Every Small Victory Matters

Maria Montes
3 min readSep 27, 2022

Life can be exhausting, specially if you deeply care about what’s going on here in Melbourne, and around the world. Having high levels of empathy can be a blessing and a heavy burden for some of us.

In these days, I have a few close friends of mine going through very difficult family situations, and I am as emotionally invested as I know they would be, if I was the one in their shoes right now.

For this May edition, I have decided to celebrate four wins, because I believe that every small victory matters, and most importantly, because I believe that life and joy is worthwhile celebrating amongst all.

1)
A few months ago, I wrote about losing my Spanish citizenship and how this unfortunate event shook me emotionally, right in the middle of a global pandemic where traveling across continents, feels like a nostalgic dream from the past. After eight months, I finally recovered it, and I’m now in the process of re-obtaining my EU passport.

Australia is still closed for international traveling, unless you leave the island for over a three-month period, so shortly I’m hoping to be in a position where I can travel back home if my family need me.

2)
A few days ago, my friend Adam Sughito celebrated his company’s 10th Anniversary under the theme “What can you do in ten?” Adam and I met each other over a decade ago, and he has been the reason why I started writing these email newsletters in the first place, so THANK YOU very much for your wise advice Adam.

As part of Intentional’s birthday celebration, Adam invited me to be a panelist alongside Daniel Flynn from Thank You. Basically, I summarised my last 10 years as an Independent designer in 10 minutes under the title “Good Shit Takes Time”. If you have been traveling with me for a while, you’ll know that I spent two years working on personal project called “The Shit Series”, so the topic is pretty familiar to me.

On May 21, Intentional hosted their virtual event and you can watch it here. I have decided to share my presentation publicly, for anyone who’d find it useful. Additionally, I offered a Birthday Giveaway which you can access for free here.

3)
A couple of months ago, Rotson Studios celebrated its seventh birthday. I can’t believe it’s been such a long time since Robert Tickner and I opened this creative space, and I have to say that it has been one of the proudest ventures up to date!

March 2021 marked one year since the beginning of the Pandemic, and I’m happy to share that our studio is full, housing twenty creatives whose work you should definitely check out:

petertarasiuk.com, teaganglenane.com, madevisual.com.au, knowstudio.com, spadeandarrow.com.au, sharrock.desig, mariamontes.net, socialspace.com.au, jessevogelaar.com, gxspxr.com, rohanporteous.com, johncitizen.net, jeffthepeff.com, oakandink.com, amarywiggin.com, tareknagy.com, either-either.com, lanning.work, frawleydesign.com.au, lucycawood.net

4)

On April 30, my Green Fairy Font turned three years old! And to celebrate it I have applied a 30% discount available at My Fonts and on my online store. Promotion ends June 17, 2021.

This article was originally written as part of my May 2021 bi-monthly newsletter called Every Small Victory Matters

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Maria Montes

Barcelona born, Naarm based independent lettering designer and illustrator specialised in branding assets and calligraphy education. www.mariamontes.net