’t have to start from zero.
That’s the whole thing. Stay if that’s useful to you.
The test I set aside for thirty years.
When I was 18, I took an aptitude test at the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation. It said my natural aptitudes were in the arts. I had an “eye for design”.
My dad said he’d pay for business school.
So I got a business degree, a marketing minor, and a master’s in finance. I built a career with numbers. Good work. Stable work. Not the work the test pointed at.
Then I hit fifty.
What changed?
Over the holidays I had a stretch of quiet downtime, and I started thinking about the rest of my life. What I’d do when I retire. Why my work had started to feel thin.
So I pulled up that old aptitude test and read it cover to cover. I decided I wanted to make art for the rest of my life. One problem: I hadn’t picked up a brush in over twenty years.
The one-year promise.
I don’t believe in luck. I believe chance favors the prepared mind. So instead of waiting to feel ready, I set a constraint. One year. All of 2026. I find out if this is the thing. January through March, I lived inside YouTube tutorials and Skillshare courses, trying to figure out what I actually wanted to make. Graphic design. Typography. And somewhere in there, surface pattern design. That one stopped me.
Why surface pattern design?
It was the thing I’d always been quietly noticing. The notebooks, the planners. The prints on baby and toddler things at Pottery Barn Kids. For years I’d pick something up, turn it over, and think, “I can do that. I can design something like this.” Now I’m finding out if that’s true. I took Bonnie Christine’s Immersion program early on. A beautiful course. It was also further along than where I actually was, and pretending otherwise wouldn’t have helped me. That’s the whole point of this site.
What this blog is.
I’m a beginner. This is me documenting the real process. What I’m learning, what’s working, what isn’t, and what I’d do differently.
The actual work, written down as I go. My online diary. I can’t wait to look back on all my posts in 5 years.
If you’re starting where I’m starting, reach out, maybe we can help each other.
Start here…