# Road Map... *Road map for my life.* By [RockTower](https://paragraph.com/@rocktower) ยท 2025-07-26 --- When getting involved with crypto and looking into different projects to invest in. One thing I always enjoyed looking at was their road map. It always gave me a little insight to what was going and where they were at, but also which direction they were heading in. To this day I still look for road maps on the certain projects I am interested in. I am not naive I know things can change and often life throws curve balls as us. But I think still having a plan for how you would like things to play out is a good idea. It is like having a vision board. I decided to take this concept and a way of organizing and apply it to my life. See if maybe I can get those goals I have set out to do. I am not going to put a time limit on when things need to be done by, because I feel that is not how life works. Most things aren't done because of a linear time, goals get accomplished by achieving and finishing the goal before it. Plus also I am leaving room for that wild card variable. Why do I need a road map? Back in 2017 I ended up getting an offer from a friend that I couldn't refuse. It was to take over their small art studio downtown of my home town. I jumped on the opportunity, it was in my price range and it was a little space I could call home for my creative soul. Plus it was in the heart of downtown. Over the next year or so. I made it home and became friends with the other artist in the building. It has its own little charm, and I started to expand my skills, leaning new techniques. I was starting to blossom. But one thing I realized was I was out growing the space and fast. I saw another opportunity in my building with a studio opening up and becoming more available. I quickly jumped on that. This space was so much bigger, and had its own sink, I had a little corner I could make into a office space and I had plenty of room to be able to have work benches. It was large enough I could also fit a dinning room table, for 8. It was a great space for me to be able to spread out my stuff on and eventually start teaching some classes. Once a month, the building would host an art walk where we had hundreds of people flood through the building and seeing what the local artist has to offer. I meet so many wonderful people. It was like having my own little gallery show in my studio. My dreams were starting to come true. Working for my self and doing what I loved the most. Just being creative! Good times must come to an end,.. right... Well in the begining of 2020 I had decided to take a leap of faith and quit my full time job. I had put my notice in, in January of 2020. I knew I was leaving a supervisor position, and the job I was leaving did require some knowledge. I wanted to give them some time for me to be able to find a replacement but also hopefully I could train them. But also because I was excited to just get on with my life and wanted to talk about it openly with my friends. So I had planned my last day at that job to be at the end of March around my birthday. Well in the middle of March COVID hit. And everything was shutting down. But since I worked at a health food store in the herbal supplement department. We were consided "essential". You can only imagine how I felt near the end of my job. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I had never seen panic buying like that before. Well it wasn't too long after my time there I realized what was happening and how my dreams were going to be thrown off course for a while. My source of income through classes and the art walks were put on hold. I didnt know how long for. But I just had a feeling it was going to be longer then the "two weeks" they said. Through my family and partner. I was able to keep the studio doing for a little while longer. Some how I was able to keep it going for a year and half. Around the end of 2021 the building had changed hands to a new owner. With very little notice they jacked up our rent, in some cases doubling in size, and with Art Walks no longer really being a thing like it had been prior. I had to make some tough calls. After deliberatin on what to do with my partner. We decided to ditch the studio and work from home but in order to do that we would need to move. So we moved to a different apartment one with two bedrooms. The apartment happen to be in the same building so it did make the move easier. Since I would not longer be getting the exposer like I had before. I decided to take up going to vendor shows and getting my name out that way. This became great, I got to work at home making things for shows. Got to wake up and get a cup of coffee and go right to work. My creative flow was at full max. Up late night drafting, and cutting and assembling. I had a routine. For a while I was doing well with this, but I started to realize like before I have quickly out grown it. To the point it has become hard to work there. At this point I am missing my big studio. Enter the wild card. Well one thing that was thrown into the mix was the wild card of the economy. 2023/ 2024, the elections were heating up, things were getting more intense though out the country. The economy wasn't doing good, prices were going up. Well when that happens people spend less money. The events I was doing were decent events, but I kept noticing I wasn't leaving with as much as I had when I first started. After talking to other vendors and noticing they were experiencing the same thing. We started to realize people were not spending as much because they can't afford it. I tried gearing the things I made to smaller and more affordable items, such as keychains and earrings for like $5 a piece. Still didn't help as much as I would have liked. Well all of this had lead me to finally having to break down an get a part time job. It was one of the hardest things I had to do. I felt like I was giving up on my dreams. I kept telling myself this is only temporary. I will do this until I can get myself going again. In some way I knew I was lieing to myself. I made the best of it. I have made some new friends and I am thankful for that. A few months ago I noticed something about myself. I started to care less and less about my own business, I let my website go and haven't done much with it. I hadn't drafted a new project in months. And I had felt my creative spark starting to die. I felt this sadness almost a mourning for what once was. I knew something needed to change. I was loosing who I was, I needed to do something and get myself back on track. I decided to create a road map for myself and start achieving my goals again. Because once when you get those first goals met, the goals after become easier. With this new Base platform, it has given me knew ideas on ways I can interact with the public and ways to bring my creativity to a new level. So for those who are interested and for my own personal accountability here is my road map. Social media presence: * Follow 5 new people a day. Try to find people with similar interests in either art, crypto, or just funny memes. * Get a few new followers a day. * Post a few times daily * Write a post in Paragraph at least once a week on a topic of interest. * Come up with new ideas to engage with the public. Example: fun facts, photos of interesting things, random quotes. * Document my moose hunt in the fall and the leading up to it. * Show off some of my art, explain what I was thinking when I created it and if there is any story behind it. Business related: * Work on website to get it public again, which will include a shopify store where people can buy some of my work. * Rebrand with a new launch in the digital space. * Create some new products. Longer term goals: * Start to think about getting a new studio, one that is larger than what I have now. * Expand into local shops. * Add more inventory to the mix of items I sell at events and online. Including plants and stones for events and merch and POD for online. * Get property where a permanent studio can be created, for the intent of larger projects, and as a base of operation. Thank you for taking the time to read this. "Be the change you wish to see" - Gandhi --- *Originally published on [RockTower](https://paragraph.com/@rocktower/road-map)*