Hello, I’m Kali!

My Journey

👩‍🏫 I spent my first career getting my Master’s of Arts in Teaching, teaching middle and high school math, coaching volleyball, while playing competitive Ultimate over the summer.

😓 For eight consecutive years, I ignored the little voice inside me saying that teaching wasn’t the right job for me and that I was overextending myself by trying to coach competitive club volleyball at the same time.

😵‍💫 Ignoring that voice led to chronic headaches, anxiety, depression and fertility struggles.

🕵️‍♀️ I realized I needed an overhaul of my daily routine. I started exploring art, forest bathing, mindfulness, body scans, acupuncture, therapy, and medication.

👩🏻‍🎨 When my daughter was born in the fall of 2019, I had no desire to do anything but hang with her all day and watch this incredible human that I created discover the world around her. That period of life was prolonged by the pandemic, and we ended up spending more time home together than I initially planned.

🐒 Eighteen months later, on a trip to the zoo, my daughter was more interested in the other families than the animals. I decided it was time to get her into daycare and it was time for me to develop my digital art and design skills.

👩🏻‍💻 I took Visual Design at General Assembly, loaded up on Skillshare classes and Dribbble workshops, and became a logo designer and a website designer.

👶 I created some pretty good momentum for Kali Joseph Design over the next year and a half but all of that came to a screeching halt when my son was born. He was healthy, but woke ~4 times a night for the first year no matter what we tried. The mystery was eventually solved, and ear tubes were put in place. By the time he was 18 months old, I started sleeping again.

🦈 It took a long time for work to pick back up again as the sleep deprivation sapped most of my creativity and motivation. I was treated for postpartum anxiety and depression.

🤹🏻‍♀️ My kids are 3 and 6 now and things seem to be evening out. I am still learning to juggle all the moving parts in my life. With every day that passes, I am learning how to set better boundaries and take better care of everyone in my life — including my kids, my clients, and most importantly myself.

🧑‍🎨 As I fight the urge to have more babies, I am pouring more creativity into Kali Joseph Design. In the coming months, I hope to begin selling artwork and networking more intentionally so that I can find the right clients for this work. If you’ve read this far, thank you!!! This is not a happy ending, but it certainly seems like a happy middle.