new years resolutions

I made myself a promise at the beginning of this year. Not so much a new year’s resolution*, because it isn’t a goal with which I intend to better myself, but more of a commitment to either “shit or get off the pot”.

I am a non-practicing-obsessive-crafter**… or at least, I have tons and tons of craft ideas. Whether or not I follow through with them is an entirely different story. For about three years now, I have considered the idea of starting a small business with my crafts (handmade cards and jewelry mostly). I’ve even picked a name for this business—frog’s hair—hence the name of this blog.*** I have spent the smallest amount of time researching how one goes about turning their hobby into their job, though not since I made Washington my new state of residence, so I would need to start there. The problem is that I am concerned that I might lose interest, that I wouldn’t be able to make it work, and of course, there’s the fear of rejection—what if no one wants to buy my stuff? I remind myself of something Eric once told me, “have you seen the crap that people buy?!?”. I get a lot of compliments on my crafts, and a couple of my jewelry pieces sold at an office auction we had this year for three and four times the minimum bid (which I think I fairly priced at the actual cost of parts [retail]). I guess that the answer is that I just have to take it all in stride. If the business fails, so be it. At least I tried. And it’s not like I am looking to get rich, quit my day job and retire on the profits. Honestly, I don’t need the money at all. I just like doing it, and it seems like a challenge to make a go of it.

Back to the promise I made to myself at new years: in the next two years (don’t be surprised if I bump that up to three years later on down the road) either I have to do my homework, get off my arse and get this business started, or else quit most of the crafting I do. I can keep quilting and knitting, but everything else goes. Either shit or get off the pot.

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* I have no idea why people have such a hard time dealing with new year’s resolutions. I know it sounds totally cheesy when you put it into words, but come on, once a year there’s a tradition where everyone picks something they want to improve about themselves, their environment, their loved ones, and then they spend the year trying to achieve that! Why do so many people resist that?

** I am also a non-practicing morning person/vegetarian/workaholic

** frog’s hair. I gave the name of the business to my father for Father’s Day in 2003. When I was a child, he would come home from work and I would run out to the driveway to greet him. He would ask me how my day was and I would say “fine” and he would say “fine as frog’s hair?”. To which I reply “Daddy, frogs don’t have hair!” Even before I started seriously considering starting a business with my crafts, my Dad has been encouraging me to go for it.

brain fry

Husband and I went to a homebuying seminar yesterday to help us understand what all is involved in the whole homebuying process. I came home with my brain feeling more like pudding than it has since my last round of college finals. Oy. Next move is finding a "mortage consultant" and finding out what our price range is. No point in drooling over houses in the Fremont District until then. We can go drool after we find out that we really can't afford them.

crumpling paper and writing lists

There’s something inherently satisfying about crumpling up a sheet of 8 ½ by 11 paper. The same doesn’t go for all paper (newspaper, the scrap paper you use to pad a box when you ship a gift and don’t want to try to track down packing peanuts), and I’d even venture to say that some letter-sized paper crumples better than others. Just a few minutes ago, I crumpled up a sheet of yellow, wide-ruled notepad paper, and it just gave the most satisfying crumple. The sound, the feel, the appearance of the crumpled ball afterwards, it was all perfect. So much so, that I felt compelled to write about it.

I am a compulsive list writer. When it occurs to me to write a list (nearly always “to do” lists), I just can’t really move on to another task until I have written that list. Even if I know it’s going to say the exact same thing as the list I wrote earlier in the day but that is not with me at the moment, I have to write the list. Nearly every morning when I get to work, I write a list of the things I need to do when I get home.

and that's what blogs are all about, Charlie Brown

I have been meaning to improve my writing skills for many years now, and possibly branching out into creative writing. I am hoping that this blog will help me do that in a sense, though don’t expect short stories from me anytime soon. I think sometimes as though I am writing—thinking of good words, literary descriptions and the like—but when I attempt to put the words and descriptions down on paper, I feel like I’m being pretentious, that everything I write should be more profound. So I stop writing at all. I am working on coming to grips with the fact that I am not a great writer, a master of words. But the only way I am going to get any better is if I get past my feeling of needing to be an expert immediately. I think I can, I think I can. So I imagine that that is what some of this blog will be about: getting some good words out of my head and into the world. Writing exercises, if you will. I don’t mean for any of this stuff to sound like grand poetry or deep thoughts, just stuff that I think about, and then write about.

Oh, and also I thought I’d try keeping a blog to let friends and family know what Eric and I are up to….hikes, crafts, discovering seattle, and so forth.

new year's resolution: start a blog

wow, I've done it. I've created a blog. now let's hope my life is actually as interesting as I seem to think it is.