Scared

I love my Etsy store. It is kind of a non-committal way of trying to sell my wares. It is a hand's off way of putting myself out there. I don't have to talk, I don't have to see the people who are looking at my work. It is nice because I am usually a introvert. I'm sure that this is the reason that so many people have their own Etsy shops. It is easy to just throw stuff up there, and let people look around your shop without having to be that annoying shop owner; making sure that people are enjoying their shopping experience, and that they have found everything they are looking for.

That is great and all, but if I want to get noticed, and actually make sales, then I cannot be just one of these thousands of people who haphazardly put up goods on a website, and then lean back and hope that someone likes their iPhone pic of their crocheted scarf. (I'm not trying to be judgmental, maybe that works for them, but this doesn't work for me.) The thing is that so many people are doing the same things, I need do more than that to get noticed, and find the kind of success I am actually looking for.

This means that I am going to have to go beyond the comfort of my computer chair and art table, and talk to people in real life. This weekend I have my first booth in a craft fair. (http://oddmallseattle.wordpress.com/ ) It is great that I have this opportunity, but I am starting to freak out. I haven't shown my art in a public space since college. That is almost 5 years of distance from the art community. I have been losing sleep with worry that I am going to take this great chance to get back into the art world and totally crash and burn.

There are many reasons that I feel like I am not going to do well. Most just lead back to the fact that I am introverted and don't socialize well with strangers. I get the feeling that I am going to look like this. Obviously I won't be asking strangers for their hand in marriage, but I will be asking for their attention, their opinions of my work, and in the end their money. It just makes me shake with fear that I am going to fail at one of the most basic skills of being human: communication.

My stomach has felt full of rocks and butterflies all week knowing that I signed myself up for this. I like to live a logical life, and use reason to get through my struggles, and also get out of unpleasant situations. But this time my fear of the entire encounter is getting in the way of my ability to think my way out. I know what I needs to be done, but I am worried that I don't posses the skill to be likable, interesting, and informative in a manner that will sell people on my work. I keep hoping there is a way around this feeling so that I can move on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pspcBpqUlRY), but it will not be that easy, everything worth doing never is.

I don't know when I became such a wimp when it come to social situations, but I cannot make any excuses. I know that this is not only good for my sales, to get it out in the public eye, but it is also good for me. I need to get uncomfortable in order to make any kind of progress towards becoming better at this.

We have been learning how to interact with people since the day we were born, I just don't understand where my fear of it has come from over the years. I am old enough that all of my years of practice should make me a pro at talking to others, but at some point I learned to fear it. This will just not do, so this weekend I take the plunge back into the art world, and relearn some of those communication skills I seem to have forgotten. Despite my fear this will get done.

The Skies Open Up

I have been having a rather hard time trying to feel good about my work recently. I have had some mild success selling. I have had several different features on different blogs, and I have been working hard to get the word out about my art, but have seen very little return on my efforts. I know that if I don't get the work out there no one will see it, and there will be now sales at the end of the day. I have been investing a ton of effort into networking and such, but even with all of the work and, even attention that I have had I have still been rather unsuccessful at selling.

It is funny like that. I have all of these high expectations for the return for my effort in this, but I have not seen what I had wanted. I dump so much hope into something so little. I know that I could increase my efforts, but when I don't get any reward for my current effort it is hard to want to put more into it.

So the last couple of weeks I have been contemplating just quitting entirely. I had been thinking that the money, and effort that I have put into this art, and store in the last year in a half has seen minimal return. I have not made back the money I have spent let alone made up for my labor. I was really just done with the whole thing.

I have been thinking about a lot of things lately. It's the change of seasons that makes me do this. I am pretty sure every time summer comes around I get this itch to change my life around in one way or another. Most goals, changes, hair cuts, and things of that nature happen around this time of year. I think it is because my mind has been programed by the end of the school year to think that this time of year is a time for transition.

Anyways, I was thinking about shutting down my shop. It was making me sad to give up on this, but I just couldn't justify spending any more money on this venture that wasn't making any return. We are trying to save up for some big things, and my desire to sell art that wasn't selling was just going to have to be put on hold.

Then the clouds rolled back and two things happened. The first is that I got a sale, like my first one since January. Then I won a free booth space in the Seattle Oddmall. It is was an uplifting weekend. It helped my to realize that maybe there was interest in my art. When I get down on myself and feel like a failure it can be just the little things that make me feel better about life again. I really only made a $15 sale of a print. It was minimal but it got my spirits back up.

To be honest one purchase is not going to save my shop, and I don't really know just how much I will actually be able to sell at this craft fair, but we will see. I have decided that the future of my shop will depend on how this next month goes.

What I need to do now is make goals. I need to measure the success of my sales for the next month, and if I make the goals that I have then I will keep the shop open. If I don't then I will start to shut things down. I need to have a duel mind when it comes to these things. I need to hope for the best sales, but be prepared for the fact that I may not make my goals and will need to end this venture for now.

I'm not saying that I will shut down my shop forever. I think that it was a good thing for me to open this shop. I have learned a lot about networking. I have learned about how to run the finances of a small business. I have learned how to sell. I have also been more interest in making and following through with goals. It has been great, I will just have to put it on hold till we get this whole housing, and financial thing figured out. This art venture is important to me and important to making me feel productive and independent of the title of mom. (Which to be honest is great for my self-esteem to be more than just a care giver.)  It gives me a sense of identity that I don't think I could ever abandon.

We will just have to see how things turn out. But this isn't the end just yet.

Creative Inspriations

I have made a list lately of all of the art that I want to achieve this year. The are particular pieces that I want to make for one reason or another. I am going to list them for you and me so that I don't forget that this is what I want to do later:

1. I want to do an anime inspired self portrait. I have recently gotten back into anime, and the beauty and simplify of the style of drawing really appeals to me. When I was in art classes my teachers would always get on to me because I didn't like to fill in all of my shading and detail when I was drawing faces. In the end the lack of detail actually resembled the anime style of drawing to some degree.

2. The next piece that I want to work on is another anime based item. In my head anime and the styling of Mucha's art works rather well together. When I was taking art history I fell in love with the art nouveau. The line work and shading are similar to that of the anime. Mucha style also seems to be informed a bit by the Celtic knotting which I have a love for too. It all kinds of adds up to something awesome.

3. I have my brother's name for Christmas this year. I was thinking some kind of epic dragon piece for him would be fun. Though I don't really know all of the details on that one yet. I don't know what style that I will be making it in but it should be fun to try to come up with something that will work best for him.

4. The last piece that that I have been having on my mind is a portrait of my great-grandma. I was looking through one of my old sketch books and found and unfinished version of the same picture I want do. I have this great head shot of her with her cute little bob haircut when she was young. It is beautiful. I think that I want to do this one as a watercolor and try to add color the picture that is really only in black and white.

There are still many ideas bouncing around in my head right now but none of them are as developed as these ones I have listed. I don't want to forget all of the things I want to do. So often I tell myself I am going to do something and then never get around to it because I forgot. At least if it is here, I won't forget that I want to do these things.

Bogged Down

I don't take heat very well. Summer is my least favorite season.  I loath doing anything. I don't want to go out, because that means I have to put on pants and and make-up which just adds to the discomfort of the whole situation. Summer makes me want to lay on the cold tile floor in pajamas with a cool wet towel on my head, and not let anyone touch me. My body doesn't really deal with the heat very well. I get over heated, and it takes me forever to cool down. I just don't function at all in the heat.

When most people talk about all of the fun of summer, I just sit there dreading it. People talk about water parks, bbq, and sports. And I'm just over here trying to figure out all of the indoor, air conditioned places where I can hibernate for the summer. It is just not a season that gets me excited in any way at all.

Not only does the summer coming make me want to become a hermit, it also is detrimental to my work ethic. Being over heated makes me want to just lay there all day, and try to refrain from any kind of effort that would add to my body heat. I can spend hours trying to avoid any kinds of movement, or work. To be honest I cope with the heat best by taking naps, and because of that I have a record of spending most of my summers napping to avoid the heat.

It is difficult to want to do anything at all when I feel like this. I lose all kinds of motivation. Things start to fall apart during this time of year. I don't want to do art, I don't want to be creative, I would really rather just be in some kind of stasis pod on ice for the three months of summer and then revived when it is all over.

This is just not an option with the current technology of the world. So I have to muddle through like anyone else. This also means that I cannot just leave all of my art on standby till I feel like moving again. As much as I feel at the time that it is totally worth it to become a sloth for three months and not do anything, I regret it later. I feel bad that I haven't really done anything for so long. I have to make myself get back into the swing of things and I curse myself for all of the time that i have wasted. But it is just so tempting to want to curl up in the fridge and take a nap.

Summer is truly the most trying time of the year for me. I am uncomfortable, and drawn to laziness. I just need to bear down and deal with it. If it takes packing myself in ice in order to get art done then so be it. I am just going to have to be creative so that I can be just as productive during the summer as I am the rest of the year.

scheduling conflicts

I like a good schedule. I like to know when I have to do something and when I can move on to something else. I like the guidelines that this kind of living gives me, because then it is easier for me to feel productive, and helps me to quantify in some way what I have done with my day. School taught me how to live by the clock, and for me it has really just stuck around. I can stick to the same schedule for ages. I am really good at consistency, and when things change it can be rather hard for me to adjust.

Having a kid changes everything. I know it is cliche to say that, but for me change can be quite disturbing to me. I like my routine. I like the freedom it gives me to have a routine. If I know how each day is going to play out, then I know where I can take breaks and move things around for extra activities, I know how to better accommodate for the unexpected. I know just how long it takes me to do things, to travel from A to B, and where I can make up time if things get a little messed up along the way. When things are all mapped out I don't have to worry about blank spots in my day where I waste time.

I hate it when things change and now I have to alter my routine and remake my schedule. This week we are changing the kids nap schedule, because he has not been sleeping through the night as well as he used to. I used to know how long he needed to nap, when to feed him. Exactly how long we should stay at the park in order to get back in time for his nap, and when he had to wake up so that he wouldn't be over slept. Now things are up in the air.

Since he isn't taking a morning nap his afternoon nap needs to come earlier than what it was, but he hasn't adjusted to the change so I am having to play things more by ear than I am used to. I have to give him a nap when he is tired which means that we don't go to the park at the same time and we don't eat at the same time. Because of all of this change I get to the end of the day an have run out of time to do all of the things I need to on a daily basis. So my sink is full of dirty dishes, and the floor hasn't been cleaned as I would like to have done by this point in the week. I have a schedule for all of my chores, for my work, and for how we play. Losing this schedule means that many of the things I am really good at getting done are being neglected.

What all of this adds up to, is that I am not sure when I can actually get my own art work done. I spend all of my day trying to figure out his new schedule and how to keep him happy that I haven't been able to be very productive in my artistic realms.

This is a little upsetting to me. My art is a happy place for me. It puts me in a better mood, and helps me to find a zen like balance in my mind. It is kind of like my disconnect from the stresses of this world, or my reset button for the day. Not getting to do my art, like I would want to is starting to fray me at the ends. I need that creative release, and this change of schedule is really starting to mess with my head.

I know that this is just a time of transition, but it doesn't make it any less stressful for me. I just keep hoping that by the end of the next week or so we will have this all figured out, and I can get back into my work and let out some of the pent up stress that is starting to affect my life.

New Tricks

Ages ago I got a drawing pad to make digital art. After a month or so I gave up trying to use it and it got put in a box and forgotten about. I lost a lot of chances to learn a new skill with that pad. If I had stuck with it I would have been really great a using it by now. Sadly, I have come back to using this drawing pad years later and I have no experience and no skill with this tool. Now, I am starting from scratch, but this time because I have been scanning my work and spending more time in photoshop, I have more motivation to gain skills in this new medium.

It is not easy at all. I like to learn new things but wrapping my head around the concept of drawing on a screen is much more difficult than I could have imagined. It is why I gave up last time. I don't think of my drawing tools the same way the computer does when I am drawing, and the disconnect is affecting my work. I can use the same brush to make all kinds of different lines and shapes when I need something different. This whole changing brushes in order to do something different is really messing with my head. It makes me feel like I would have benefitted from learning how to draw with pointillism rather than line work. Making a ton of dots to draw the picture makes more sense in this medium than trying to actually get my lines to do the same thing that I can on paper.

All I know is that it is becoming increasingly frustrating to try to put ideas down this way. It is kind of like having a word on the tip of your tongue and not being able to find it for weeks. You really need to use that word, you know that you have it in your vocabulary, but things are just not connecting for you. You know that you have the capability to use the word, and the opportunity to put it to good use, but for some reason it is just not there for you when you want to use it.

I don't plan on giving up on this endeavor yet. I just have to figure out what direction to come at this to make it work for me. Everyone has their own strategy for doing things. If I go to youtube and find tutorials on how to draw in photoshop, I will get a list of hundreds of people who all have different ways of using the tools and techniques. All of them have the same tools, and all of them make great pieces of work, but all of them have different preferences and techniques personalized to their own drawing and thinking styles. Just like them I need to find the function that works best for my own style of work.

I think the hardest part is that the program is so vast and the technique so new to me, that I have become overwhelmed by the possibilities. At the end of each day I find that instead of actually getting work done on the piece I am trying to make, I have spend a good portion of the day doing what kids do in paint, or that cool game kids pics we had when I was kid. I go through all of the brushes and try them out. Then I go through all of the different settings on the different brushes and test them. At the end of the day I have a series of marks of different size, shape, and texture and no actual work done.

I just wish I could get to the point where I know what each setting does, so that I will know what I need in order to get my work done. I just want to know what technique I need. I have this awesome tool and I am sad to say that I am not using it very well yet. I hope that I can learn how to appropriately use it and actually be able to achieve something. I just can't give up while I am still learning. I cannot decided that I am no good at this without giving myself a proper chance get better at it.

Feeling Useless

There are many times where money is tight, or I want something we don't really have the money for, and I think to myself why did I choose to become a stay at home mom. I wonder, why it is that I decided to pick such a useless art major. I feel sometimes that I can be of so much more use to our family if I were to work, and contribute a second pay check. I have always had some kind of work throughout my entire life. If I felt that I needed a little more to get by on, I have always had the option of picking up more with extra hours.

My parents have a custom furniture business in the garage. When I was growing up if I ever needed money for something my mom's answer was always to go out and help in the shop. I always knew that if I needed something I could go earn it. If I wanted something I could go make money for it. My parents had taught me the value of money and work. I thank them for that, but sometimes I feel like they taught me too well, because I have a hard time not bring in some sort of income. 

It just makes me feel so useless when I cannot just go outside to the shop and earn what I need. It is a convenience that I miss sometimes. I may have hated to work in the shop when I was a kid, but it was something I could always go to. Now that I live in another state it really isn't an option any more. 

I have to face my decisions, and the conflicted feelings that I have about them. It could be so much more simple to just pick up a job, and help more directly with our goals, but that would mean that I wouldn't be able to be there for the kid.

Taking care of the kid and being there all the time for him is more important to me than making extra money at any job. None the less I still get these feelings every once in a while where I wish there were something more that I could do. That maybe some of my extra hours in the day could be used to do something more useful. Nap times could be work times for me. His independent play time could be my time to bring in a little income. But things are not that way and I have to learn how to live with that. 

These feelings make me restless. This is part of why I dedicate so much time to my art. The more time that I use up during the day the less time I have to brood on other options I could have chosen to take. I am confident in the decision I have made. I would choose the same things every time if I were to do it all again. There are just moments of weakness. Those days where I get to the end of the day and feel like I have not gotten anything done with my time. Those are the days where I question my decisions. Those unproductive days with too much time to over think things make me doubt myself. 

I constantly question if what I do during the day is enough. I don't have a 9-5 job. I cannot quantify just how much work I do. So it is difficult to determine just how productive I have really been. When it is harder to see my accomplishments, it is harder for me to feel good about my work during the day. It can be disheartening. 

I like to avoid these feelings whenever I can by keeping busy. When I feel like I have had a productive day I have no reason question my choices. Every day I try to be sure that I am productive enough to avoid these crippling feelings. I value my time with the kid too much to even really consider a job. I just have to remind myself of that when I am suffering from doubt. 

Sometimes I just think too much about the "what if's" and lose sight of the long term value of the choices I have made.