Let Me Introduce Myself...
My name is Fatima Learn and I am an artist/mother extraordinaire. I was born first generation Canadian in Toronto to Portuguese immigrant parents. My family recalls my interest in art starting as a child when I would colour on walls, tables and dolls faces much to their dismay. After high school, I strayed from my passion and started a 9 to 5 office clerk job. To my surprise and the disappointment of some people around me, I quit a perfectly good full-time job with advancement opportunities and started studying Art and Design in college.
Life Changing Choice
Several years into my post secondary education, something happened that changed my life path. Steve Jobs, decided to introduce Apple products to design education. All of a sudden every art related classroom had a Macintosh Apple computer in it. My exposure to seminars, lectures and demonstrations of the Apple products changed my life. I believed computers were going to make a difference in the way we work and live.
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Well folks, I bought into the dream and the path I took was to specialize in Prepress Production Art - a career in the computer graphics industry which allowed me to make a decent income. The perfect career for someone who wanted stability and be creative. That is what I thought anyways. Now when I reflect on that time, I wish I had just bought Apple stocks and kept painting instead.
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The Path Taken
Fast-forward a few more years – My husband Mark and I lived in a suburb north of Toronto that was our "starter home". It had become inconvenient to move once the kids arrived and started school. We both made a decent income, worked near home and the grandparents were close enough to help take care of the kids. Life was very busy but somehow I became unhappy. Fortunately, I was able to change my work lifestyle and pursue painting full-time again in 2012. I even went back to college for Museum and Gallery studies with the support of my husband and kids.
My desire and expertise to be a career painter artist was beginning to take shape and progress. Then the unthinkable happened to our family. My husband Mark, was diagnosed with cancer and thirteen months later he passed away.
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Getting Back On My Feet
I returned to my former full-time corporate lifestyle. This decision was to help me get out of financial trouble but it came with a price. I began to lose touch with the painting arts community and saw less and less of my kids. I picked up some bad habits that were unhealthy and regrets started surfacing which was leading to depression. This could not be the next chapter in my life so I wrote down a question for myself. How can I live a better life?
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Time To Create A Better Lifestyle
There are no shortcuts and no easy over night solution for success but there is a better way to earn a living and spend more time with those you love. By leveraging the power of the internet, I am learning to grow my income as I continue to be true to myself. Life is too short to live with regret and you can’t change what happened, but you can still change what's to come.