This post has taken me a billion years to write. I just can’t figure out what I want to say about these beautiful pictures that my good friend Trevor Beaty took for me (seriously Trevor you do amazing work) but I thought what better day to share them than my birthday!! Hello 24, how are you?!

I wanted to do a stylized lifestyle photo shoot in my current apartment so I could remember how queenikathleeni looked at the very beginning. I’m moving out of this apartment soon and I just don’t want to forget this time and what it looks like. When I first moved in I had a desk with a piece of my artwork framed on it and some pencils but not much else. It was minimalist and lasted a hot second. I am currently busting at the seams with shipping materials, original pieces of artwork and product that I have nowhere to go with. But I hate traditional “home tours” or stylized lifestyle shoots because that’s not what anyone’s life looks like. So let me tell you this first: all of my clutter was shoved under my bed about thirty minutes before these pictures were taken and I can’t even open up my closet right now because it is so packed full of crap. I cleaned for a week straight before the pictures were taken…Welcome to my messy life. With all of that being said, this is kind of what a more organized version of my life would look like. It’s colorful, it’s creative and it’s caffeinated.

I say this all of the time but my life looks nothing like what I thought it would look like and I struggle with that. I’m in counseling right now to try and figure out how I can make my mind a better and more accepting place of what I have chosen to do. I recently figured out that all of the judgements are made up in my own head because of insecurities I have about being an artist. Despite all of my own critiques of myself, I feel really lucky that about three or four days a week I get to live my dream and decide what that looks like for me each day. Some days it is much more of a struggle than others to get the motivation to be my own boss and to be quite honest, when I look at my bank account at certain times, I’m not sure how this is ever going to work out, but it does.

I will most likely be in a work/live situation for the next several years but I’m so excited that my art will have its own little studio room/office in my next apartment (fingers crossed). I have hopes and dreams for this that are hard for me to explain but trust me, in my head, the future of my business looks just fantastic. I’m working on being happy with where I am right now but not content. It’s not my best skill but when I look at these photos, how could I not be happy? I’m quite certain it is my purpose in life to share my talents in this form with the world. That is a good feeling at 24 to know that. I’m sure it will take on different forms and look quite different in a few years but I am in the right spot, with the right people, headed the right direction. All is well.

Love to my readers,

qk

*All photos in this post are copyright and belong to Trevor Beaty.