Dear Diary,
I have a re-useable water bottle that is 48 ounces. I drank 6 of those yesterday. I drank three cups of coffee, maybe a bit less. And then I slept for 8 solid hours for the first time in years. It was weird and I felt really discombobulated when I got up at 3am. I’ll have to adjust my sleep schedule to get most sleep at night. I need the day light now for a while. And 3-10am is my quiet time with Doc home.
He’s working overtime this week. 14 hour days all week. There’s our new TV. But it’s going to be hard on him. I have to keep him going to work this week. If we can get him through the next two, he can relax for a while and take an extra day off to unwind. I see dollar signs in one eye and a beat and battered Doc in the other. I’m conflicted. They are trying to make him a Coach of his department again. He doesn’t want it. Barely more compensation, maybe not any more because Doc has been working there so long he’s already making good money. And way more hassle. Doc is good, no great at what he does. Global Support and Service. He talks to employees all over the world and remote fixes their issues. And he doesn’t take shit from anyone, which has earned him respect from his superiors over and over. Because he makes it seem like it is your decision not to give him any more shit and just cooperate with him. I love that about him.
I think I’ll move the extra lamp in here tonight to get some extra work done. I am almost finished and ready to send packages out to my three closest friends. Packages that should have arrived a long time ago. But I hope they will be appreciated, never the less. Kelli’s box will be packed up last because I have software to send her, a loaded hard drive to send her, and instructions to print out for her. I am going to try my damndest to get her back into art and design. She has no room to paint right now, so I’m setting her up with the Adobe Creative Suite to play with, with all of my presets and brushes and such-ness.
I have about two dozen necklaces to make. It’s funny, I’ve never worked with “focal pieces” (center pieces of the necklace) before. Maybe a charm here or there, but not like I am now. Medium emphasis on beads, simple cord and findings, and what I am trying to make gorgeous focal pieces. I have one I kind of fucked up, so I just made it for myself because no one ever gets close enough to me to see the flaws. It’s hanging outside to loosen the coils on the leather cord. Once I put it on, I will take a picture of it on and finally debut my stolen and mutilated concept.
I also have to order tinsel glitter today and renew zenweb.net, which expired 2/6. With luck, Doc left enough in my account.
I’m going to ask for my birthday that someone get me an 8oz. package of black Sculpey. I don’t like using white as a base, I always have to paint or something over it. With black, I can just gloss. And it would add a lot to my designs because I am using bright clay colors and the contrast would be nice. Actually, I think I’ll buy it with my Patreon money next month. That’s a better and faster idea. Though, I could always use black clay. I’m making a clay tree for the cover of my Smash Book. And that is going to take a lot of black. I already have the design ready, it will be made up of long, thin ropes. It will be super-creepy and very cool. You guys do know that though I use extreme adjectives to describe what I’m doing, at the same time, I am completely gobsmacked that I can actually make this stuff, and make it look good. Really, it blows me away when I look through my inventory.
I’ve decided to offer Patreon Patrons 10% off the shop when it is finally up. As a bonus kind of thing. I swear, I can’t make my Patreon memberships any more enticing or better value for your money. I need PR, advertising, word of mouth. I’m not getting it. I need to do something to go viral. But all the things I have tried have gone unnoticed. It’s going to have to happen accidentally. I just have to keep working at it and keep the material fresh and interesting. And I don’t want to go “white trash viral” where everyone is laughing at me, that isn’t the kind of recognition I want.
I’m done with my cup and a half of coffee. Didn’t even finish it. I cleaned out my mug and put it in the dishwasher to dry. I’m on my third bottle of water. I see I’m going to be filling the Brita pitcher a lot now. I WILL BE THIN. If you can’t have money, then you don’t need hips. And I’m out of baby age, so I don’t need hips at all, and my breasts are now purely ornamental. Maybe I should gold leaf them or something.
Okay, sun will be up in an hour. Time to start setting up the photo shoot for the shop. I need to get it open and indexed so I can start getting customers and I have a following by Xmas. I plan on doing a little Xmas boutique in the shop for the holidays. I was thinking Mokume Gane candy canes for hanging on the tree. Those would be expensive, but worth it. I’ll likely make some mini ones for my holiday tree.
I also have to find a source for small-medium pom poms. The three sets of ornaments I’m going to make, my mom taught me. We sold them like hot cakes back in the 80’s. I’m going for a cuteness revival, because all three ornaments are fucking precious. They each involve a prop and a fuzzy animal. A bear, a dog and a mouse. If I can find larger grey pompoms, I will make rat ornaments, too. Because, rats.
And when Halloween comes around, I am going to find and collect every bit of skull, bat, and spider fabric and ribbon and molds and stencils and anything else I can find. Then I can incorporate them into other holidays. Easter Spider? I’m going into the clearing with the holiday trees and spinning around and diving in.
I must take a shower today. Negative symptom. Doesn’t shower. Typical. Still unpleasant. I know I’m doing well when I can’t take my own stink, which I can smell long before anyone else can. And my hair, which is short as all hell, is matted against my head in the wrong direction, and it actually hurts. Yes, my hair hurts. Fucked up.
After the photo shoot, today has to be “finish up” day. I have a line of things waiting for their final stages. I have to get all of that taken care of today so I can shoot it all tomorrow.
Once it gets shot, it will be assigned an inventory number and labeled. Groupings of things will be packaged together. Then I have to find big boxes to store the stuff in, in an organized way. Then I will keep it in my room, to keep anything from melting in the heat of the garage/studio. Then , the hard part, working with the spread sheet to set prices. Figuring out how much I need to charge for taxes before I can get my profit. I also have to design receipts (unless WooCommerce does that for me, which it might), and keep copies of all of them. I have a small file box in the garage that I will use to keep the bills and other paperwork. All of my taxes are going straight into my savings account, so at the end of next year, I have the money ready to go to the state. I’m going to do this smart. Pay my taxes, report my income to SSI every month in writing. I can make around $500 per month from the shop. I don’t think I’ll have any issues with exceeding that. I don’t have the inventory yet. HA!