14th February 2025
Last week my arm went into crisis. I can think of no better way to describe it. There was no injury, but my shoulder, the shoulder of my drawing arm, became ‘impinged’. It hurt a LOT. It stopped me sleeping. No position relieved it and painkillers barely touched it. Not good, but worse than that, so very much worse, was the fact that I draw for a living and the fear of not being able to draw (and earn a living) was, well you can imagine.
The good news, the great news, is that whatever it was that pissed my arm off so royally began to recover with 2 emergency physio appts and a lot of Ibruprofen.
It did make me wonder, should I insure my arm, or is that something only rockstars do (apparently Mark King from Level 42 insured his thumb for a cool 3m)? The crisis was brief, my panic unnecessary, but for the next few days you will find me looking at rockstar insurance policies.
A little bit about me: Hi - I’m Cara, a Graphic Recorder and Illustrator working in the UK. Alongside my Graphic Recording business I also run the Graphic Change Academy training people around the world to work visually. See more here.
My book, Draw a Better Business is a visual thinking toolkit for creative thinking small business owners. See more about that here.
I have two publications here on Substack: The JOTT a weekly visual journal page, and The Visual Edit, a monthly newsletter for Graphic Recorders, Sketchnoters and Graphic Facilitators.
If you follow along then do say hi, I love to hear about how people are working visually and of course reconnect with any of our course graduates who have found their way to Substack.