Bikes, Paintings, and Chopping Off My Hair

My 2023 Year in Review

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

First of all: welcome to my new space for my newsletters! I’m finally joining the party here on Substack.

I am loving the collective energy around this new year. This time in 2023, I was NOT feeling the ‘New Year New Me’ vibes. I was very much “fuck the Gregorian calendar, we’re still supposed to be HIBERNATING” vibes. And I was sick.

From my post on January 3, 2023:

“It was very difficult for me to make money last year. I was ghosted an insane number of times, not only by potential clients but people I had worked with already, and that was really upsetting and challenging to deal with.

2023's focus is finally putting a pause on the relentless entrepreneur artist/designer hustling and finding a full time job that I actually like. Saving to buy a house. And riding my bike a lot. Keeping my drawing practice sacred and only for me.”

Well, I did ride my bike a lot. About 1,300 miles. I didn’t do any of those other things though lol.

I have a draft of this letter that I wrote in December. And it’s a bummer honestly. It concludes with, “Okay, I am struggling to write this. Every time I write a newsletter it feels so negative. I omitted so much stuff from the last one. When does it cross the line from thank you for being authentic and sharing your struggle and helping others feel less alone, to: wow this is a slog, just shut up!?”

But I’m emerging from a month off Instagram as well as three days in a remote mountain cabin with a group of some of my most special friends, and I’m ready to share with a more balanced perspective. :)

My 2023 Year In Review

MTB Friends, digital painting, June 2023

I started off the year focusing on rebuilding my website in Webflow. I also created my first Twitch overlay: A reaction to a Tiktok where a ‘Sell Digital Products on Etsy’ Influencer shared an ~untapped niche~ with lots of searches but little competition. “I have no idea what a Twitch overlay is, and this is definitely something you’d need to be an advanced designer for…” I couldn’t resist the temptation. I know what that is! I’m ✨advanced!✨

I upleveled my motion design skills quite a bit for this project. When I created my second overlay, I got a little too in the weeds. I learned how to create animated stream alerts, which took two full days. It burnt me out and the second one got way less favorites and sales. So I didn’t make another one.

I do plan on returning to this revenue stream (excuse the pun) in the new year, with an additional component: I am going to stream!!! More on that soon.

At the end of January 2023, I created one of my favorite graphic design pieces. A local cycling group I planned to join had an outdated logo, and I was inspired to create something new.

I invited them to use the work, but they told me that they were already working with one of the member’s husbands, who “told them what font to use”.

And thus, what was once a benign dislike evolved into a passionate vendetta against the typeface Brandon Grotesque.

My intention for creating the graphic was mostly for developing my own skills and having a new portfolio piece, also a bit of “hello new community I need y’all to know I can do stuff like this”, but my ego couldn’t help but inject a little cheeky feeling of rejection and judgement every time I saw their ‘official’ logo.

In March, I rode my first gravel century at the Midsouth in Stillwater, Oklahoma! The last time I had been on a 100 mile ride was years ago with my Austin crew. This was my first Big Cycling Event. Despite a slow start as my lungs struggled to warm up and my heartrate beat stubbornly high, I finally got into the groove and felt great for the entire ride.

About to roll out / Finding Russell and sharing his joint! 😜 😋

Highlights included riding along with some of my Austin/Cycleast buddies, and flying past my fellow slow pokes in the mountain bike trail section. 😈 I got pretty good at riding my gravel bike on singletrack when I moved to ~The MTB Capitol of the World~ with a mountain bike that was broken and unridable for the first few months lol.

In April, Daniel and I drove to St. Louis to see 100 Gecs! We met up with my cousin Caitlin and her bf at the farmers market and they accompanied us to St. Louis Art Supply. I expected it to be a big art store, but it was actually very small space that only carried high quality supplies, much of it imported from Japan. I was in heaven! It felt good to be back in a big city.

Flowers and Rat, Gouache on paper, 11x14”

In May, it was time to attempt another gravel century, the Femmes Gravel 100.

It was a wet and rainy morning. I made strawberry lucky charm rice cakes! Jerod taught me about these rice cakes at the Midsouth. They’re a recipe from the Feed Lab book. They’re unlike any other ride snack in that you truly feel a major boost in your HP shortly after eating them, and they cure cramps 90% of the time.

As the day went on, the weather shifted from grey and rainy to hot and humid. My nutrition and hydration was on point but my body just wasn’t having it. There was one point where I had to fight really hard to not stop and lay down on the side of the road. I had never had that urge on a bike ride. It was like my body was begging me to just lay down and die. Finally, at mile 69, in the middle of nowhere Missouri, I called it. We had arrived at a rest stop where two friends were waiting with sodas and snacks. After my group fueled up and continued riding, I stayed with the friends and they drove me to Rucker’s Music and Mayhem, a karaoke bar that I’ve always been curious about.

“Are you sure you want us to leave you… here?” They asked as we parked in front of the run down building, the parking lot nearly empty.

“Yeah! I’ve always wanted to come here. My husband will pick me up!”

I had to admit the bar looked a bit… ominous, but I’m not a true crime girlie. Being abducted and tortured simply isn’t part of my reality.

My time at Ruckers was pleasant. I had a Shirley Temple and chatted with the owner about his extensive collection of cool swords displayed throughout the space.

Then Daniel took me to the river. It was the perfect end to the day.

Later in the month, I bought a new 180mm camera lens and photographed the Rule of 3 bike race. I was really proud of the images I captured. Lots of people sent messages thanking me for photographing the “back end”/slower riders of the race. As a slower rider myself I related to the feeling of not being photographed or celebrated as Part of the Thing so I was thrilled to be able to provide that for people.

Austin friend Alicia pulling up to the finish line! If I remember correctly, I think she said, “I feel like punching someone!” LOL

May also brought me a really fun brand design client! Chelsea, a longtime friend and coven-mate from Austin, contacted me to design the brand for her new yoga coaching venture.

”The best part was how you just ~got it~! From the moment we started, it really felt like you saw the brand vision as clearly as I did. I never had one moment of doubt or question that we weren’t on the same page. It felt effortless. From our initial conversation to the mood board to the final design elements, you captured my vision and artfully brought it to life. The brand guidelines for real inspire me and help me remember why I’m doing this <3”

Aunt Donna visited and she rode my mountain bike through one of my favorite little sections of trails near my house. She is a cyclist, but was so nervous after not riding for awhile. She did great though. I was so proud of her.

In June I finally cut off my hair!!!!

I couldn’t find any stylists online in Bentonville that seemed like they knew how to do what I wanted, so I drove two hours north to Kansas city. I stayed the night at a hippie farm/retreat space, shopped at the creative reuse center, and attended the miniatures show. It was a fun trip but I missed my husband.

My friend Sarah started a women’s mountain bike ride on Wednesday nights leaving from the bike shop where she works, which just so happens to be a 5 minute ride from my house. This was the group I needed to encourage me to ride some of the trails I had been too scared to attempt alone, and I quickly fell much more deeply in love with mountain biking. I declared the summer of 2023 Mountain Bike Girl Summer. I joined Buddy Pegs as a mountain bike camp counselor for lil kids.

Moth Flies in My Face While I’m Practicing Trackstands in the Yard, Gouache on paper, 8x10”

This is one of my favorite paintings of the year. I love that it combines an autobiographical element with abstraction and nature. Three common themes in my work that don’t often appear all together in one piece. As soon as this moth flew in my face I knew I had to paint it.

Solstice Unicorn I and II, Gouache on paper, 7x5”

Baby Unicorn, Gouache on paper, approx. 3x2”

In July, Sarah and Luke visited for my birthday. We went on an epic eMTB adventure. My mom got me a sewing machine!

I launched Junco Eclectic, an experiment in ecommerce.

I went on a solo 20 mile mountain bike ride from my house to Tanyard Creek Falls. I listened to this album on repeat and now it always brings me back to that day and how badass and accomplished I felt.

Dark Botanical, Gouache on Panel, 6x8”

In August Daniel and I traveled to West Virginia for a really beautiful wedding. Then our friends Mike, Joe, and Tess visited. We, of course, went on another rented eMTB adventure. It felt so, so healing to have the three of them stay with us. I hardly looked at my phone. We saw the Smashing Pumpkins and I cried during 1979 even though I told Daniel I wouldn’t when he teased me that I was going to. Having stylish Tess with us gave me the confidence I needed for this outfit:

Daniel and I traveled again to Taos, New Mexico for another wedding. Then we rented the most incredible little cabin with a private waterfall for our anniversary.

I finished this abstract oil painting that I had been battling since before we moved to Arkansas, and built a frame for it with my new miter saw:

My Chaotic Friend, Oil on canvas, 16x20”

In September I finished another oil painting:

The Gardener, Oil on canvas, 18x24”

In October, Daniel and I attended our first market as Junco Eclectic. It was a cold, windy day. Despite feeling super motivated during the week before as I madly prepped, the day exhausted me so much that I didn’t attend the other two markets that I had planned for the season.

By November, my allergies had become so severe that I had to stop riding my bike. It’s a yearly cycle that I’m used to, but it still sucked. I got depressed. I was struggling with trying to build the new Junco Eclectic brand, starting to understand that I really didn’t have the resources or support to bring this vision to life.

Daniel and I visited his family in Houston for Thanksgiving which is always fun. We went to a very fancy and overpriced estate sale where I bought a giant vintage pad of Arches watercolor paper for $15. We had to ship it home for $40. Still way less than I would have paid for a pad of that size new!

One day I mysteriously woke up at 5 am and painted this giant watercolor Vaporeon on my new-to-me paper.

In December I finally saw the Barbie movie. I logged out of Instagram to give my brain some space. After 9 total sales, I shut down Junco Eclectic, and plan to simplify by just having a shop on noelkalmus.com. I made lots of nice presents for my peeps. We got a new artificial tree that is big house sized, an upgrade from my bachelorette pad sized skinny pencil tree. We visited my family for Christmas and Abilene tried it’s hardest to give me an upper respiratory infection just in time for New Year’s friends cabin, but it only succeeded in robbing me of one Abilene family day with a 24 hour stomach bug.

One more 2023 Win:

After drinking way too much Rumpelmintz from a peppermint shotglass on Christmas Eve 2022, I spent the next day horribly hungover. For the first half of 2023, I didn’t drink any alcohol. I gradually reintroduced it with a drink at a wedding, a glass of wine on our anniversary. At our new years cabin, I planned to drink kind of a lot, and just stay hydrated. I found that I didn’t really want to. I couldn’t bring myself to drink straight Mezcal, a past favorite. I had a few drinks and stayed hydrated throughout the night. I didn’t get hungover. I’ve truly transformed my relationship with alcohol, and I’m grateful for that.

Finally having the focus to sit down and sift through my planner and camera roll to assemble my 2023 Year in Review has been healing. Before this I remembered it as one big sad money struggle, but I did have so much fun riding my bike and creating some cool paintings. I’m feeling much more prepared for financial success as an artist, designer, and brand strategist in 2024 with some exciting plans and goals, but that’s for another post. :)

Thanks for being here. Happy 2024!

Love,

Noëllie 💚