Housekeeping and Decision-Making.

This has been an insanely busy year for me!  Early on in the year, I made the decision to throw myself into doing shows this year.  Sadly, other things in my life got pushed aside so that I could do this. It was also pretty expensive.  That said, I think the way I have done things is probably the most efficient, in the long run.  Now, goodness knows I didn't hit nearly all of the possible venues I could have;  however, my experiences with the ones I did hit proved valuable.

For one thing, I now know which times of year I will and won't bother with shows (I have two left this year, but I have a good idea.)  I also know which venues I will keep and which I will skip next year. This will save me money, time, and energy, and it will allow me to try different venues next year.

As I said, other areas of my life suffered a bit, but I am hoping to rebuild those areas over the winter and next year.  I will be far more available next year, since I will be limiting how often I do shows.  A major area that suffered was my actual creating.  Because I was scrambling for a lot of the summer to prepare for show after show, I did not get nearly as much time as I would have liked in the studio. I have several unfinished products, to which I am hoping to return in the very near future.  My next show is in about two weeks.

I have also had to put off--again--the roll-out of my website.  I'm not going to be using this blog as my main site forever!  Because I can't afford to pay someone to build my website, my boyfriend has been gracious enough to help me with it.  He showed me as much as he could, and then I planned to take over the project, with him available to help me if I got stuck.  Trouble is...well, see above.  It's mostly finished.  I just need to load photos into my database, and I'm debating whether I want a separate, sparse landing page or whether I'm going to use it as it is now.  I don't anticipate being able to get back to it any time soon, so I'm hoping for a launch in early 2011.  It's frustrating, but that's a consequence of running a one-woman show.

Finally, I have re-opened a shop at Etsy .  I did this in order to stay involved with my local Etsy Street Team (CREST.)  They are a great bunch of people, and even though I've been active with their off-site stuff, I have decided I want to be more actively involved again. We are gearing up for our very first Team craft show, and it's been fun helping with the preparations.  It's also really good to have a local network.

On a personal note, I am having job troubles, so some of my time has also been devoted to searching for a more suitable position.  As most everyone knows, now is a horrible time to be searching for a job.  I'm plugging away, though.  If my current situation were better, I could devote my job hunting time to my art, but this is simply my reality right now.

These days, I'm lucky if I can fit in one hour a night!  That's just life.

I do have some exciting ideas simmering.  I was hoping to manifest some of them along with the website, but that is taking too long.  As soon as I get my next show behind me, I'm going to start planning and start doing some of these things.  I think you will enjoy them!  :)

I hope everyone is having a lovely Autumn so far!