Struggling Artist.

I'm fairly certain that if you had asked me a year ago what I would be doing in a year, I would have said I would still be in Korea. It turns out that I can be extremely thankful for the year I had there. Living abroad in a non-English speaking culture has always been a dream of mine.
Basically, I should never plan ahead as I seem to have some sort of curse which prevents my schemes from ever turning out how I plan. The best thing for me seems to be to roll with whatever gets thrown my way. When I don't think about it I'm most successful.
All I can say is YAY! for good friends. I have really had to rely on a few of them since returning home. Friends are few and far between and I am constatntly surprised that I have any. Since getting back in November the job prospects in NZ have been pretty slim to non-existent. Bad for the bank balance, but awesome for me as an artist. I have done some of my best stuff ever in the last few months. More exciting -finishing quite a few projects I had started long ago. Most exciting of all - making good (belatedly) on a few promises to others.
I never make new years resolutions (as that would be making plans - see above). However, this year I made one! I vowed to make more of a name for myself as an artist. How am I getting on with that resolution? I took a few paintings into one gallery. They were certain that my work would sell and basically wanted to take the paintings I had on me (I couldn't part with them, so declined). I emailed two (sort of) randomly selected Auckland galleries, including several jpegs of my paintings, to see if they would be interested. I never heard back from either. I'll give it another crack soon, but I need to do some legwork first. It would be good to know some places that would display my work and find out the most acceptable way of approaching galleries etc.
I guess the most important step I have made towards achieving my goal has been working hard and becoming more confident in my talents. If you're still interested I'll keep you posted on how I get on.