Where business and the arts meet, making work better together.
I’ve had a go at sketching poppies before now, and having enjoyed the challenge, I revisited it earlier this Summer. I shared these sketches on Facebook and my friend Laurie Ruettimann suggested I start an Etsy shop to sell some of my art. I followed Laurie’s advice, one of these poppy sketches has since been sold, the other one I gave to Laurie as a thank you for the Etsy idea.
I subsequently painted a single poppy, this time in purple. This one has sold to a friend in New Zealand.
Bad things in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are.
Monday, what a drag. You know how sometimes nothing goes wrong enough to make a fuss but somehow everything sucks just bad enough to leave you hollow by the day’s end? Yeah – that.
Monday evening – read Laurie Ruettimann’s blog post – felt better, more purposeful again.
Tuesday, quick out of the blocks. I always get excited when orders for Stop Doing Dumb Things come in, and I’m due a delivery from the printer with new stock too. While I wait for the DHL van to show I kick down my to do list.
Tick, tick, tick – I’m on the case, take that Tuesday! Delivery arrives – world turns upside down.
The top row is how the cards are supposed to look, the bottom row is what has arrived from the printers. Ouch! I reminded myself – ‘keep calm, there’s a solution in here somewhere’, and rang the printer. It turns out that three orders, including this restock, are all wrong. And to rub salt into the wound – some are going direct to clients, and the correct card template has been overwritten. The problem only affects a few cards in each deck but long story short, I am going to have to rebuild the complete set again from scratch.
Time to take my medicine and get on with it. I start on Tuesday afternoon and finish on…
Wednesday. After several hours of retyping, setting and colouring I’m done. Proof it – approve it – get on with it. Wednesday afternoon is all about prepping my management accounts and playing catch up, and so too is…
Thursday. I’m getting on with stuff, and yet drifting a bit, suffering some kind of sorry for myself post panic hangover. Then I check an email that arrived during all the hoohah from Joan, who I met two months ago in Illinois. It said:
‘You definitely made an impact in my world and the story you shared about your father’s pocket watch is still with me. I’ve started to follow your blog & professional posts as I so enjoy your writing. Wishing you a great day. Thanks again for all you do & share to help everyone else be better & do good things!’
Two things. 1 – Thanks Joan, what a lovely note. 2 – I think my week sucks – who am I kidding? Something went wrong, it got fixed, nobody died. I got a whole bunch of stuff done and best of all, Joan appreciates me. What’s not to like, dumbass! (Note: I’m talking to me right there, not you).
For the most part I have an optimistic outlook, and yet this week is a great reminder for me: negative stuff is a fact of life, it creeps in – and boy does it grow quickly when you let it. I think Meatloaf said it best when he sang: Bad things in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are. Or something.
I’m off to read Laurie’s post again, then I’m going to take Friday off and make a long weekend of it. May your week also close out in spectacular fashion.
At the end of last month I read a post over at Laurie Ruettimann’s Cynical Girl blog that started ‘If you are a blogger, you should blog on a daily basis. I believe that blogging is a full-time job. Target, McDonalds and Walmart barely shut their doors. Neither should you.’ I’m not going to start saying what I think is right, wrong, up or down about blogging, the last time I tried that I got my ass kicked and couldn’t sit down for a week. You draw your own conclusions about what blogging is or isn’t.
Anyhoo, the words Laurie wrote got me thinking, how hard/easy/smart/dumb would it be to try and get a new blog post out every weekday in July? I decided to go for it and feeling chicken, I kept the challenge to myself. After all, most of what I write comes pretty much from the here and now and I’ve always struggled to have a lot of drafts and reserves to call upon, so the chances of me making it are pretty slim right?
Yeah it was close at times and I made it to this finish line. I found some time on weekends to sit and pen a few thoughts which helped along the way, and I learned the importance of scribbling down good ideas. Over the course of July I’ve had four lightbulb moments which I think would have made great blog posts, but because I didn’t write them down I forgot ’em all, dang it!
Thanks for sticking with me this past month, August won’t be quite the same as there are holidays coming.