Six Month Review: Doesn't Look Like This'll Replace A Real Job

Sunday was the last show of this show season. I did not go. At one o'clock in the morning Saturday I woke up suddenly, sat straight up in bed and then shook my husband awake.

"Do you really want to spend 6 hours sitting on that hard chair, watching people not buy anything?" I asked him. He did not immediately choke me to death so that he could get some sleep. That's why I married him, for his superhuman ability to refrain from killing me. He must love me.

"This might be the time you sell everything," he answered groggily but supportingly.

"Or, this might be the time we get up early, lift heavy objects and put them in the car. Drive for forever, lift heavy objects yet again, spend an hour hanging tiny liitle hooks onto mesh. And then sit on those hard metal chairs for 6 hours while people don't buy my cra. . . stuff. Sure you wanna do it?" You see? I'm still working hard on not calling my stuff 'crap'.

"I won't lie and say I'm looking forward to that."

"You'd have to do all the heavy lifting and tiny hook hanging all by yourself. My knee is still being bitchy. I can't put much weight on it. You're sure you want to do this?"

"No. I don't wanna do that at all."

"Good. Me neither. G'night."

Six o'clock in the morning I wake up to pee and Hubby is in the shower. "You going somewhere?" I ask.

"Yeah, the show. Did you forget?"

"We talked about this last night. We decided not to go, remember?"

"Nope," he said. Then turned off the shower, wrapped himself up in a towel and went right back to bed.

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I did not make a dime these last 6 months of experimenting with self-employment. I, in fact, lost a few dimes. The one time purchases are what killed any profit I could have made. That and the fact that, out of the 6 shows I paid for, I only made table at 3 of them.

I am going to do craft shows and fairs come spring. Mostly because I purchased that damned tent and I'm going to fucking use it. But also because I will be sticking to the small church and community group fairs. The ones that charge $20 or so. I'll be sure to cover table at those. Plus, since all the big-one time purchases have been bought, anything I sell can go right in my pocket.

If I look on the bright side, there was only one day that I sold nothing at a fair that I actually attended. Weeks could go by without anyone buying from my Artfire Studio or Etsy shop. This is O.K., profit-wise. I don't pay them $60 to $90 a day for the privilege of selling my stuff. They are also great for generating private orders.

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In other news, I made this pendant, these earrings, a pin and a ring as a set. I was going to put them all in a big, high gloss black box with tiny pieces of cherry cathedral glass as accents. My daughter liked the jewelry. Especially the pendant and earrings. So I gave them to her. I took this picture to show them off on my Facebook page. The thing is, I take shitty pictures indoors. Not only is the light shitty, which I blame totally on the sun being so damned awesome, but my composition is shitty too. Why my composition goes straight to hell when I'm indoors is a total mystery to me. I'm debating whether this picture is too ugly to put on the Facebook page.

Man alive, I'm blabby today. Lemme shut up.