Reading harold_maude's journal

I'm getting pissed off. It takes alot to piss me off, really it does.
And I am getting there, fast.

Here is the latest fun thing that I need to fix. I started working on getting a site up on Etsy, so that I could sell my art and hopefully make some money. It's under construction, but I have an account and it part way finished.
All the stuff you gotta fill in for an on line store has been part of the delay, it's been a real pain in the ass.

Anyway, a friend asks for the link to my store. I decide to try it, and it says that my store doesn't exist! IT just sort of feels like one more bit of bulshit to the huge pile that I have had to wade through every time I turn around. And it's really starting to piss me off.

This whole mess with an old medical debt and getting sued over it almost 6 years later, I really thought when the hospital sued me all of it was included in that.
I found out that no, it wasn't.
And this last job with all it's bulshit and needing to quit because working there exposed me to somthing that made me so sick that I really felt the need to go to the hospital, but couldn't stay up right long enough to do that. I survived it, but I still don't feel quite right, not quite 100%.

I really felt that this store was going to be the turning point into better things...and now, it doesn't exist!?!?!?!

All the shit from people who have walked into my life in this town and taken and taken and taken and then just walked away, leaving me holding the check so to speak.
I am really getting pissed off...really, really pissed off.
I am so tired of everything in life being such a pain in the ass and having to go through more crap to get it fixed. What is up with all of this? GRRRRRRRR.....

I DO EXIST!!!!! And I am NOT, I repeat NOT A DOOR MATT!!!!!

*ehem*

If you need help in actually building your own shop site, I could step in, at least with technical and designing help. I've been in this business for nearly ten years now, I think I know how "to catch the chance" ;)

I never heard of Etsy before, first was after you mentioned it in your post, but looked it up anyway - looks rather like "yet another social community mixed with selling goods"-thrown-together site. At least there's no international impact to see yet.

I really really wonder why you didnt come up with this idea in here right away - there are lotsa geeky folks at NAO who'd probably gonna help you - if you didnt know that already ;)

We, at least I, could help you to put up a site to represent your handmade items and icons to the rest of the world, including marketing technics folks like Etsy + Co. just adapted from real life, like using a weblog for marketing themselves, giving the visitor an open view to the things working in background, etc. Last but not least you still could introduce parts of your goods to Etsy and similar platforms, but thanks to having an own site you would be independent of them ;)

For technically interested readers: To draw a raw sketch, I'd set this site up using a combination of WordPress, Habari and alike weblog systems plus its plugin API to couple it with already existing shop software or building our own plugin using parts of them.

Of course this all should be open source, still actively developed software.

cu, w0lf.

Naturally, I love Jesus very much. I love him so much that I'd like to crucify him all over again.

First before I get into anything here, thank you for the offer.
I know you are a web designer, but where I'm sitting financially I would be hard pressed to pay you for your services, which if I had the money to do that, I would have loved to have asked you, I've seen your site and it's awesome,
and because you are working tord the same thing, being in business for yourself instead of having to rely on an outside income to make ends meet, it would be wonderful to be able to support you in your journey to that end.

There is nothing frustrating than having to keep taking jobs while you are trying to get a buisness up and running. I know you understand that feeling.

I am the type of person who believes that what a person does is worth being paid for.

About etsy, it was designed as a market place where only goods made by the seller are allowed. An answer to all the massive mass produced identical items that are shipped here and sold from over seas.
The social aspect is about the sellers being able to talk to each other and support each other.

The plan that I was working on was to start at etsy and then to be able to include products produced by friends, I have a friend who has making and selling soap for 5 years, and another who makes the most beautiful hemp jewerly, I had planned to put up an independant shop.

Where I keep getting stuck at is what I want the policies to be about, which shipping method to use, what to charge for shipping and handling, and what kind of gaurentees I'm willing to offer.
So it's not just the technical stuff that keeps me scratching my head, but a whole lot of other things right now.

Until this mess with the old medical debt is taken completely care of, everything is frozen right now, I'm kind of in limbo at the moment. I will be for another week or so, I got help to fix this mess at least the financial end of things, but what it's done to my spirit and my head is another story. Getting nailed with all of it, it disapearing for almost 6 years and then showing up out of the blue has really, knocked the wind out of me.
I'm in this crazy place where even creating new work is painful.
All of this, has really made me feel like a complete failure. I have these huge expectations of what I should be doing.

To add to this I need to create an entirly new visual portfolio. The older work that I have been trying to sell when and where ever I can is made up of larger works. I tired taking pictures of a few peices with a digital camera but it made the work look like things from someone's crazy dream sequence. The solution of going to either a professional photograher or a copy shop is expensive, maybe I should have put my creative energies into becomming a photographer instead of a painter.
Anyway, the scanner I have has a small bed on it, so I am in a place where I have to produce new work. That's been lots of fun, considering where my head is at. It's been almost two years since I did any consistant art.
My prolific nature as an artist got put on some back burner while I got really focused on making a living.

After going door to door in this town trying to sell work and find a gallery that I could afford to have work in, they are expensive here, they rent little spaces and charge really big prices to show work, at least in this town that's how it works,
and not selling enough to make any kind of living on, and getting tired of not being able to eat more than once a day, I focused all my energy on getting a job. That took over a year to accomplish, no one would hire me here. Finally found a job, and since that time, doing art has just fallen into smaller and smaller spaces.

At the moment, today that is, I'm back to looking for work to support myself while I am trying to get back into the grove of creating enough peices of work to sell. It's been kind of nuts all the way around. Starting virually at ground zero again.
If you'd like to see some of the new work I can send you what I have. The work on minilla paper needs to be mounted on acid free matt board before it's actually sellable for a decient price. Right now it's way too fragile to just sell as is.
Most of the bead work I did have for sale is gone, so along with new visual art, I have to create more of that.
I just need to clone about 10 of me so that there would be enough people to cover doing the work and getting enough done in a very short amount of time.

I've been working very long frustrating days here lately. The reason etsy is a good idea of a place to start is that I would find out if my wares are even in demand by anyone.
Kind of a testing ground before an independant shop goes up.

So there it is, and inspite of how much of my own head crap is in a really screwed up state right now I'm trying to go forward anyway. I am determined to suceed. No one can do that for me, I gotta do that part for me, regain some of what got blown up in all of this.

First before I get into anything here, thank you for the offer.
I know you are a web designer, but where I'm sitting financially I would be hard pressed to pay you for your services, which if I had the money to do that, I would have loved to have asked you, I've seen your site and it's awesome,

ah .. I've thought you would get the hint by yourself, but now I have to write it out: I wouldnt mind setting it up for free (as in beer). I've got 4 offers for regular employment, thus I'm going to have much less time "minding my business". But I'm planning still to stay somehow in business, even its on private / side job-base. That's because I want to stay on the save side; I already made the mistake to completely trust into a regular employment job, thus making my self totally dependent to it. I'm not going to take this risk all over again.

But back to topic: What's in this for me - aside of no money - you might ask? Well, just another site to add to my portfolio, and possibly good, proper mouth-to-mouth propaganda ;)

I dont do is on a regular base - only selected clients get the "free as in beer"-job. But I wouldnt mind setting up a shop system for you, as I can heavily relate to your current situation, because I've been to worse situations as well.

cu, w0lf.

Naturally, I love Jesus very much. I love him so much that I'd like to crucify him all over again.

I've spent the last few days working on jewerly. And I've been looking at the want adds to find something that won't take alot of life out of me.
Soon there will be a shift in the job world out there, and work will be available in a variety of places.

It some how reminds me of going to a really nasty resturaunt for dinner.

But in this world it takes much money to live with your head further above the water line than your nose.
So, I keep going forward each day, each hour. Riding out emotional battles between depression and rage...

I've thought about your offer Ginsterbusch, and I've rolled it around in my head, I've had to because of my relationship with gifts and disaster over the last couple of years.
It's a bit hard to explain, but it's a definte repeating pattern in my life since I had that accident almost 4 years ago.

The only way I can accept your offer is to barter with you.
I don't think I can ship beer tho, because I am very sure they would snag if I tried to ship it.
So how about this, in exchange I will do some peices of art for you. You pick the subject and the colors you wanna see.
You'll be able to see what it is that I sell, I will even throw in a couple peices of my jewerly.

What do I get out of doing this on this end? I get to say that I now have art in 4 foriegn countries. As far as I know the people who own the work still live in thoes countries.
I have work in at least 9 states here.
Some of the work got paid for, other work got gifted. But my work is out there, hanging on the walls somewhere or stuffed in a closet waiting for some thrift store or yard sale.
Hey, it happens.

I'm a realist not an eletist. Nor a primadonna about my art.
But an artist, I love what it is to me and my life.
I think the road to art is designed to be filled with sharp edges and places that will knock the wind out of you, to ensure that you stay in touch with the creative fire inside you, so you don't just become another great technition.

If this sounds reasonable to you and your interested in bartering with me, let me know. It's going to be a while before I have enough that I'm comfortable with having up for sale so I can work with taking good pictures of my art that's larger and deciding prices and all of that.

I need some time to work with taking pictures of the larger peices of my art, I want them to be very clear. Then there is the part I have the worst trouble with, writing about what they are looking at. It all feels so, I don't know, like I'm some kind of ego centric artist who is more drama than anything.
It really sucks having to write about it. I'd rather just create it, walk away and let someone else talk about it.

When I finish a work, I'm done with it. I put it away, and go off and do another peice. I don't look at my work on a regular baisis, with one exception, the walls of my house are in the process of becomming one large mural of college work. I even have a couple of other people's work in there and when it's all done I will be living in a work of collective art.
Other than that, Everything else gets put away.

Anyway,

I know it's only been a week since my life got handed a bomb, but it feels like months to me.
It's been hard, like plumpiting down a hill covered with big rocks. If I wasn't in the middle of all of this I wouldn't believe that something that happens to alot of people could do this.
I guess I had to experience it first hand to understand it better.
I've been through alot over the last 7 years. Each time something went wrong I was able to pull up and out of it relatively quickly.
But this, this has knocked the wind out of me. It's touched everything in my life in a way that I really would never have belived possible.

So it's going to take a bit before I'm ready. If this sounds good I'll do the art and send it and when I'm ready I'll get ahold of you. It'll take a bit more time, but it will be a bit slower and I need that right now too. I really need things to slow down for a bit so I can catch my breath.

Let me know ok?

This post was edited by harold_maude on Aug 02, 2008.

About getting bigger works digitalized, did you already try the following way?

First, you get the whole picture (indeed). So, you step back as far as possible, and take the whole picture frame.

Next, you put that on your 'puter monitor and make a raw map on it to take detailed shots of your work.

Now, you do the shooting again - select each single part of your work you want to have a more detailed picture of, and take a shot with the camera.

By now, you should have both a complete shot of your work and all wanted details. Thus, you are now able to put that stuff first on your computer - to add some descriptions and maybe referencial numbers to get each detail shot connected to the main one - and next on, up to the net ;)

cu, w0lf.

Naturally, I love Jesus very much. I love him so much that I'd like to crucify him all over again.