What Sold at My First Market of 2026

(After I Stopped Working Three Days Early)

Three days before my first market of 2026, I stopped working. Not because I felt ready. Not because I felt calm. Not because I was certain I had enough. I stopped because I had told myself I would. I had finally followed through on the action that had been missing.

Usually, that is the exact moment I begin negotiating with myself. Just one more piece. Just a few more tins. You will feel better if you make more. You will feel safer if you make more. The voice sounds responsible. It sounds driven. It even sounds like care.

It is not.

Four days before the market, I had a conversation with my therapist about this exact pattern. I told her that the hardest part is not knowing what would help. I usually do know. The hardest part is following through once I am alone with the anxiety.

I said I panic about not having the thing someone might want. I imagine someone walking up to my stall, asking for a specific piece, and me having to say I do not have it. I worry about letting people down. About missing a sale. About not being enough.

At the same time, I also said I wanted to stop making before the market so I could prepare properly. So I was holding two truths at once: I know over-making exhausts me, and I am afraid of not having enough. That is the block.

It is not confusion. It is fear dressed up as productivity. In that session, I wrote a list. At the top it said something simple: “Stop making.” Underneath it was everything else I actually needed to do. None of it had anything to do with artwork. It was travel. Packing. Display planning. Admin. Eating. Sleeping. Practical things.

There was something about writing it down in that space that felt steady. Contained. Safe. I was not fighting myself. I was not negotiating. I was just naming what needed to happen. And then I took the list home and followed it. Not perfectly. Not heroically. Just step by step.

Seeing it written down made it harder to argue with. It made it clear that continuing to make was not preparation. It was avoidance. Because I had given myself those days, I had space to look properly at the travel. I assumed I would book a straightforward train and be done with it. Instead, I realised there were no direct trains to where the market was being held. If I had left that discovery until the last minute, it would have tipped me straight into panic. Instead, I had time.

Time to reroute. Time to work out that I would need to get a lift to a station several towns over. Time to accept it would mean a very early start. It was not seamless, but it was manageable.

I did notice myself becoming anxious about the minutes between stations. Watching connection times carefully. Calculating what would happen if one train was even slightly late. The anxiety crept in quietly, disguising itself as efficiency. Looking back, I can see I was searching for something to control. When the bigger structure feels uncertain, my brain zooms in on small details. Timetables. Margins. Minutes between platforms. It feels productive, but often it is just a way to soothe discomfort.

The difference this time was that the anxiety did not run the show. I could see it. I could name it. And because I had prepared early, the logistics were not layered on top of exhaustion. Preparation did not remove the nerves. It just stopped them from multiplying. I still am struggling with over preparing in situations that may not warrant it.

I treated the market like an in-person shop update rather than something I had to cram for. I sent a newsletter the week before. I shared posts in the lead-up. I let people know what would be there. And on the actual day, I did not post at all. That was deliberate.

I did not want to split my attention between selling and performing. I did not want to panic-broadcast my way through it. I wanted to be present with the people in front of me. I used to believe that constant visibility was a form of insurance, that if I was not loudly present I would somehow disappear. This time, I trusted the groundwork.

Sunday travel was still chaotic. Blocked roads. Delays. The kind of disruption that normally tips me into self-blame. In the past, I would have taken that as confirmation that I should have worked harder. That I should have made more. ;But I had prepared. I had slept. I had packed carefully. I had not drained myself in the days before. There was space inside me to handle the disruption. Preparation protected me in a way overworking never has.

There were wobbles throughout the day. My phone clung stubbornly to 3G. The signal dropped mid-payment. For a moment I felt the old surge of panic, the familiar heat rising in my chest. A year ago, that might have unravelled me. This time, I breathed. I explained. I tried again. I asked for help.

Regulation is something I am learning not as a concept, but as a practice. And then there were the sales.

I sold 45 small tin reminders, 10 medium pieces, 5 ornaments, 5 blue line drawings, 3 original drawings and 3 older prints. Three of the blue drawings were bought by therapists for their spaces, which felt quietly significant given how much of my work circles around steadiness and nervous systems.

It ended up being my best market yet. I made what I made at my Christmas market in just two and a half hours. What struck me most was not just the total. It was what sold. The small reminders were still the heartbeat. Not the loudest pieces. Not the most elaborate. The steady ones. The ones people hold and exhale over.

Data is calmer than anxiety. Data does not shout. It tells you what is true.

There were other small lessons woven into the day. Some pieces I had not even displayed were asked for by name. I invested in a pair of small upgrades that changed the physical experience of my stall. First, I raised the height of my table using stackable adjuster bed risers on these ones, which meant my work sat at a more comfortable viewing angle rather than being hunched over. It sounds simple, but the added height gave the whole setup more presence and made conversations easier.

Second, I used a triple row plywood display stand to layer smaller pieces without crowding the table. It helped everything feel intentional and calm rather than crammed in at the last minute.

These are not affiliate links, just things I bought and found genuinely useful. If you do markets, small structural tweaks like this can make a bigger difference than another late night of making.

My sister stood beside me all day, carrying boxes, taking payments, noticing when I had not eaten. Support felt less like weakness and more like infrastructure. The biggest shift, though, was internal. I did not leave replaying the day, calculating imaginary lost income because I stopped three days early. I did not tell myself I should have done more. I left feeling steady. I was exhausted though. I used to believe markets rewarded exhaustion. That if I pushed hard enough, I would earn my way through.

What I am starting to understand is this: they reward clarity, energy and presence. And presence is much easier to access when you have not abandoned yourself in the process.
Stopping early was not laziness. It was alignment. It was keeping my word to myself.

And that, more than the sales figure, feels like the real success.