"I’m not great at being super organized, but I realized that if I wanted to find the time to myself to be creative, I HAD to make myself a schedule and get help with childcare AND that it was crucial for me to have an area separate from my kids to work in. I got lucky last year and had a friend offer me a room in her studio to use at my convenience. That was really a turning point for me in realizing how important my art is to my well-being and how worthwhile it is to spend my energy carving out time and resources to continue making it a priority. My advice to anyone else in my situation would definitely be to sit down and look at your schedule really closely and see where you could fit in a few hours here and there. Honestly, I probably only have 5 hours a week or so to paint, but that’s five hours I didn’t have last year, so I’ll take it and hopefully grow with it!" -Jenny Kersting