Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsey Petersen.
Lindsey, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It begins with my tenacity & free spirit. I’ll try and give you the quickest version but My story is a story that took just as many gritty moments as it did miracles. I’m not talking about some insane story where I walk out of a burning building & my life has changed overnight. When I say miracles, I mean the minuscule moments that we probably don’t even know are going to change our lives.
My childhood sucked to say the least. My dreams of playing soccer at a competitive level had been crippled after breaking my right tibia twice & By Jr year of high school when everyone started to ask what I was going to do with myself after graduating I always remember thinking “travel, I just want to travel.” There was no career attached to the answer or means of how I was going to travel I just knew I wanted to travel.
The voices of society that had persuaded so many before me also had me in the incorrect mindset of “there’s a degree or there’s failure.” I graduated High school early & reluctantly enrolled in a nursing track. This was the only way I would be granted the parental signature needed to graduate early & I wanted out. I was working 2 jobs & attending school full-time for about a year when My boyfriend Decided to break my heart. This was miracle #1. You see, after all the sh*t (am I allowed to say that? I had already endured. I wasn’t going to be Caught dead crying into a bowl of ice cream & watching Nicholas sparks movies for months. I was going to overcome this with fire & passion & truth. I took a “break” from school & bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii with $2k to my name & no reason to care what anyone else thought I should be doing with my life. This began the journey to building a life even bigger than my dreams.
In walks miracle #2: My friend Jessica, who had joined my adventure to Hawaii, were hitchhiking to Coconut Island. Two girls picked us up & as we were chatting them up, we found out they were travel nurses. Here I am thinking “oh great I’ll ask them all about it they’ll convince me that I’m on the right track I’ll return to school and I’ll be a travel nurse.” I was excitedly questioning their experiences in Hawaii thus far and all they could say was “well, we’ve been here three weeks and this is the first time we’ve seen anything other than the inside the hospital walls” That was it, any hope anyone had of me returning to school died & left in a coffin in that back seat of that car. I knew Immediately upon hearing that I would never be happy with any sort of usual career.
I’m 19 when I returned to my hometown from Hawaii broke, with no job & no car. Everyone & their mother is asking me when I’m going to return to school & assume I have no plans for my life. Not to worry though! I decide I will basically beg for my old dishwashing job back at a family-owned Mexican restaurant worked at in high school since I can longboard to & from work. In walks miracle #3 They’re looking for a waitress! Have I ever done anything like this before? Absolutely not! Did I return at 4pm for my first shift of “training” where I was greeted by a line of customers wrapped around the building & frantically thrown a notepad & apron followed by “here Jelepeno, (the nickname given to me by the owner) do you think you can take orders? Just do what you think a waitress does! It’s too busy to train you!” Absolutely. This shaped me into a fantastic waitress & for the next 6 years, I worked 6 doubles a week. I would never have known waitressing would perfectly accommodate & fund my travel desires without the sequence of miracles up to this point. I was traveling frequently, I met the perfect partner who allowed me to stay as free-spirited & tenacious as I pleased & dreamed just as big for himself. I save up for a little ford ranger, I end up living in the back of it for 6 months while saving up for my first apartment. Steve & I find this oddly enjoyable.
I’m 22 & in walks miracle #4. Art had always been a part of my life but it was more of a secret peacekeeper I used for myself. I also thought my work was “to weird” or “not good enough” to share with others for a long time. Steve & I used our second bedroom as a shared studio space for his music & my art. I was working on a new collection of what I referred to as the “Creature collection.” Steve popped over my shoulder as I was working on one exclaiming, “wow these are pretty cool Linds, I bet people would pay for these if you wanted to do something with this.” His vote of confidence got me thinking & I found my way to my first art event where I blew myself away. At the time, I had the creatures & very few other drawings. I won a prize that was voted on by the public & I made just as much money as I did on an average waitress shift. This is the first time I have begun to taste the power in sharing my artwork.
I’m 24, right up until the Pandemic times, I’m still enjoying this same pattern of waitressing, traveling more than most & returning home to do it all again till the next trip. My Art style is developing as I grow, learn & heal through all of my experiences traveling & Pershing a more non traditional life. I’m selling more & more artwork but my waitress schedule makes it difficult to book as many art events as I’d like. Pandemic times take over, traveling comes to a stop, restaurants close, & money is tight. My imagination runs wild 24/7 so when the pandemic granted me endless free time, I was able to give my imagination access to unlimited creative time & use the energy I was putting into my shifts, in my small art business.
Traveling has taught me so much about different walks of life and given me so much light & inspiration that I wanted to pour into others through my artwork. Early on in my travel career, everywhere else felt more like home than home itself. Travel made me feel alive, it brought me joy, excitement, fulfillment, and knowledge! I needed more all the time! Right before the world shut down, Steve & I had been planning to move to AZ. We would scoop up some restaurant jobs buy a house & begin a bus conversion. That was the plan at least. After months of researching & planning our bus conversion, it became clear the world wasn’t returning to normal anytime soon so why should we!? We made the decision to buy a bus & use our down payment money intended for buying a house, to complete the Skoolie conversion of our dreams. We would save up as much as we could while converting the bus & building our small businesses to sustain us traveling full time.
Miracle #5 I was lucky enough to be part of the Rosemary & Jeans Public house crew. This is Another family-owned restaurant who took incredibly good care of its employees during the pandemic. As restrictions begin to lift, I now have boatloads of artwork to share but it’s difficult to find Art events to join again. I see this as an opportunity to fill the void. Rosemary & jeans just so happen to be the most adorable venue I’ve ever seen nuzzled into a 100-year-old house! I think it will be a fantastic space to hold a pop up art gallery giving local artists & makers an opportunity to sell their work so I pitch the idea to the owner! The event is a smashing success & over the next 2 years, I am able to host several successful galleries, learn the ropes of curating, build my brand,& create a genuine environment lucrative to everyone involved.
We finished the build in May of 2022 & spent The summer we camped at Lake Alexander campground on the Kankakee river in Illinois. My Art sales began to hit numbers consistent with the numbers needed to survive on the road & I continued to waitress to fund the build & a nice cushion for emergencies. We have officially been on the road to 1 month. We drove all the way from Chicago to Austin & I’ve got Imaginables booked solid for events in Austin through Christmas!
More than anything it is important to me that others find inspiration, deep healing & encouragement through the life I live & the messages I spread through my artwork. The grand reveal of my story has really just begun but now I know that as long as you practice discipline & fearlessly chase your most authentic desires, you will succeed. However, success doesn’t come without failure & the most fearless thing you can do is continue to pursue anything you’ve failed at.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The bus build itself was grueling. So incredibly rewarding but also grueling. Steve and I did all the work, just the two of us. We’re talking 18-hour days, we spent nine months of our build time living in it with no water, over the winter. We were going out to a well during the snow & cold to get water. We got held up for months at a time at multiple points in the billing process because of waiting for things to ship due to Covid.
It’s A LOT! Who on earth decides to convert a bus into their full-time home, build their own small business, work full time & heal their inner child all at once!? That would be me, of course.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Art holds an enormous amount of power, connecting us more deeply to each other & the universe. Here at Imaginables, we aspire to inspire! Find encouragement, healing, tenacity, inspiration & more through the creations Of Imaginables. We believe your greatest Dreams outweigh your biggest fears & fully intend to exploit that fire for the benefit of every hungry soul out there. Get connected through Art prints, dr wood burning and so much more!
If you just keep your faith God will make sure it all works out for you.
Contact Info:
- Website: Imaginablesart.com
- Instagram: Www.instagram.com/Lindsey.petersen
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imaginables.8/
- Other: https://linktr.ee/Imaginablesart
