Viva la révolution

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair
In 77 and 69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

(Sandi Thom)

I actually love this song. It was around last summer? The summer before? Its not my usual style at all, I listen to rock of the Green Day/Linkin Park/Evanescence ilk but this touched my soul. Even though 'punk rocker' should perhaps have been "peace-lovin', weed-smokin' hippie", given the flowers. I was born in December '75 so missed the spirit and change of the time. Even the early 80s punk rock scene passed me by as nothing more than the big kids wearing weird clothes and doing odd things with hair and makeup.

Either way... the point is that this is a 'who I want to be when I grow up' post. Not that I want to grow up, but I'm doing my very best to metamorphose. And I don't really want to be anyone but uniquely, insanely ME but I have a HUGE admiration for a number of people in this industry, and at the very pinnacle of that list sits the amazing Margot Potter.

Now those of you who also read my personal blog will be familiar with my slightly chaotic, inspired and flighty way of taking ideas and sprinting with them. I'm not going to pretend for a second that it isn't a definite characteristic of bipolarity because it IS but its the part of the illness that I wouldn't willingly give up for the world. My personal journal is similar to this one in many ways, but I swear more, make more typos and subject my friends to moans about life, flights of ideas and the more sensitive business details, sometimes locked, sometimes not. This blog is the cleaned-up-for-professional-use version.

Either way, I've been reading Margot's blog for a month or two now and she continues to inspire and amaze me with her talent and generosity of spirit. When I went blog-hunting I was looking for people who were doing what I want to do, in my own fashion and found so many amazing women, including Margot. She's a designer and writer and possibly the best non-pushy self-promoter I've ever come across and on an almost daily basis, she shares the reasons for her success and tips on how to achieve it with the world. Not in an awful, smarmy, life-coach way but in an absolutely genuine lets-all-help-each-other kinda way, whilst being totally sassy and original. I was sad to read she'd had an unnecessarily negative review about her latest book, Sparkletastic. Some people just look for things in life to moan about. Possibly because they don't know what to say if they're not moaning.

So Margot is the person I think I've learned most from this year so far, and her posts, among others, are keeping me going at the minute, when I'm putting my metamorphosis on temporary hold to concentrate on actually making money through the daily grind of my eBay shop. Sadly I'm mid financial crisis and while I am certainly not abandoning my writer-designer plans, for the next week or two, they have to be put to one side while I make enough money to pay my mortgage and bills.

And finally, while I'm sharing linky goodness, go check out my Bead Magazine review over on the lovely Cyndi's jewelryandbeading blog. I was privileged to be asked to write this and ridiculously pleased when I saw it posted yesterday. :o)

Mrs Clarke's office, how may I help?

I appear to have developed a new role in life as the personal secretary of Mrs Clarke. Today I took a returned call after Mrs Clarke left a message on some company's answerphone, and dealt with her delivery company. This has been going on for two weeks, Mrs Clarke gets a LOT of phone calls and deliveries. She also saves or has a mortgage with Northern Rock.

Trouble is, I have no freakin' CLUE who Mrs Clarke is.

I am assuming she's a dimwit of the highest order due to her not only getting her own number wrong (forgivable, especially if BT are involved) but you'd think after TWO WEEKS she'd have a) clicked that no-one ever returns her calls and b) that SOMEONE in her personal circle would have mentioned it to her.

Its getting mildly irritating. Especially as I work from home and get her blinkin phone calls all day long.

But other than that life is.... tentatively OK. After a couple of bitch-from-hell PMT days this week I appear to be back to what passes as normality in my quirky little world. Work is happening. Its mainly counting beads and listing them so deadly dull, but it is getting done and I'm staying motivated by keeping up my research on magazine submissions. I figure, if I JUST manage to get everything outstanding listed then all I'll have to do work-wise is restocks and packing so I'll be able to spend a lot more time working on designed-for-publication jewellery, and will have the time to keep it all organised and efficient - there'd be nothing worse than having no clue what had been submitted to where and what was free to be submitted etc. Well there are plenty of worse things, but within the confines of my current ambitions its pretty bad!

I did have on my list for February 'hunt down submission guidelines for all relevant magazines' however the lovely Cyndi from jewelleryandbeading.com blogged the entire list this morning, missing off only Bead Magazine which is a UK publication and therefore understandable (I also already have their submission guidelines bookmarked).

So I'm getting quite excited. I'm looking forward to the day I can come on here and say 'one of my necklaces is going to be in xxx magazine!' with happy bounciness and major overexcitement. I don't of course, consider that I'll spend a lifetime being perpetually turned down. I'm too confident/arrogant for that and honestly, what's the point of submitting if you expect to fail? Plus I know I'm good at design (it surprises me that some people can't do it, it's the easiest thing in the world) and if I'm actually trying my writing is OK as well (for years I wanted to be a journalist - I seriously kicked ass in GCSE and A Level English with 90%+ overall scores... then went and did a degree in mainy IT. How bizarre... all I can say is that I was 18, had just discovered the very new Internet (as far as public use went) and I was TOTALLY overwhelmed and enthused by the possibilities this geeky little toy offered the world. Turns out I was right ;-). Saying that for years before that I wanted to be a vet. And Geoff still wants to be an astronaut...

So thats how I'm staying motivated amidst millions of uncounted beads. Maybe not millions. But I'd say certainly in excess of a couple of hundred thousand.

I'm bloody knackered

I have finally been through every single template of every single relevant product in my shop (there's around 1200 products - with around 1-2 templates each) and changed all the bloody listings that still have image URLs for the old domain. Its boring, mind numbing and what few braincells I have left are attempting to escape their torture by climbing out my nose *sniff*. I also stock took as I went... so now in theory all my stock levels for those categories - which is most of the stuff I have - are correct and absolutely everything is listed for sale. Erm all the already written-and-photographed stock that is. That doesn't include the few hundred lines I have sitting here unphotographed, uncounted and unwritten. So much as I'd like to, I can't really take much of a break yet. But its a good start to the year I guess and my shop is now reopened so I should start making money pdq again. Which we need coz we're a bit screwed at the mo.

Soooo tomorrow its stocktake the remaining stuff that doesn't have potential wrong domains - glass beads and jewellery - sticking the jewellery up on the new website as well as I go. Then starts the slow process of getting through all the brand new lines that aren't up yet. And I'm still only on step 2 (of 10) of The Big Picture. And they're not even linear steps *sighs* they go like this:

1..2....3....4................5..6......7...................................8.............................9......*10* utopia!

Or to put it more simply, the first 6 steps - about 2 months. The next 3 steps - about 6 months and simultaneous. Thats way more planning and forethought than I've ever shown any ability to stick to before.


Unsurprisingly I've done bugger all other than work my bum off and sleep the last few days but I figure now the absolute immediate essential stuff is out the way I can maybe go back to having slightly more balance. And, y'know, reintroducing my husband to his wife. I think he's forgotton who I am.

And finally a question.... because I'm really quite interested in the answer. Is finding balance supposed to be so damn difficult?

Its a MAJOR mental logistics problem trying to get my head around doing work-play-family-house-health-etc every day. How do people manage it all the time?

Coz my natural inclination is to one or the other. Like... I can work solid for a week no problem. I can spend days straight reading new books. I can decide my house needs cleaning / redecorating and keep going until the damn thing is done. I've lost weeks of my life completely immersed to the exclusion of everything else when finding new hobbies. I've lost entire months of my life in online communities (or amateur dramatics! Away from rehearsals, costumes need making, props and sets need doing, the am dram pub quiz team Needs You!... is very easy to give your entire life over to it)

But I find it sooooo hard to do little bit of each, every day. So whats the secret?

Being a good girl

Sadly the fat chick picture tells me that I've lost the ability to do sweet, cute and delightfully angelic so I shan't try. It would be grimace-like. Sadly my kids noticed it and have been teasing horribly. Or rather Darren was teasing horribly until he decided to convince me that if he really stopped talking to me I'd be worried (haha - I won that one though, he's 'not speaking to me' for a week to see if I get panicky. Yay! No incessant teenage rambling!). Then he just sent Jay in with comments about double chins *glares*.

But I have been behaving in the sense of sticking to my lists a little more. Work has been getting done, although I've changed the shop reopen date to Monday to allow me to get through the rest of the stock edits unhindered, I've been dutifully getting my minimum-per-day exercise, staying (mainly) off the chocolate and attempting to get my finances slightly more... afloat. As Geoff appears to be still largely non-posting on his journal, I'll say that it looks like he's going back to work part time as a contractor - at least for a little while. I won't pretend I won't miss having him at home - I'm not sure how I'll feel to be honest, I've been a lot less depressed with him around - but we need the extra income at the minute. We're not entirely sure how we'll manage kids though given that Cam needs collecting from school at 3.15 daily and I don't currently have a car.

I'd like to have found some time for drawing/painting but most of the stuff I'm in the middle of is currently at the stage where its going to require a good few hours uninterrupted to get further and I haven't really had those hours to spare. I have however got several new books that I've yet to read some of which are relevant to the artwork I'm working on so could read them instead, takes considerably less time!

Sadly the one major thing on my do every day list that I've skipped today is 'something houseworky' so I'm going to bugger off and change the cat litter trays in a mo... Oh and I didn't take my extensive collection of vitamins, supplements and meds this morning either. Ooops. Bad Stephie. Bad, bad bad. *Adjusts the halo from where it slipped anklewards*

The End is Nigh!

So its another New Year's Eve and another night in. Technically Geoff and I were supposed to get to go out this year - we had my sister's kids last year so it was OUR TURN, dagnabit! But Daxi is 8 and a half months pregnant and not in any real condition to have our kids as well as her own so we don't get to go out. I can't even drink because I'm on labour emergency call (so if she goes into labour I get to jump in the car, drive down there and look after the evil wee girlies). Which is a shame because I'm high as a kite at the minute and partying the night away would be FUN. Although I'd be seriously at risk of inappropriate, gender irrelevant snogging. But c'est la vie.. there's always next year and she's going to bloody well get spayed this year if I have to take her to the vets hospital myself!

Otherwise I'm good. My Plan is going to... well, plan, helped along by the fact that I'm almost certainly mid mania at the minute, not sleeping, highly energetic and ultra efficient but I'm pleased I've been doing quite well at keeping a balance betweeen different things. Work, play and home are all featuring in equal amounts (even my husband doesn't appear to feel neglected... just slightly harrassed by my constant demands that he do this, that and t'other). I have set myself the possibly unrealistic target of stocktaking everything and changing all those blinkin domains by the 3rd (because thats when the shop reopens) but I'm actually getting through them OK at the minute so it should be perfectly manageable.

Both Bry's and Jans paintings have had work done on them (I say painting, they're both technically still drawings - brys is at least mapped out on watercolour paper whereas jans is still getting its rough draft done). I was waiting for masking fluid before doing any more work on Bry's (which also served as a reminder Not to Shop when manic - because a simple quest to get a couple of bottles of masking fluid turned into a £350 art materials & paper shopping spree *sigh* including masking fluid from four different retailers...). And my house is getting tidy and hoovered (another classic manic thing.... I clean when I'm manic. I don't clean any other time though...!) I've been kind of good with not eating too much rubbish which is to say I've ben eating less of it, not none, although it won't kick into full gear until all the christmas goodies are gone. And I've been home exercising dutifully. Holly likes it - slightly bemused kitty rubbing up against me when I'm on the office floor doing stretches!

So... here's to a productive, busy and highly enjoyable 2008 :o)

~loves y'all lots~

Stephie

Making my life better - creativity

"I want to find a balance between money making, personal fulfillment and my responsibilities as a wife and mother. I want to make my husband and children happier while not feeling it takes away from the money or personal side of my life."

That was written amidst some notes but probably sums up what I'm aiming for overall.

With my job, and business development plans, creative wellbeing is intrinsically tied to work. So this post is about creativity and work as two separate but interrelated topics. I'll have a separate one about money and work although again, I have a fairly holistic approach. How could work, money, creativity, relationships, health and fitness not be interlinked? They're all about the common theme of me and my sense of happiness and fulfillment.
I want to work through the points 2 and 3 in Steven Aitchison's article 'Change Your Life Part 1: Grab Your Balls'

[Taken from his post with my answers in red:]

Most people don’t know what they really want to do with their
working life. Try the following exercise:

Write down 7 things you love to do: Read, Shop, Spend time with friends, Draw, Play with Beads, Write, Receive praise

Write down your 7 best talents (be honest and don’t be shy): Design, Analysis, Seeing how things (physical or abstract concepts) work, Jewellery making, writing, ability to learn quickly, sales, animal interpretation

Write down 7 jobs you’d love to do: Jeweller, Artist, Singer, Entrepreneur, Writer (non fiction), Wildlife photographer, erm... I'm stuck

Write down 7 things other people say you’re good at: Jewellery making, art & design, making people feel better, self analysis, sales, techy web stuff, mind reading (its a combination of empathy, logic and interpretation of body language, I do it unconsciously).

Write down 7 courses you would take [cut - specified university but I think thats too limiting. Not everyone wants to learn something purely academic - personally I've done quite enough academia to know I'm damn clever, now I wanna have fun!] if you had the chance: Silversmithing, salsa classes, drama, enamelling, fantasy watercolour painting, the psychology of mental illness, circus skills

After you have down this look at all the things you’ve
written and try and find a common theme. It might be teaching, it might be
learning, it might be driving just try and find the theme.

Art, design, performance, sales. I want to be good at my arts, and I want to achieve recognition and financial recompense for them.

3. If someone gave me a million pounds

If someone gave you a million pounds to change careers what
career would you choose?

I'd take the opportunity to learn to become a bench jeweller, opal cutter and artist, and to develop a name writing about my chosen arts. All three skills would require learning and practise.

[end article text]

To an extent I know what I want to be, what I want to do and how I need to change things to get there - but I think everyone knows that about themselves really, whats important is working out the specifics.

• I want to develop as an artist.
• I want the development of my websites, galleries and tutorials to drive money in through the business rather than the sales side being the focus and everything else being an afterthought 'when I have time' - switching those focuses is perfectly possible but requires planning and determination.
• I want to spend less time on the work that I dislike to free up more time for the artistic side.
• I want to get my websites up,
• I want to be a good artist,
• I want to be beautiful and I want to keep in touch with the things I enjoy.
• I want to stop procrastinating with things that mean nothing and result in me getting frustrated,

I can see all the answers are there, everything I need to change my entire life focus and I can see what's stopping me from reaching it. I need to work out how to get past those obstacles, not just now but as an ongoing thing.

So - back to the focus. Creativity is a wonderful thing and I have the good fortune to be passably good at most things I try. I also learn extremely quickly. But I do have a tendancy to be impatient and fickle. My interests can change quickly and I'm not very good at working myself through passably good and onto excellence. I'm also quite poor at doing things that require a degree of setting up - because its not instant gratification and inevitably requires the drudge work afterwards of clearning up. My strongest artistic skills are cold jewellery making, web design and written communiation - because they're the ones I've been doing the longest. They're also the ones that currently contribute to my income. I'd like to add traditional art, cgi art, bench jeweller, opal cutter, and specifically specialist jewellery making writer to that skill set that makes money. Of those four extra things, writing is the only one I currently do so it stays as its essential to my business plans. The others are all new skills that will require development over a period of time. As my current interest is traditional art (and by traditional I mean pencils, pastels and paints), that stays too. Bench jewellery and opal cutting both require additional expenditure and learning from scratch so they can be pus aside for later development. CGI art I was reasonably good at until I found a reason to stop doing it, and realistically I no longer have a computer capable of dealing with modelling software. So it stays on the shelf as well.

Creativity requires regular practise - the more you do it, the better you get. Simple and obvious but easy to overlook. Some creative things are essential to my job. Jewellery making sells my beads and components by demonstrating their potential use. Writing enables me to sell my products through clear use of words. Web design enables me to create welcoming and easy to use environments in which to shop. My fledgling tutorials project is aimed at reaching a wider jewellery-making audience to buy my products (I write the tutorials using the ebay guides feature. Whether you love it or hate it, ebay has great search engine ranking). But they all need developing. I have a jewellery gallery within my ebay shop aimed at providing design ideas but it doesn't get updated anywhere near as often as it should. I should be producing a tutorial a week, and I've only managed two since the conception of the project several months ago. Both finished jewellery and jewellery making sales websites are still in their embryonic stage. I have plans to start writing for magazines, again with the aim of promoting myself and my products to a wider audience (but need the websites finished first, realistically - eBay is a problematic venue). And I have all manner of plans for raising my internet profile to much higher levels (again, I kind of need the websites finished first). Artistically, I see no particular reason that I couldnt become a good enough artist to be saleable, but more importantly, its something I enjoy doing for ME. I don't want to spend every waking moment obsessed with whether what I'm doing makes a profit.

I believe that doing (I used 'practising' first but that suggests 'not for real' which is misleading) those artistic skills, regularly and consistantly will automatically result in a greater income. As above, I want to use my creativity to drive sales to the more mundane side of my business, by creating a reputable, well regarded presence within my fields, rather than my focus being entirely on the mundane side with anything creative being an afterthought. So my products are listed, sold and restocked with very little direct input while traffic comes from making jewellery, writing about design ideas, tutorials, magazine features etc which is a major shift from where I am now where all of my sales come through ebay and I'm constantly revising listings, and adding new products (and getting very bored and frustrated with it, and angry at myself for being bored with it).

So on a regular basis I aim to:

• Draw or paint
• Make Jewellery
• Write online tutorials for publishing on both my websites and ebay
• Write tutorials aimed at specific magazines
• Spend some time every week looking at promoting my web presence through the use of online communities (various methods from writing book reviews to offering advise on jewellery making forums)

I should be spending some time, every day, at a creative activity that I enjoy.

To do this I need to:

• Get my house in order - finish my websites and make sure my stock is all listed
• Energise myself - mental energy is related to physical energy and that is related to diet and exercise
• Create a calm environment - I hate mess and disorganisation (bit stupid really given that I'm one of the messiest people I know) - schedule in regular housework.
• Develop a balanced life schedule. I don't mean to the exclusion of spontaneity but I dont want to be sitting round going arghhh I don't know what to do either. I'm at my best when I'm structured and busy and I operate well with lists.
• Have welcoming artistic environments. My bead room is getting better, it feels a bit more homey now and Geoff shifted his CCG cards off my desk in there. My stock will be moving out of the office at some point in spring (to new premises - they're currently being built) at which point the office  can be optimised towards Geoff and I doing things we enjoy. Drawing is OK at my desk, painting really isn't.

My main problem here is balance and scheduling and organsation and I want help and suggestions with this.