It's time to connect the dots. Time to draw cyberspace into physical space. Giving both ends of the bungee cord the final tugs to bring the seemingly just short hooks together and hold the bundle to the bike. Here is where I find myself.
All the while that I have been working away at this lovely little cyber home in my lovely little cyber neighborhood I have had the luxury of not paying much attention to the workaday responsibilities that a new home can bring. Like moving into a new house. While choosing paint colors and selecting the perfect pulls for the kitchen cabinets and being thrilled with the newness and shininess of it all, thoughts of what you will do the first time the sink backs up never enter your mind. Thoughts of whether or not the neighbors will be friendly or if the mailman is efficient are far removed from the fantasy princess world you are blissfully inhabiting as you nest and decorate your beloved abode.
But then you are satisfied (for now) that your new home is ready for visitors and you'd like to invite people over to celebrate. You invite some friends and family and those that can, dutifully attend but you realize that the people that you really need to have over are the people you don't know that you want to meet. Neighbors and new people are the integral element to your new life in your new home and getting strangers to come visit you is not as easy as it was in grandma's day. Okay, the next door neighbor has a stake in this so they will come. The people across the street have a bit of an interest in you so they come too. Yet with the few friends and family, the next door neighbors and the people across the street, there is still plenty of food and drink and the new home looks a little empty without more people. Where is the rest of the neighborhood? Did they get the invitation? Why didn't they come? Whose going to eat all this food?
And so it is with my little Etsy shoppe. I've decorated, I've written the invitations and I have laid out the food and drink for all to consume and well, frankly not many of the invitees have shown up. I know that just sitting and waiting and wishing and hoping are are just that and not a good use of my resources. I know this is a time for what little salesmanship I have to kick in. Though I never thought I was particularly good at promoting myself (I'm a killer promoter when it comes to others) if ever there was a time to try harder, it's now.
I started kicking around some of the blogs and websites designed for crafty entrepreneurs like myself. There's plenty out there. For starters, Etsy itself publishes a newsletter/blog with advice from other sellers that was helpful to me during the building process. Now, not so much as I look to expand beyond the Etsy community. I came across Crafting an MBA, an amazingly informative and useful site which I go to religiously and Design Sponge, a virtual library of topic driven articles that are textbook-like in the authority and usefulness of their information.
I also began reading books - Craft, Inc. thorough and full of insight and information including interviews and advice from successful crafters, well, like Jonathan Adler, who if you didn't know, started out as a potter. Crafty Superstar is a lighter version but well organized and very useful. Crafting A Business a very pretty, inspiring book which is a collection of personal stories and advice from those successful subjects. And for all around attitude adjustment and correct focus of ambition there is The Martha Rules from the greatest crafty visionary of all time. You can say what you will about Martha, love her or hate her, but she is my hero. She was the first to take baking pies, giving dinner parties, growing her own food and making her own aprons into a domestic and crafting skills empire.
There are several routes to travel and at the moment I intuitively feel there is one in particular I must take. The art and craft fairs. Tis' the season and there are many to participate in. I made a half-hearted promise to myself that I would try to do the May Nyack Street Fair (large, local and well attended) but got hung up on having to have a picture of my booth for the application and because I'd never done a fair before I didn't have those pictures. Realizing I could set something up in my driveway to photograph, my inner perfectionist got the best of me and while I was intently trying to come up with the displays that would be the be all/end all, well I missed that deadline. Oh well, there's another one in July. Late July. Hot. Really hot. I hate hot. I can almost make myself cry at the thought of sitting in a tent on a 95 degree/80% humidity day trying to look interested, interesting, dripping sweat all over the pretty things I am trying to show an potential buyer. I can imagine them not wanting me to fasten the necklace on them because I look like I am going to pass out. Saying thanks anyway as they walk away looking at me looking so pathetically miserable. There has to be a better time for me to do these things. Obviously the fall and all those Christmas season fairs. Those are the ticket for me.
The next Nyack Street Fair is in October. That's the one. That is where I will begin. Then I realize I don't know what that beginning looks like. I've been to a million street fairs, craft fairs, art and craft fairs - for god sakes, I live in New York. There are days in the summer that the streets of NYC can look like Marrakesh with fairs and festivals taking up long stretches of main avenues and even entire neighborhoods. There's a festival in Little Italy that turns several blocks of NYC into the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore!
Anyway. When I have attended these events I have gone and focused on what I was supposed to be paying attention to - what the booth was selling. The merch. I was not looking at how they were set up and what equipment they needed to look like they belonged there. So as the season began, I set out on reconnaissance missions to look at the structure not the stuff. Obviously the tents were my first priority. Now I have been to some flea market type events with women sitting on chairs with big black umbrellas the only thing between them and the blazing sun and I can tell you I don't blame them for not getting up when potential customers approach their table. They just want the friggin' day to be over. When they were packing up their wares before they left home they had dollar signs in their eyes. By mid-day the perspiration had drenched all of that into a raging headache.
Rule number one. No umbrellas. Let's look at the tents. I walked around several markets taking notes on my Blackberry of the brand names of the frail canopies lined up one after the other. Many of these things take place on asphalt so there is no staking the tent like you would if you were camping or doing some Hudson Valley celebration for some natural event (the river, strawberries, apples, farms) on grass (which I will no doubt be doing at some point). So after I had walked around looking up for brand labels, witnessing a couple of near disasters when a little wind kicked up, I began looking down. Down to see how the real pros were keeping the tent from becoming air born. There were gallon water bottles tied to the poles, barbell weights taped to the legs, sandbags - all very functional but wildly unattractive and in some instances a little dangerous to the wandering public that are not really watching where they are going. I reminded myself that anything that was there had been carried there and I balked at the idea of schlepping this awkward, heavy and unattractive junk along for the ride after spending days, weeks, months designing the best damned craft fair booth going. I finally found the answer but it is so ingenious I shall not share it here. Be advised however, I told the clever gal I was going to borrow her invention and I'll leave it at that. It's that good.
I Googled all the tent brand names when I got home from a particularly long (hot and sweaty) day of scouting. Talk about sticker shock! Most of the folks doing this live on this income. They don't have the luxury of a working executive husband. This flimsy little tent thing has to be the largest investment any respectable craft artist makes. Lordy! And the rules are the rules and I pay for what I need from what I make so I'm on my own with this expense. Sports Authority is having a sale. I guess I better get going and see what they've got and how cheap I can get one of these babies. I've got a deadline to meet.
No doubt I will obsess on the engineering of each frame (I do have the curse of being an engineer's daughter) and will spend way too much time trying to decide white or a color? White for light but is it best for sun and heat protection? Color. I love color! But will it be too dark? For another hundred bucks I could order a pink one. I love my pink! Who else has a pink canopy? Are there organizer's rules against pink tents? Everyone else seems to have white or blue. Is that because that is what is usually in stock or do they know something I don't know?
No doubt there are other tricks of the trade out there waiting to stick their foot out and trip me.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Now what?
It 's been nearly a year since this saga of mine began. In ten long months I have crammed so much information into my well worn middle-aged brain that I wonder if my headaches aren't brought on by swelling from so much additional information inside the small cavity of my skull.
Like Chicken Little, I've bought the laptop, I've learned to use it, I've bought the camera, I've learned to use it, I've set up the web site and learned to use it, I've started the blog and learned to use it. I've planted the wheat and baked the bread and though it doesn't feel as though the sky is falling, I regret to say, I'm not sure what to do next. While I spent all those months in the mosh pit of digitalizing my life, I spent little time reflecting on how it all works in the realm of physical life and practical things - like sales.
The amount of intensely focused time I spent learning all of these skills and creating this shiny new universe for my work to live in created an illusion that when I was done, the world of the Internet would just function whenever I turned on the computer. Like opening the door and walking in. Like, somehow, the fact that all this information, all these zeros and ones, would plug themselves in and work like the dickens to make me a successful business woman. If you post it they will come sort of thing. Now of course, when I step back and think in an organized, one foot in front of the other sort of way I know that setting up shop, whether it is in quaint little fancy-pants village or a virtual co-op, the work has only just begun. But I guess that because I had to learn sooooooooo many new skills, I fooled myself into thinking that I had done so much more than I really had. At the end of the day, all I had really done was rent the space, paint the walls, make the signs, stock the store and opened the doors for business. Unfortunately, I am the only one there most of the time.
It's an interesting paradox, this cyberspace and physical space. The computer has the ability to organize our ideas in such tight little spaces with such dazzling visuals that it makes us giddy with the notion that we have done way more than we have. When once I would have had to cut and paste and draw and xerox and erase and bind and staple and tape and go to the printer (not the one in your office, the guy) I can now sit on the couch and conjure like a shaman. I can do things with keys and mouses (meece?) that give me the impression that I am better than I am. It looks to me like I have many more skills and talents than I actually do. Don't get me wrong. I don't discount the value of an idea and the computer is like a magic wand the way it makes it all happen before your very eyes. Yet, if I had not done all this virtually, I would have had to hire a staff or die of exhaustion trying.
But yea for me and here I sit all by myself wondering what to do next.
In the olden days you would have bought some advertising. That would have meant that either you had the skills to lay out art boards with computer generated type and hand drawn rapidograph artwork with velum covers to give to the publication for your insert, scaled to the size of the ad you were purchasing or wish that you had a friend that worked at a design studio and would do it for free after the boss had gone home. And if this sounds like a lot, it was and not cheap at all. Advertising was a gigantic expense.
Now, I can do my own ads. Now I can use photos and my logo, do it myself and not have to produce a physical representation of the ad. And there are a myriad of places to post my ad for not much money. In fact, the most sensible use of resources is to advertise on the Internet. Okay! Cool, simple and I don't even have to leave the house. This is yet another wonder of the modern age. The democratization of commerce. Everyone and anyone can open a business with a little drive, a computer and something to sell. Brilliant.
I love Facebook. I say it with no reservations and not a lick of shame. I love it. It has opened a whole new world of social interaction and I have met some very interesting people that I would never had met were it not for this innovation. I have even had the pleasure of meeting, face to face, two fascinating and intellectually stimulating sisters that I had befriended through my dear friend Dinah (who insisted I sign up for this thing a couple of years ago - she didn't know what it was about, really, but let's do it) and during the holidays we all met for lunch. It was truly a 21st Century moment for me. I was married pre-Internet so I had never done any online dating (though I had answered a few personal ads in the back of New York Magazine and The Washingtonian - ohmygod) and was not in the mainstream business world so had never developed a virtual relationship with a coworker and then met at a meeting. This was a defining moment for me.
Okay, so the reason I bring up Facebook is that it seemed a likely place for me to dip my toes in the water of virtual advertising since it was a community that I was familiar with and a part of. Yes, I had some reservations about it since I had already been targeted for women my exact age being eligible for a free pair of Uggs and skin care products that were going to make me look ten years younger and remove age spots (are you talking to me?) so why would I want to inflict that on others? Business is business and everything I read about FB advertising said that the ability to target and the flexibility to only pay for hits made it a no brainer for advertising a small business. The idea that I would create an ad to appeal to a highly specific crowd with a very narrow commonality to get them to my site to see a particular item in hopes that they would stay and look around and maybe purchase something was a little astonishing. Yes, hard copy advertising had a targeted approach but it was not like the hairdresser I read about that focused on young women who loved red lipstick and were fans of Lady GaGa. Holy smokes! Now that is zeroing right in on just who exactly you think would be interested in the very specific type of hair designs, that you personally think are the bomb (but may have very limited appeal) and would be interested in sporting your personal fashion sense as all the rage! The object is to come up with tags (for those of you that don't know, we'll talk later) to attract the buyer that you think is your best clientele.
I'm overwhelmed again. Now I'm not just looking at demographics like age, sex, financial and marital status but I'm trying to determine if everyone that likes my work also listens to the Ting Tings! I'm trying to psychoanalyze the keyboard choices of millions of people in order to get a few sales on my little Internet site where I sell my humble wares. This is out of proportion. It is mixing the modest with the grandiose. It is asking me, the artist, to try to figure out the buying habits of potential customers when I usually have no idea why I made such thing except that is seemed like a cool idea at the time. I am not calculated. I am impulsive, particularly when it comes to what I make. There are not enough hours in the day for me to address all the ideas that come into my head for every medium I am able to work in - and them some. I am a bit all over the place sometimes and for me to zero in on my best customer is like trying to determine how someone takes their Starbucks, just by looking at them. If you study it enough I suppose you could become pretty proficient at it but who wants to drink coffee all day and take notes about what the chick in the trendy outfit is drinking today - and is that what she always orders or is she as hard to pin down as I am?
I'm trying to untangle this. I believe that things in life are at their best when they are simplest. I am not adverse to editing and I believe in common denominators. I don't think that what this means is that there are more determining factors out there than there ever were. I think that access to the virtual world of others has just highlighted how many different variables there are in one single human being. We can choose to have the massive amount of information that has been compiled about every single person that has logged onto the Internet overwhelm us and send us to the couch for a nap. Or we can realize that everyone belongs to a tribe and we recognize our tribe members when we see them and that what is required here is to rally the call for our tribespeople and bring them together in a place they may recognize. I am choosing the latter. Well, that's what I'm doing on my good days when I get enough sleep, wake up on the right side of the bed, make particularly excellent coffee and have the router work the minute I log onto my computer. Some days though, things don't go as smoothly and the router just won't let me in and I have to crawl under the desk and unplug 46 tangled wires, count to 30 and then try to reconnect them properly without my glasses. Those are nap days.
Like Chicken Little, I've bought the laptop, I've learned to use it, I've bought the camera, I've learned to use it, I've set up the web site and learned to use it, I've started the blog and learned to use it. I've planted the wheat and baked the bread and though it doesn't feel as though the sky is falling, I regret to say, I'm not sure what to do next. While I spent all those months in the mosh pit of digitalizing my life, I spent little time reflecting on how it all works in the realm of physical life and practical things - like sales.
The amount of intensely focused time I spent learning all of these skills and creating this shiny new universe for my work to live in created an illusion that when I was done, the world of the Internet would just function whenever I turned on the computer. Like opening the door and walking in. Like, somehow, the fact that all this information, all these zeros and ones, would plug themselves in and work like the dickens to make me a successful business woman. If you post it they will come sort of thing. Now of course, when I step back and think in an organized, one foot in front of the other sort of way I know that setting up shop, whether it is in quaint little fancy-pants village or a virtual co-op, the work has only just begun. But I guess that because I had to learn sooooooooo many new skills, I fooled myself into thinking that I had done so much more than I really had. At the end of the day, all I had really done was rent the space, paint the walls, make the signs, stock the store and opened the doors for business. Unfortunately, I am the only one there most of the time.
It's an interesting paradox, this cyberspace and physical space. The computer has the ability to organize our ideas in such tight little spaces with such dazzling visuals that it makes us giddy with the notion that we have done way more than we have. When once I would have had to cut and paste and draw and xerox and erase and bind and staple and tape and go to the printer (not the one in your office, the guy) I can now sit on the couch and conjure like a shaman. I can do things with keys and mouses (meece?) that give me the impression that I am better than I am. It looks to me like I have many more skills and talents than I actually do. Don't get me wrong. I don't discount the value of an idea and the computer is like a magic wand the way it makes it all happen before your very eyes. Yet, if I had not done all this virtually, I would have had to hire a staff or die of exhaustion trying.
But yea for me and here I sit all by myself wondering what to do next.
In the olden days you would have bought some advertising. That would have meant that either you had the skills to lay out art boards with computer generated type and hand drawn rapidograph artwork with velum covers to give to the publication for your insert, scaled to the size of the ad you were purchasing or wish that you had a friend that worked at a design studio and would do it for free after the boss had gone home. And if this sounds like a lot, it was and not cheap at all. Advertising was a gigantic expense.
Now, I can do my own ads. Now I can use photos and my logo, do it myself and not have to produce a physical representation of the ad. And there are a myriad of places to post my ad for not much money. In fact, the most sensible use of resources is to advertise on the Internet. Okay! Cool, simple and I don't even have to leave the house. This is yet another wonder of the modern age. The democratization of commerce. Everyone and anyone can open a business with a little drive, a computer and something to sell. Brilliant.
I love Facebook. I say it with no reservations and not a lick of shame. I love it. It has opened a whole new world of social interaction and I have met some very interesting people that I would never had met were it not for this innovation. I have even had the pleasure of meeting, face to face, two fascinating and intellectually stimulating sisters that I had befriended through my dear friend Dinah (who insisted I sign up for this thing a couple of years ago - she didn't know what it was about, really, but let's do it) and during the holidays we all met for lunch. It was truly a 21st Century moment for me. I was married pre-Internet so I had never done any online dating (though I had answered a few personal ads in the back of New York Magazine and The Washingtonian - ohmygod) and was not in the mainstream business world so had never developed a virtual relationship with a coworker and then met at a meeting. This was a defining moment for me.
Okay, so the reason I bring up Facebook is that it seemed a likely place for me to dip my toes in the water of virtual advertising since it was a community that I was familiar with and a part of. Yes, I had some reservations about it since I had already been targeted for women my exact age being eligible for a free pair of Uggs and skin care products that were going to make me look ten years younger and remove age spots (are you talking to me?) so why would I want to inflict that on others? Business is business and everything I read about FB advertising said that the ability to target and the flexibility to only pay for hits made it a no brainer for advertising a small business. The idea that I would create an ad to appeal to a highly specific crowd with a very narrow commonality to get them to my site to see a particular item in hopes that they would stay and look around and maybe purchase something was a little astonishing. Yes, hard copy advertising had a targeted approach but it was not like the hairdresser I read about that focused on young women who loved red lipstick and were fans of Lady GaGa. Holy smokes! Now that is zeroing right in on just who exactly you think would be interested in the very specific type of hair designs, that you personally think are the bomb (but may have very limited appeal) and would be interested in sporting your personal fashion sense as all the rage! The object is to come up with tags (for those of you that don't know, we'll talk later) to attract the buyer that you think is your best clientele.
I'm overwhelmed again. Now I'm not just looking at demographics like age, sex, financial and marital status but I'm trying to determine if everyone that likes my work also listens to the Ting Tings! I'm trying to psychoanalyze the keyboard choices of millions of people in order to get a few sales on my little Internet site where I sell my humble wares. This is out of proportion. It is mixing the modest with the grandiose. It is asking me, the artist, to try to figure out the buying habits of potential customers when I usually have no idea why I made such thing except that is seemed like a cool idea at the time. I am not calculated. I am impulsive, particularly when it comes to what I make. There are not enough hours in the day for me to address all the ideas that come into my head for every medium I am able to work in - and them some. I am a bit all over the place sometimes and for me to zero in on my best customer is like trying to determine how someone takes their Starbucks, just by looking at them. If you study it enough I suppose you could become pretty proficient at it but who wants to drink coffee all day and take notes about what the chick in the trendy outfit is drinking today - and is that what she always orders or is she as hard to pin down as I am?
I'm trying to untangle this. I believe that things in life are at their best when they are simplest. I am not adverse to editing and I believe in common denominators. I don't think that what this means is that there are more determining factors out there than there ever were. I think that access to the virtual world of others has just highlighted how many different variables there are in one single human being. We can choose to have the massive amount of information that has been compiled about every single person that has logged onto the Internet overwhelm us and send us to the couch for a nap. Or we can realize that everyone belongs to a tribe and we recognize our tribe members when we see them and that what is required here is to rally the call for our tribespeople and bring them together in a place they may recognize. I am choosing the latter. Well, that's what I'm doing on my good days when I get enough sleep, wake up on the right side of the bed, make particularly excellent coffee and have the router work the minute I log onto my computer. Some days though, things don't go as smoothly and the router just won't let me in and I have to crawl under the desk and unplug 46 tangled wires, count to 30 and then try to reconnect them properly without my glasses. Those are nap days.
Monday, May 24, 2010
I Have Nothing To Say...
My last Facebook post was, "I have nothing to say". Not a statement I make on a regular basis. And though I have not posted anything in nearly 2 weeks I have been thinking about this blog and why I feel I have nothing to say.
Nearly a year ago, I made the decision to "go Etsy". Bought the computer, the camera, went through a studio redo, began the process of learning to function on my computer and took off on the acid trip that is the parallel universe of cyberspace. Oddly enough, last night my husband wondered, as I sat at the kitchen table for hours after dinner, what I thought my life would be like without my laptop now.
Different. So, so different.
One of the last hurdles on my long list of Things I need to learn on the computer was to set up a bookkeeping system for my business. I looked at the systems offered online and wondered why I was going to pay a fee for a simple payables/receivables set up and determined that what I already had on my laptop, Excel , was fine for what I needed to do. Since accounting is not what I live to get out of bed for in the morning, I was able to procrastinate for a very long time on this one. It was only when we went to the accountant for our taxes and he all but called me an idiot on more than one occasion that I decided I needed to step up and face the numbers.
Excel is a blank slate. It is whatever you want it to be. For those of us that like to be in control and know exactly what the rules and boundaries are, this can be a bit disconcerting. For me, one of the only redeeming qualities of numbers is their absoluteness. One and one is two and that's it. Settled. No maybe, sorta ofs. A sum is a sum. So when I looked at what I believed was going to be a basic spread sheet and saw, what my numbers guy husband called "endless possibilities", my brain had a little meltdown. I didn't want endless possibilities. I wanted a bookkeeping system. I wanted a place to record my endless expenses and my piss ant income. Plain and simple.
I opened Excel and was offered a video tutorial. That voice, that always reminds me of the guy that talked us through the educational films of the 60's about duck and cover and other comically useless information we learned in school back then, brightly encouraged me to get started and follow along as he showed me just the basics of what Excel could do for me. Phantom cursors moved columns around and charts morphed into configurations I would never in a million cyber years need for anything. Now, I will confess. I have always had a "thing" for printed charts and graphs. They appeal to my sense of organization. There is something comforting for me about being able to break things down, systematically, and reorganize them into a perfect, explainable package. I also like they way they look. Neat. Consistent. Pretty. I was being lured into the mystique of Excel. Okay, hyperbole, but I was not feeling the need for a Xanax and my palms weren't sweating and I was feeling pretty darned good about learning this new program.
I took a deep breath. I can do this. I can learn another thing and put it into practice. No really, Nell, there is room in your brain to learn something else. We only use a small percentage of our brain power. So you have plenty of storage space left so press on, MacDuff. I wanted to get the thing set up and done so badly that I just jumped in.
It was pretty easy. I was clickin' and dragin' and highlightin' and totallin' like I knew what the hell I was doin'! Most importantly to me, I was sitting down to learn something new on the computer and it was not taking me an entire week to have something to show for it. In a mater of a couple of hours I had a set of books up on the screen with five months of information organized and posted. It was a remarkable day in the life of me.
But then - there was nothing to say. I had crossed a threshold. I had stepped over a line. I had graduated to something. I had moved on, forward, up, out. I hadn't spent a week hissing and cursing and spitting bile out of frustration over a new computer program. I was even able to ask my husband a few questions without getting so nasty with him that he spent the rest of day wondering why he had married such a lunatic bitch. I was calm. I was confident I could learn it and I was not afraid. I realised I was living in a new neighborhood.
Now let me be very clear. I'm certainly not fool enough to believe myself some computer wizard that can pull off any computer move you can think of. I am by no means the Bobby Fischer of laptops. I have grown comfortable though and I am aware that a major part of my life takes place in cyberspace. I have relationships online that I don't have in physical space. I have a store that does not exist in physical space. I read mail and subscribe to newsletters and blogs that I cannot hold in my hand. I visit events and seminars and never leave the couch and have political discourse with people I only know online. I order supplies, do research and now, keep my books online with no paper involved and not even any real money. My world has become drastically more conceptual. I suspend belief and accept that things have actually happened even though I am of a generation where everything needed a piece of paper to actually be validated and real. Back in secretarial school we learned to type in triplicate (for the youngins' that involved putting three pieces of paper with carbon paper in between, rolling the whole stack into the manual typewriter and banging on those keys hard enough to press through to the last sheet in order to have three copies). Now I think twice about printing because I am more concerned with trees that filling up a file cabinet.
This is a fascinating time for me. I have the satisfaction of having taught myself a new skill set that I never dreamed I would even be interested in and moving into possibilities I am only just conceiving. Now, I need to get my mind around how exactly this all translates into action in the world. I have conceived a new world for myself. But do I really know how to make it work for me?
Nearly a year ago, I made the decision to "go Etsy". Bought the computer, the camera, went through a studio redo, began the process of learning to function on my computer and took off on the acid trip that is the parallel universe of cyberspace. Oddly enough, last night my husband wondered, as I sat at the kitchen table for hours after dinner, what I thought my life would be like without my laptop now.
Different. So, so different.
One of the last hurdles on my long list of Things I need to learn on the computer was to set up a bookkeeping system for my business. I looked at the systems offered online and wondered why I was going to pay a fee for a simple payables/receivables set up and determined that what I already had on my laptop, Excel , was fine for what I needed to do. Since accounting is not what I live to get out of bed for in the morning, I was able to procrastinate for a very long time on this one. It was only when we went to the accountant for our taxes and he all but called me an idiot on more than one occasion that I decided I needed to step up and face the numbers.
Excel is a blank slate. It is whatever you want it to be. For those of us that like to be in control and know exactly what the rules and boundaries are, this can be a bit disconcerting. For me, one of the only redeeming qualities of numbers is their absoluteness. One and one is two and that's it. Settled. No maybe, sorta ofs. A sum is a sum. So when I looked at what I believed was going to be a basic spread sheet and saw, what my numbers guy husband called "endless possibilities", my brain had a little meltdown. I didn't want endless possibilities. I wanted a bookkeeping system. I wanted a place to record my endless expenses and my piss ant income. Plain and simple.
I opened Excel and was offered a video tutorial. That voice, that always reminds me of the guy that talked us through the educational films of the 60's about duck and cover and other comically useless information we learned in school back then, brightly encouraged me to get started and follow along as he showed me just the basics of what Excel could do for me. Phantom cursors moved columns around and charts morphed into configurations I would never in a million cyber years need for anything. Now, I will confess. I have always had a "thing" for printed charts and graphs. They appeal to my sense of organization. There is something comforting for me about being able to break things down, systematically, and reorganize them into a perfect, explainable package. I also like they way they look. Neat. Consistent. Pretty. I was being lured into the mystique of Excel. Okay, hyperbole, but I was not feeling the need for a Xanax and my palms weren't sweating and I was feeling pretty darned good about learning this new program.
I took a deep breath. I can do this. I can learn another thing and put it into practice. No really, Nell, there is room in your brain to learn something else. We only use a small percentage of our brain power. So you have plenty of storage space left so press on, MacDuff. I wanted to get the thing set up and done so badly that I just jumped in.
It was pretty easy. I was clickin' and dragin' and highlightin' and totallin' like I knew what the hell I was doin'! Most importantly to me, I was sitting down to learn something new on the computer and it was not taking me an entire week to have something to show for it. In a mater of a couple of hours I had a set of books up on the screen with five months of information organized and posted. It was a remarkable day in the life of me.
But then - there was nothing to say. I had crossed a threshold. I had stepped over a line. I had graduated to something. I had moved on, forward, up, out. I hadn't spent a week hissing and cursing and spitting bile out of frustration over a new computer program. I was even able to ask my husband a few questions without getting so nasty with him that he spent the rest of day wondering why he had married such a lunatic bitch. I was calm. I was confident I could learn it and I was not afraid. I realised I was living in a new neighborhood.
Now let me be very clear. I'm certainly not fool enough to believe myself some computer wizard that can pull off any computer move you can think of. I am by no means the Bobby Fischer of laptops. I have grown comfortable though and I am aware that a major part of my life takes place in cyberspace. I have relationships online that I don't have in physical space. I have a store that does not exist in physical space. I read mail and subscribe to newsletters and blogs that I cannot hold in my hand. I visit events and seminars and never leave the couch and have political discourse with people I only know online. I order supplies, do research and now, keep my books online with no paper involved and not even any real money. My world has become drastically more conceptual. I suspend belief and accept that things have actually happened even though I am of a generation where everything needed a piece of paper to actually be validated and real. Back in secretarial school we learned to type in triplicate (for the youngins' that involved putting three pieces of paper with carbon paper in between, rolling the whole stack into the manual typewriter and banging on those keys hard enough to press through to the last sheet in order to have three copies). Now I think twice about printing because I am more concerned with trees that filling up a file cabinet.
This is a fascinating time for me. I have the satisfaction of having taught myself a new skill set that I never dreamed I would even be interested in and moving into possibilities I am only just conceiving. Now, I need to get my mind around how exactly this all translates into action in the world. I have conceived a new world for myself. But do I really know how to make it work for me?
Monday, May 3, 2010
The Picture Thang
I have always loved the world through a lens. Under different circumstances I may have taken my interest in photography a little further. I did, however, take it far enough to accumulate a very good 35mm camera and a decent assortment of lenses. Travel always meant a carry-on camera bag and several of those film cases to keep the X-rays out of my film. I was never a crack photographer but I had a working knowledge of film speeds, shutter speeds and f-stops and always enjoyed the special eye of the camera.
Along came digital photography. Let me first say, that film, as a medium, will always hold a special place in my artist's heart. The soft, sumptuous warmth of film photography strikes a chord in my brain that not even the great masters of painting can. And then there's black and white! Is there anything more striking, more evocative, more illusive than good black and white photography? Think of the films that were shot in black and white and the emotional tone they set simply by being about shadows - light and dark. The metaphors abound! What would Raging Bull be in color? Could Woody Allen's Manhattan have sung more gloriously to New Yorkers had it been in color? I think not. New York is a black and white city. Paris is a city in color but New York is definitively black and white.
So rhapsodically I carry on about film only to be faced with the digital image. Okay, it is a cool thing - in concept. Certainly, on a practical level, being able to shoot with abandon and not have to think about how much every click of the shutter is costing, is a luxury. But what does it do for photography? When every image was bought before it was exposed and paid for in order to view whether or not it was a success, there was more care and discretion exercised before plunging the shutter. Composition counted and cropping was something that required several more steps after developing in order to have a final image. With digital, we can shoot with abandon, crop before we print and even tweak the light and exposure, something that before had to be done in a lab. Very convenient and excessive.
Alright, I've made my point. I love film.
I acquired my first digital camera before I went to Paris on a personal, significant birthday, "vision quest". I went to take a look at my life, have some time alone and bathe myself in the city of light. I had a basic knowledge of how the camera worked and looked forward to the freedom of taking as many shots as I wanted. (I still took my SLR, loaded with B&W film just because I wanted to shoot Notre Dame in light and shadows.) I must say, I was able to capture somethings with the digital that I never would have with my film camera equipment such as back lit, medieval stained glass and ancient Roman Baths deep underground. I slowly gave up the film cameras and reluctantly joined the digital age of photography.
So back to Etsy, shall we? "Upload first image". My first challenge, which to this day is a little like always reviewing right hand/left hand, is upload and download. I get stuck on those words all the time and my mind wanders off to endless schematics I have created in my head to map my way through the maze of computer concepts I barely understand. I wish there were a GPS we could plug into our brains to do the destination calculations for us. I would be much less tired at the end of the day.
A friend had told me about Picassa, a file sharing program like Flicker (I say that like I know. It is an assumption I am making so if I am wrong just remember I am still a third grader.) Before I could "upload my first image" I had to backtrack to Picassa, upoad the images from my camera, import them to my hard disk then go back to Etsy, find my listing in storage and take my first shot at uploading onto my Etsy site. Like all things computer, it took me several passes but when the deed was done, I was ecstatic. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Fuji in my sneakers. It was really cool! Until I saw the quality of the picture. It was all yellowish and flat looking. WTF? And the focus was mooshy and lacked detail.
After doing some research I realized two things. First, my little point and shoot was not going to do the trick for these kinds of "commercial" purposes. Second, the table top I had set up in my studio with clip lights and incandescent bulbs was not the approach to take with the digital. There I was, all set up with my little photo studio fit for an amature in the 1980's trying to light the medium of the 21st century. Who knew there was such a chasm between 20 and 21? All I wanted to do was open a little shop on Etsy to pedal my wares and now I had come up against yet another hitch in the road that required me to give myself another crash course in another high concept operation. What to do? Quit? Not on your life! I'd made it this far I wasn't going to let a camera stop me now.
I spent two days on the Internet researching cameras. Let me explain that for me to even say, let alone do, research on the Internet is totally out of character and yet another indication of how I am changing. For me, the solution is to go to the store where they sell these things and talk to the people that tell you what you need. Except, I couldn't think of one single camera shop withing 35 square miles of where I live. Until about 5 years ago, there was a little camera shop in our town but the last time I saw him he was selling out and going into insurance or something. The big box stores have people that take out packaging and read it to you, as if they're reading it to you will have more significance. I can read, thank you very much. So onto the Internet I went and found this amazing site where the guy does video demos of the cameras and in that moment I thought the Internet was the most amazing thing ever! I was talking to the guy in the camera store at my own kitchen table. I didn't even have to put on shoes or one schmere of lipstick to find out exactly what camera was going to best suit my needs. Now I could go into Best Buy and tell the person, who knew as much about digital cameras as I did, exactly what I was going to buy. Success.
This whole camera thing was a turning point for me. I think because the learning experience was a case of transposition. With the cameras, I had to take a skill I already had and translate what I already knew into a new language. I wasn't starting from scratch. I already had concepts to use as a jumping off point. Going from film to digital was like copying music into another key. It's still the same music but with a different configuration of notes. With the computer, I have had to enter a foreign country, learn a completely new language - which sounds like the language I have been using all of my life but is deceptively different. I have had to take physical skills like typing and use them in an expanded way on a piece of hardware that has a totally different feel and purpose than what I learned on in business school. I have had to revise my concepts of social interaction and adapt to having types of relationships that didn't exist when I was born and growing up. Perhaps, most significantly, I have had to give up the tactile process of moving information around. I am the generation of paper. If it wasn't on paper, it didn't really exist or more importantly, it didn't matter. Put it on paper. Sign this paper, Send me the paper copy. File this paper. Fax me the paper. Organize your papers. The paper made it real. It, whatever it was, existed because it was on paper.
Cyberspace challenges us to operate in a world of visualization and though we still live in a tactile world of three dimensional things that we hold, touch and interact with we have to reconceptualize what that means so that everything can be fluidly transposed between the concept and the concrete. From where I stand, this leaves us with two choices as we move forward in our lives. We can plant ourselves firmly in the righteousness of our solid, feet planted firmly on the ground, if I can touch it it is real way of living. Or. We can encourage ourselves to explore this dual universe and see where it takes us. We can strengthen our minds by allowing ourselves to step out of the comfy place and see what it's like to slip in and out of either world. We can, by making the choice, have a relationship with the conceptual on our screens. It may not be the same relationship we have with something we hold in our hands or someone we kiss on the cheek but it is, in fact, a real relationship. It's just different. And by expansion of our beliefs, we can explore what my generation always thought would be actual outer space, right here where we sit, on these screens in our own little comfy spot.
Along came digital photography. Let me first say, that film, as a medium, will always hold a special place in my artist's heart. The soft, sumptuous warmth of film photography strikes a chord in my brain that not even the great masters of painting can. And then there's black and white! Is there anything more striking, more evocative, more illusive than good black and white photography? Think of the films that were shot in black and white and the emotional tone they set simply by being about shadows - light and dark. The metaphors abound! What would Raging Bull be in color? Could Woody Allen's Manhattan have sung more gloriously to New Yorkers had it been in color? I think not. New York is a black and white city. Paris is a city in color but New York is definitively black and white.
So rhapsodically I carry on about film only to be faced with the digital image. Okay, it is a cool thing - in concept. Certainly, on a practical level, being able to shoot with abandon and not have to think about how much every click of the shutter is costing, is a luxury. But what does it do for photography? When every image was bought before it was exposed and paid for in order to view whether or not it was a success, there was more care and discretion exercised before plunging the shutter. Composition counted and cropping was something that required several more steps after developing in order to have a final image. With digital, we can shoot with abandon, crop before we print and even tweak the light and exposure, something that before had to be done in a lab. Very convenient and excessive.
Alright, I've made my point. I love film.
I acquired my first digital camera before I went to Paris on a personal, significant birthday, "vision quest". I went to take a look at my life, have some time alone and bathe myself in the city of light. I had a basic knowledge of how the camera worked and looked forward to the freedom of taking as many shots as I wanted. (I still took my SLR, loaded with B&W film just because I wanted to shoot Notre Dame in light and shadows.) I must say, I was able to capture somethings with the digital that I never would have with my film camera equipment such as back lit, medieval stained glass and ancient Roman Baths deep underground. I slowly gave up the film cameras and reluctantly joined the digital age of photography.
So back to Etsy, shall we? "Upload first image". My first challenge, which to this day is a little like always reviewing right hand/left hand, is upload and download. I get stuck on those words all the time and my mind wanders off to endless schematics I have created in my head to map my way through the maze of computer concepts I barely understand. I wish there were a GPS we could plug into our brains to do the destination calculations for us. I would be much less tired at the end of the day.
A friend had told me about Picassa, a file sharing program like Flicker (I say that like I know. It is an assumption I am making so if I am wrong just remember I am still a third grader.) Before I could "upload my first image" I had to backtrack to Picassa, upoad the images from my camera, import them to my hard disk then go back to Etsy, find my listing in storage and take my first shot at uploading onto my Etsy site. Like all things computer, it took me several passes but when the deed was done, I was ecstatic. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Fuji in my sneakers. It was really cool! Until I saw the quality of the picture. It was all yellowish and flat looking. WTF? And the focus was mooshy and lacked detail.
After doing some research I realized two things. First, my little point and shoot was not going to do the trick for these kinds of "commercial" purposes. Second, the table top I had set up in my studio with clip lights and incandescent bulbs was not the approach to take with the digital. There I was, all set up with my little photo studio fit for an amature in the 1980's trying to light the medium of the 21st century. Who knew there was such a chasm between 20 and 21? All I wanted to do was open a little shop on Etsy to pedal my wares and now I had come up against yet another hitch in the road that required me to give myself another crash course in another high concept operation. What to do? Quit? Not on your life! I'd made it this far I wasn't going to let a camera stop me now.
I spent two days on the Internet researching cameras. Let me explain that for me to even say, let alone do, research on the Internet is totally out of character and yet another indication of how I am changing. For me, the solution is to go to the store where they sell these things and talk to the people that tell you what you need. Except, I couldn't think of one single camera shop withing 35 square miles of where I live. Until about 5 years ago, there was a little camera shop in our town but the last time I saw him he was selling out and going into insurance or something. The big box stores have people that take out packaging and read it to you, as if they're reading it to you will have more significance. I can read, thank you very much. So onto the Internet I went and found this amazing site where the guy does video demos of the cameras and in that moment I thought the Internet was the most amazing thing ever! I was talking to the guy in the camera store at my own kitchen table. I didn't even have to put on shoes or one schmere of lipstick to find out exactly what camera was going to best suit my needs. Now I could go into Best Buy and tell the person, who knew as much about digital cameras as I did, exactly what I was going to buy. Success.
This whole camera thing was a turning point for me. I think because the learning experience was a case of transposition. With the cameras, I had to take a skill I already had and translate what I already knew into a new language. I wasn't starting from scratch. I already had concepts to use as a jumping off point. Going from film to digital was like copying music into another key. It's still the same music but with a different configuration of notes. With the computer, I have had to enter a foreign country, learn a completely new language - which sounds like the language I have been using all of my life but is deceptively different. I have had to take physical skills like typing and use them in an expanded way on a piece of hardware that has a totally different feel and purpose than what I learned on in business school. I have had to revise my concepts of social interaction and adapt to having types of relationships that didn't exist when I was born and growing up. Perhaps, most significantly, I have had to give up the tactile process of moving information around. I am the generation of paper. If it wasn't on paper, it didn't really exist or more importantly, it didn't matter. Put it on paper. Sign this paper, Send me the paper copy. File this paper. Fax me the paper. Organize your papers. The paper made it real. It, whatever it was, existed because it was on paper.
Cyberspace challenges us to operate in a world of visualization and though we still live in a tactile world of three dimensional things that we hold, touch and interact with we have to reconceptualize what that means so that everything can be fluidly transposed between the concept and the concrete. From where I stand, this leaves us with two choices as we move forward in our lives. We can plant ourselves firmly in the righteousness of our solid, feet planted firmly on the ground, if I can touch it it is real way of living. Or. We can encourage ourselves to explore this dual universe and see where it takes us. We can strengthen our minds by allowing ourselves to step out of the comfy place and see what it's like to slip in and out of either world. We can, by making the choice, have a relationship with the conceptual on our screens. It may not be the same relationship we have with something we hold in our hands or someone we kiss on the cheek but it is, in fact, a real relationship. It's just different. And by expansion of our beliefs, we can explore what my generation always thought would be actual outer space, right here where we sit, on these screens in our own little comfy spot.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Earth Day Revolution
I have a real knack for shopping. I don’t just mean that I can walk into a store and find the real find. I mean I can walk into a place, find what is on sale, identify what is terrific about some pathetic thing that has been passed over for seasons and breathe new life into it. I can spot some oddball object in the junk pile that is the sale table at TJMaxx, pay practically nothing for it and make it become the thing in someone’s home that everyone oooohs and aaaaaahs over. It’s all about time and place and not having a judgement about something coming from the road traveled too long and too far.
Needless to say, I lived a lot of my life sport shopping, accumulating lots of things I love and many more that I absolutely never needed. That all changed very painfully and very abruptly a couple of years ago.
Two things happened in quick succession. First, my husband and I got caught in the real estate collapse right about the time we had decided to downsize. We had bought a smaller house with a barn for me to work in (with one of those crafty little bridge loans Washington Mutual was handing out like coupons in the grocery store) while still in possession of the large trophy home we had been living in for the last 10 years. The upshot of that experience was that we never moved into the more modest house because it was easier to sell (at a very large loss, I might add) and we were on the verge of foreclosure on four (yes, you read that right) mortgages. We were drowning in paper obligations we never had any business taking on in the first place.
The second thing that happened was, sometime before Christmas, I was staring at the wooden sign (that I got at some outrageously low price somewhere) that said Simplify. I had bought it for the fireplace mantel at the other house that I now did not live in, and talking to my girlfriend on the phone. In that conversation she said something to me that changed my life forever. The is not hyperbole. It changed my life forever. Here’s what she said.
We were talking about Christmas shopping and of course I was feeling so sorry for myself because I could do absolutely no shopping that year. There was barely money for groceries so Christmas gifts were sooooooooo out of the question. She told me that she was on the escalator in Macy’s and when she arrived on her floor, she stopped for a moment and looked around. And then it hit her - every single thing in the store, including every single thing that was involved in the construction of the building, everything within her sight, would end up in a landfill somewhere, sometime. I urge you to stop for a moment and just think about that. Every dress, every screw, every floor tile, every shoe, every makeup brush every yard of fabric and carpet every rhinestone every watch…would eventually end up as trash in a landfill somewhere on this planet of ours. I can tell you, my mind was blown forever at this thought.
That is when I decided that I would identify every single place, every single day of my life where I could find a way to reuse something instead of buying more. Luckily, my work was primarily broken pieces mosaics at the time, so I already had a reuse, recycle, reinvent mentality about how I was using my materials. Not only was I using old china but I would purchase the chipped stuff on sale tables and friends were bagging up everything they broke and giving it to me. This way of working caused me to begin seeing things in components. A plate that was not really much to look at but had one beautiful rose right smack dab in the middle of the flattest part of the plate was a find. An otherwise white plate with a beautiful gold border around the edge that would make a perfect border around a house number was a keeper. I was developing an eye for salvage.
When I found myself overcome with the urge to make jewelry I ran to Michael’s to stock up on materials. As I stood looking at all the findings, beads, pendants, wire, I was struck by two things. One, these materials were not going to express the vision I had in my head of what this jewelry of mine was going to look like and two, what I saw, more than the materials themselves was all of the packaging. Every single thing came with cellophane, cardboard, staples, tape, wire - all manner of packing materials that would end up in the garbage before I even made my first necklace. The image of the Arthur Kills landfill flashed before me and I no longer had a feel for my new jewelry line.
I was cleaning out a drawer one day and there were several pieces of junk jewelry, you know, those impulse buys from Target or H&M that you wore once and then wondered why on earth you bought it to begin with. I also came across some old grandma pieces that I would never wear but felt terrible tossing out (more landfill pictures). I stared and opened myself up to the possibility in these tidbits. And then I began to see components. If I disassembled the jewelry, there would be clasps, jump rings, beads, chains - all the things I had walked away from at Michael’s were staring me right in the face! I could make the jewelry I was envisioning by disassembling old useless pieces and recomposing them in a new and creative way. Suddenly, everything I laid my eyes on became potential material for all of my work.
I don’t see garbage anymore. Everything I see has the potential to be reinvented. New is what you turn to when you need something really specific and you don’t have time to wait for it to fall into your lap. But now, for me, there is no such thing as junk jewelry. Those box lids of grandma’s crappy leftovers at garage sales are now a box full of supplies for my work. A friend cleaning out her drawers is now an opportunity for me to invite myself over to pick through her garbage before the trash guys get there. My friends are getting used to it too. Just last night, I was with a friend and were taking pictures of our kids who were off to their Junior Prom and she told me she had a bag of old jewelry to give me. My friend who moves a lot because of her husband’s job always has a box of breakage to ship to me once she has unpacked and settled into a new home.
What I know is that, we on this planet have enough. Some of us have too much and some not enough but there is enough stuff for everyone. We as artists can create a revolution now. We can explore the esthetic of recycling and reimagine what is beautiful. We have a power and a responsibility, as artists, to see the world through different more thoughtful eyes. Let’s make our contribution to our planet this earth day by pledging to develop new eyes. Let’s see the treasure not the trash.
Needless to say, I lived a lot of my life sport shopping, accumulating lots of things I love and many more that I absolutely never needed. That all changed very painfully and very abruptly a couple of years ago.
Two things happened in quick succession. First, my husband and I got caught in the real estate collapse right about the time we had decided to downsize. We had bought a smaller house with a barn for me to work in (with one of those crafty little bridge loans Washington Mutual was handing out like coupons in the grocery store) while still in possession of the large trophy home we had been living in for the last 10 years. The upshot of that experience was that we never moved into the more modest house because it was easier to sell (at a very large loss, I might add) and we were on the verge of foreclosure on four (yes, you read that right) mortgages. We were drowning in paper obligations we never had any business taking on in the first place.
The second thing that happened was, sometime before Christmas, I was staring at the wooden sign (that I got at some outrageously low price somewhere) that said Simplify. I had bought it for the fireplace mantel at the other house that I now did not live in, and talking to my girlfriend on the phone. In that conversation she said something to me that changed my life forever. The is not hyperbole. It changed my life forever. Here’s what she said.
We were talking about Christmas shopping and of course I was feeling so sorry for myself because I could do absolutely no shopping that year. There was barely money for groceries so Christmas gifts were sooooooooo out of the question. She told me that she was on the escalator in Macy’s and when she arrived on her floor, she stopped for a moment and looked around. And then it hit her - every single thing in the store, including every single thing that was involved in the construction of the building, everything within her sight, would end up in a landfill somewhere, sometime. I urge you to stop for a moment and just think about that. Every dress, every screw, every floor tile, every shoe, every makeup brush every yard of fabric and carpet every rhinestone every watch…would eventually end up as trash in a landfill somewhere on this planet of ours. I can tell you, my mind was blown forever at this thought.
That is when I decided that I would identify every single place, every single day of my life where I could find a way to reuse something instead of buying more. Luckily, my work was primarily broken pieces mosaics at the time, so I already had a reuse, recycle, reinvent mentality about how I was using my materials. Not only was I using old china but I would purchase the chipped stuff on sale tables and friends were bagging up everything they broke and giving it to me. This way of working caused me to begin seeing things in components. A plate that was not really much to look at but had one beautiful rose right smack dab in the middle of the flattest part of the plate was a find. An otherwise white plate with a beautiful gold border around the edge that would make a perfect border around a house number was a keeper. I was developing an eye for salvage.
When I found myself overcome with the urge to make jewelry I ran to Michael’s to stock up on materials. As I stood looking at all the findings, beads, pendants, wire, I was struck by two things. One, these materials were not going to express the vision I had in my head of what this jewelry of mine was going to look like and two, what I saw, more than the materials themselves was all of the packaging. Every single thing came with cellophane, cardboard, staples, tape, wire - all manner of packing materials that would end up in the garbage before I even made my first necklace. The image of the Arthur Kills landfill flashed before me and I no longer had a feel for my new jewelry line.
I was cleaning out a drawer one day and there were several pieces of junk jewelry, you know, those impulse buys from Target or H&M that you wore once and then wondered why on earth you bought it to begin with. I also came across some old grandma pieces that I would never wear but felt terrible tossing out (more landfill pictures). I stared and opened myself up to the possibility in these tidbits. And then I began to see components. If I disassembled the jewelry, there would be clasps, jump rings, beads, chains - all the things I had walked away from at Michael’s were staring me right in the face! I could make the jewelry I was envisioning by disassembling old useless pieces and recomposing them in a new and creative way. Suddenly, everything I laid my eyes on became potential material for all of my work.
I don’t see garbage anymore. Everything I see has the potential to be reinvented. New is what you turn to when you need something really specific and you don’t have time to wait for it to fall into your lap. But now, for me, there is no such thing as junk jewelry. Those box lids of grandma’s crappy leftovers at garage sales are now a box full of supplies for my work. A friend cleaning out her drawers is now an opportunity for me to invite myself over to pick through her garbage before the trash guys get there. My friends are getting used to it too. Just last night, I was with a friend and were taking pictures of our kids who were off to their Junior Prom and she told me she had a bag of old jewelry to give me. My friend who moves a lot because of her husband’s job always has a box of breakage to ship to me once she has unpacked and settled into a new home.
What I know is that, we on this planet have enough. Some of us have too much and some not enough but there is enough stuff for everyone. We as artists can create a revolution now. We can explore the esthetic of recycling and reimagine what is beautiful. We have a power and a responsibility, as artists, to see the world through different more thoughtful eyes. Let’s make our contribution to our planet this earth day by pledging to develop new eyes. Let’s see the treasure not the trash.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Easy-peasy etsy!
I find it ironic that I sit by a window with a spectacular view of my wooded property while I navigate my way around the road less traveled via the information highway. I am mesmerized by brilliantly red-orange cardinals at the bird feeders and amused by the tribes of robins that arrive every spring like an army and organize to build nests for the mothers of their children. I stare eagerly at my beloved pink dogwood, waiting anxiously for it to burst into bloom. I watch the ancient, statuesque Norweigan spruce trees curve into the wind as their long sleeves of needles swoope like kites at the beach. The beautiful Hanoki spruce sits placidly in the garden establilshing itself as the solid Buddha that it is. I project myself easily out the window to commune with the beauty of nature and imagine the warmth of the soft spring sun warming the top of my head. The dog barking at the back door, trying to warn a squirrel that he is about to come outside and kick his ass jerks me back to the fact that I am sitting before an LED screen that is impatiently staring and waiting for me to tell it to do something.
Since I decided that I wanted to show and sell my wares on the internet, I have purchased a fancy laptop, a new digital camera, set up an etsy site, built a website from a five paged templet, joined Facebook and maintain a personal and fan page, taught myself to take, load, edit and move pictures around the cybersphere and now check my email daily, sometimes twice a day. I have acquired a Blackberry and use it for everything including grocery lists and my to-dos for the day. I have different bells, tones and whistles for calls, emails (business or personal), appointments, texts, Facebook - all distinct signals in a code only I understand. I have joined business networking sites, set up a paypal account and do my books and banking online now, able to move money and numbers around as easily as dealing cards. I often venture out of the "neighborhood" and explore shopping sites, blogs, wists and subscribe to various hipster newsletters that keep me abreast of the coolest trends and grooviest finds and can subscribe to those alerts from any major city in the world. I save favorite websites and bookmark places I can easily do business with and source odd necessities like maniquin heads and vintage jump rings. All in all, I appear to be a tech savy broad and my teenaged son seems to be the only person in my life that is not particularly impressed with what a big, fat, gigantic, awesome, staggering, mind-bending, mind-altering accomplishment this is for me.
Let me just share with you a chapter from the past, when I first sat down in this placid spot of mine to to begin the journey of setting up the oh-so-simple etsy shop. Please take note that the "oh-so-simple" part of that sentence would be dripping with bile and sarcasim if I could graphically illustrate it for you here. I chose etsy because it was pre -structured and all I needed to do was fill in the blanks with my own information. Easy-peasy! Really. No, not if you don't know your upload from you download it isn't.
Step one. Choose a name for you shop. Easy. I already had a business called Special Affects and that was the name I was going to continue to use. I entered SpecialAffects (no spaces in the names at etsy as they are also web addresses), waited and....taken. No! It can't be taken! Now what? Think. I have to use that name. I've been using it for 3 years. Let me see who has it. I did a search and up came a blank page. You're kidding! Someone used my name, threw it away and now etsy won't let me use it because someone else touched it! Now what? I pulled NellsBelles out of my memory, entered it and...bingo! NellsBelles is mine for the taking. Okay. Made it through the first step. Now in no time at all, I'll be in business. Okay. Next step.
Step two. Upload your artwork for your banner (esty for sign) which must fit into this exact sized templet. At this point it didn't manner what size the templet was. I had no art work and even if I did, I hadn't the slightest idea how to get it onto this page. I had to refer back to the etsy handbook but wait, I have to minimize this page and open a new page to access the handbook so, let me see, shit! That closes the page. Crap. Now I have to go back and find the page again and damn! It won't let me because someone has already taken that page but that someone is me and I accidently closed it but I can't figure out how to get it open again but I didn't really close it but...NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
That was the end of work day number 1.
Fortunetly for me, there were people on etsy that were making a busness of creating banners for people and I found this great girl in Maine named Juli to build a banner just the way I wanted it and thank God, she had the patience to load it for me and it didn't cost me and arm and a leg and it was a huge relief and I am forever indebted to her. I could still be sitting in front of that page, nearly a year later, trying to figure out how to get the design I had painted on my foyer wall onto my etsy page. Shout out to Juli Lamb!
So with the name claimed, the banner done the next step was to create alot of text. I am a bit of a type A personality so when I am prompted to describe my shop I immediately launch my mind into mission statements, brand establishment and all manner of thinking not so relevant to the little sapling that is my etsy site. Least that not deter me, I spent the next week contemplating and drafting, drafting and redrafting chipper chatter to introduce myself to the etsy-sphere and grab a little attention for my basement studio treasures. I have some ability with the words so this part was not torture and in fact I felt a bit of a wiz hitting a patch for which I felt I had some understanding. Of course, my spelling is atrocious and having someone who spells like English is her second language edit her own copy is a bit of a farce. (And don't you know, all the spelling and grammer freaks in my life could not comment on my work until I contacted them to discuss the mess that was my proof reading.)
The copy was written and posted and my store policies established (for the time being). I spent several days researching the most cost efficient way to ship everything from a necklace to a 25 inch lamp and could give rounded numbers to shipping costs anywhere in the United States (I have yet to reach beyond our shores to ship outside this country.) I had composed a little bio hoping to make it more entertaining than something to urge my customers to take me seriously, as if I were practicing medicine. Okay. What's next? "List your first item". Okay. Here we go. I wrote a description, again, trying to be fun and entertaining while attempting be the salesperson I don't believe myself to be. I gave measurements and suggestions for uses and reccommendations on how or where the piece might look it's best. Okay. Not bad for a beginner. There's a style there. Yeah. Kind of like a brand. A distinct voice is emerging. I kinda like it. What's next? "Upload your first image."
Okay. Day's over. Save. Close tab. Red or white? Bring on the vino.
Since I decided that I wanted to show and sell my wares on the internet, I have purchased a fancy laptop, a new digital camera, set up an etsy site, built a website from a five paged templet, joined Facebook and maintain a personal and fan page, taught myself to take, load, edit and move pictures around the cybersphere and now check my email daily, sometimes twice a day. I have acquired a Blackberry and use it for everything including grocery lists and my to-dos for the day. I have different bells, tones and whistles for calls, emails (business or personal), appointments, texts, Facebook - all distinct signals in a code only I understand. I have joined business networking sites, set up a paypal account and do my books and banking online now, able to move money and numbers around as easily as dealing cards. I often venture out of the "neighborhood" and explore shopping sites, blogs, wists and subscribe to various hipster newsletters that keep me abreast of the coolest trends and grooviest finds and can subscribe to those alerts from any major city in the world. I save favorite websites and bookmark places I can easily do business with and source odd necessities like maniquin heads and vintage jump rings. All in all, I appear to be a tech savy broad and my teenaged son seems to be the only person in my life that is not particularly impressed with what a big, fat, gigantic, awesome, staggering, mind-bending, mind-altering accomplishment this is for me.
Let me just share with you a chapter from the past, when I first sat down in this placid spot of mine to to begin the journey of setting up the oh-so-simple etsy shop. Please take note that the "oh-so-simple" part of that sentence would be dripping with bile and sarcasim if I could graphically illustrate it for you here. I chose etsy because it was pre -structured and all I needed to do was fill in the blanks with my own information. Easy-peasy! Really. No, not if you don't know your upload from you download it isn't.
Step one. Choose a name for you shop. Easy. I already had a business called Special Affects and that was the name I was going to continue to use. I entered SpecialAffects (no spaces in the names at etsy as they are also web addresses), waited and....taken. No! It can't be taken! Now what? Think. I have to use that name. I've been using it for 3 years. Let me see who has it. I did a search and up came a blank page. You're kidding! Someone used my name, threw it away and now etsy won't let me use it because someone else touched it! Now what? I pulled NellsBelles out of my memory, entered it and...bingo! NellsBelles is mine for the taking. Okay. Made it through the first step. Now in no time at all, I'll be in business. Okay. Next step.
Step two. Upload your artwork for your banner (esty for sign) which must fit into this exact sized templet. At this point it didn't manner what size the templet was. I had no art work and even if I did, I hadn't the slightest idea how to get it onto this page. I had to refer back to the etsy handbook but wait, I have to minimize this page and open a new page to access the handbook so, let me see, shit! That closes the page. Crap. Now I have to go back and find the page again and damn! It won't let me because someone has already taken that page but that someone is me and I accidently closed it but I can't figure out how to get it open again but I didn't really close it but...NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
That was the end of work day number 1.
Fortunetly for me, there were people on etsy that were making a busness of creating banners for people and I found this great girl in Maine named Juli to build a banner just the way I wanted it and thank God, she had the patience to load it for me and it didn't cost me and arm and a leg and it was a huge relief and I am forever indebted to her. I could still be sitting in front of that page, nearly a year later, trying to figure out how to get the design I had painted on my foyer wall onto my etsy page. Shout out to Juli Lamb!
So with the name claimed, the banner done the next step was to create alot of text. I am a bit of a type A personality so when I am prompted to describe my shop I immediately launch my mind into mission statements, brand establishment and all manner of thinking not so relevant to the little sapling that is my etsy site. Least that not deter me, I spent the next week contemplating and drafting, drafting and redrafting chipper chatter to introduce myself to the etsy-sphere and grab a little attention for my basement studio treasures. I have some ability with the words so this part was not torture and in fact I felt a bit of a wiz hitting a patch for which I felt I had some understanding. Of course, my spelling is atrocious and having someone who spells like English is her second language edit her own copy is a bit of a farce. (And don't you know, all the spelling and grammer freaks in my life could not comment on my work until I contacted them to discuss the mess that was my proof reading.)
The copy was written and posted and my store policies established (for the time being). I spent several days researching the most cost efficient way to ship everything from a necklace to a 25 inch lamp and could give rounded numbers to shipping costs anywhere in the United States (I have yet to reach beyond our shores to ship outside this country.) I had composed a little bio hoping to make it more entertaining than something to urge my customers to take me seriously, as if I were practicing medicine. Okay. What's next? "List your first item". Okay. Here we go. I wrote a description, again, trying to be fun and entertaining while attempting be the salesperson I don't believe myself to be. I gave measurements and suggestions for uses and reccommendations on how or where the piece might look it's best. Okay. Not bad for a beginner. There's a style there. Yeah. Kind of like a brand. A distinct voice is emerging. I kinda like it. What's next? "Upload your first image."
Okay. Day's over. Save. Close tab. Red or white? Bring on the vino.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
...In Fact, I Will
Everyday is like being in the third grade for me. I was educated in the American public school system (but for a brief detour into the north woods of Michagan for some private boarding school) in the 3 R's canon and life was presented as a very concrete, matter-of-fact place to function. NOTHING and I mean nothing, was even hinted about what was to come. Acres of gigantic computing machines with hole-punched tape and spinning reels sent men into outer space when I was a kid but there was nothing suggested about a small box of plastic pieces that would sit on top of a desk and send my sanity to the moon. The computer way of life came on like an amphetamine rush, just about the time I thought I should be feeling some firm footing in my life. Like many plebs of my generation, I segregated myself from the computer users because I was an artist and computers were for "regular" people and office workers. (True enough, I was sent to business school but I learned the fine art of bar keeping by this time and never dreamed that the computer would invade hospitality too!) It seemed very clear that as long as I could continue to get ribbons for my IBM Selectric I could communicate with the world in a business-like fashion and could leave the desk tops computers to the geeks. How'd that work out, you may be asking.
I finally relented a few years before my son was born. My sweet husband let me quit my job in the film industry to stay at home and write screenplays while he put down the guitar and posted billing (on a computer) for a TV company. My first crack at the computer was a set- up that Denny brought home from work. It was one of those scary things with the black screen and the flashing amber cursor. I knocked out two, rather fine, screenplays on that monster and though I never memorized the "F" keys (I'll allow you to imagine what I called those keys in frustration) and always needed a cheat sheet, I felt that I had slipped my way onto the information highway and could travel at my own speed. Once my son was born I found I could not cope with a new baby and a computer at the same time and so, not so suprisingly, I walked away from the computer...
...for about five years. In techno, that is light speed travel through several universes. My son went off to school, people were constantly asking me if I had email and I decided that I needed to catch up with folks that were concerned with things other than juice boxes and playdates. I purchased my first Compaq computer and had no idea just how stupid I could feel until I sat down before this chunky white plastic cube and put my fingers on the keyboard. Let me just say, here and now, that my tolerance for slow is embarassingly low. And may I remind you that waiting for a home page to materialize in the mid-nineties, particularly when a photograph was involved, was a herikeri mission to those of us with no patience. I would literally begin to perspire and bounce my knees up and down, sitting in the chair waiting...waiting...waiting...waiting...............
Forget it!!! This was not a time saver! This was a time waster and I had no time to waste! As far as I was concerned, home computers were for people who either had nothing to do or didn't want to do what they had to do. Done.
We moved to a new house and I was claiming a room of my own. A place to sit, read, be alone and yes, I was going to try to write again. A new Compaq was purchased and I was assured the computer had come a long way and it was not going to make me as tense and nervous as the last one had. I set up an email account, collected a few addressses of people to communicate with and did very little writing. I did do a little research now and then. I worked with a friend to put together a fine trip to Italy and utilized WebMD when I thought I could shortcut going to the doctor. The PTA Presidency gave me opportunity to get on the computer occaisionally but my feeling about the whole thing remained the same - computers were a crashing waste of time. Give me a phone and a typwriter anyday!
A two year-old Dell was brought home from the office and a much nicer printer was purchased. Bills were being paid online cutting the amount of time it took me to pay all the debts from our credit riddled lives in half and saved me from having to write my name over and over again until I was sick of myself. People were becoming annoyed with me as they tried to make plans via email as I waited for phone calls. "Don't you ever check your email?!?" Obviously, no. But I began to take the whole email thing into consideration and realized it was becoming a matter of social etiquette and if I wanted to have a life outside of my home, I should probably get with the program. I will check my email more that once a week, I will check my email more than once a week...
Something else that was happening was another one of my favorite mediums was taking a powder and being replaced by the digital. The good old fashioned, film photograph that I had spent so much time and money learning how to do well was gasping it's last breath as the point and shoot digital was bursting into Best Buy. When my beloved Cannon 35mm broke and it was going to cost me a fortune to repair it, my husband and son presented me with a lovely digital camera for my birthday and I didn't know whether to be grateful or cry. Yet another one of my life's pleasures that I was going to have to learn how to do - all over again.
Woe, oh woe to me. Okay. The cordless phone - a liberation. Loved it and welcomed it with open arms. The answering machine - I didn't need an answering service anymore, it was one less bill to pay and even though it put good people out of work, I liked the machine better. Ditching the correctable typewriter - you know the drill. But now the glorious, sensuous, malleable endeavor of exposing film to light? Oh gawd.
So here's how it was adding up for me. Either I continued to be a middle-aged stick in the mud that looked way too much like my mother telling me my teenaged music was just noise or I just hold my nose and cross the line into the 21st Century and try to enjoy the ride. I never wanted to ever become my mother, in any sense, and I continue to fancy myself a hip albeit aging person and so - I crossed. Stepped right over that big fat timeline with my "yes we can" attitude and looked across the horizon of the future. Yet like anything with a learning curve, there is a generous amount of time spent in learning pergatory before the fun begins.
I'm waiting.
I finally relented a few years before my son was born. My sweet husband let me quit my job in the film industry to stay at home and write screenplays while he put down the guitar and posted billing (on a computer) for a TV company. My first crack at the computer was a set- up that Denny brought home from work. It was one of those scary things with the black screen and the flashing amber cursor. I knocked out two, rather fine, screenplays on that monster and though I never memorized the "F" keys (I'll allow you to imagine what I called those keys in frustration) and always needed a cheat sheet, I felt that I had slipped my way onto the information highway and could travel at my own speed. Once my son was born I found I could not cope with a new baby and a computer at the same time and so, not so suprisingly, I walked away from the computer...
...for about five years. In techno, that is light speed travel through several universes. My son went off to school, people were constantly asking me if I had email and I decided that I needed to catch up with folks that were concerned with things other than juice boxes and playdates. I purchased my first Compaq computer and had no idea just how stupid I could feel until I sat down before this chunky white plastic cube and put my fingers on the keyboard. Let me just say, here and now, that my tolerance for slow is embarassingly low. And may I remind you that waiting for a home page to materialize in the mid-nineties, particularly when a photograph was involved, was a herikeri mission to those of us with no patience. I would literally begin to perspire and bounce my knees up and down, sitting in the chair waiting...waiting...waiting...waiting...............
Forget it!!! This was not a time saver! This was a time waster and I had no time to waste! As far as I was concerned, home computers were for people who either had nothing to do or didn't want to do what they had to do. Done.
We moved to a new house and I was claiming a room of my own. A place to sit, read, be alone and yes, I was going to try to write again. A new Compaq was purchased and I was assured the computer had come a long way and it was not going to make me as tense and nervous as the last one had. I set up an email account, collected a few addressses of people to communicate with and did very little writing. I did do a little research now and then. I worked with a friend to put together a fine trip to Italy and utilized WebMD when I thought I could shortcut going to the doctor. The PTA Presidency gave me opportunity to get on the computer occaisionally but my feeling about the whole thing remained the same - computers were a crashing waste of time. Give me a phone and a typwriter anyday!
A two year-old Dell was brought home from the office and a much nicer printer was purchased. Bills were being paid online cutting the amount of time it took me to pay all the debts from our credit riddled lives in half and saved me from having to write my name over and over again until I was sick of myself. People were becoming annoyed with me as they tried to make plans via email as I waited for phone calls. "Don't you ever check your email?!?" Obviously, no. But I began to take the whole email thing into consideration and realized it was becoming a matter of social etiquette and if I wanted to have a life outside of my home, I should probably get with the program. I will check my email more that once a week, I will check my email more than once a week...
Something else that was happening was another one of my favorite mediums was taking a powder and being replaced by the digital. The good old fashioned, film photograph that I had spent so much time and money learning how to do well was gasping it's last breath as the point and shoot digital was bursting into Best Buy. When my beloved Cannon 35mm broke and it was going to cost me a fortune to repair it, my husband and son presented me with a lovely digital camera for my birthday and I didn't know whether to be grateful or cry. Yet another one of my life's pleasures that I was going to have to learn how to do - all over again.
Woe, oh woe to me. Okay. The cordless phone - a liberation. Loved it and welcomed it with open arms. The answering machine - I didn't need an answering service anymore, it was one less bill to pay and even though it put good people out of work, I liked the machine better. Ditching the correctable typewriter - you know the drill. But now the glorious, sensuous, malleable endeavor of exposing film to light? Oh gawd.
So here's how it was adding up for me. Either I continued to be a middle-aged stick in the mud that looked way too much like my mother telling me my teenaged music was just noise or I just hold my nose and cross the line into the 21st Century and try to enjoy the ride. I never wanted to ever become my mother, in any sense, and I continue to fancy myself a hip albeit aging person and so - I crossed. Stepped right over that big fat timeline with my "yes we can" attitude and looked across the horizon of the future. Yet like anything with a learning curve, there is a generous amount of time spent in learning pergatory before the fun begins.
I'm waiting.
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