Sourcebook through the years…

January 08, 2026

With the beginning of the New Year comes a new Sourcebook page. It’s never a good experience for me. Don’t get me wrong - the people at the Medical Illustration Sourcebook are really nice. Joanne is always helpful. Always. But I hate doing it. It’s an anxiety left over from my early years in this profession. It feels like putting your underwear out for people to judge. Maybe it’s just the introvert in me.

The process is always the same. You start by opening up all the work you’ve done in the last year…and then you wonder how it is you can hate all of it.

This past year has been hard. We’ve spent a lot of it recovering from the flooding after Helene. Our little town of Marshall NC had 29 feet of river rise and a lot of the south end of our town is gone. Wiped off the map. Through this experience I’ve gotten more involved locally, and joined the board on our local arts council. It gets better every month - we’re not digging out mud, we have windows and walls now, we’re safe. But when I take the time to look over a year’s worth of work - it just doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve only started taking any days off in the last month or so. An exhausting year feels like it should have more illustrations to show for it. This year we’re calling the ‘year of reclamation’. Reclaiming our lives outside of Marshall. Reclaiming hobbies, physical activity, reading, maybe even our garden - all of those things. And now I realize - I have to reclaim this too. I restarted and reclaimed this business in 2018. 2026 will not be a repeat of that experience, but it does feel like I need to take a deep breath, gird myself and push on. My hope for this year that I will get to create a few things I love…and maybe still love those pieces when it’s time to put together next year’s page. This year? Oooph. We’ll see.