Some days it’s harder to get work done than others

I suppose, as a solo business person, I shouldn’t complain about having help in the studio and office, but… come on, already!

I mean, I have to keep moving my keyboard. The other day I pulled a muscle in my neck trying to reach around him to get to it… now I just try to work it out from underneath or behind him and set it in my lap. So that’s not awkward.

Speaking of being a solo business person, I’m fixin’ ta go on another rant soon about how business advice makes my eyelids twitch. I keep finding these groups or people to follow who are like, “yes, you, as a one and only person, can run your creative endeavor like a business!” and then I start reading their stuff and sure enough their advice soon becomes like everyone else’s — hire people to do the stuff you don’t like to do, get social media influencers, use these fifteen different online services to do these fifteen different things, use these online services to follow people who do similar things to you so you can compare yourself to them, and oh yeah don’t forget about posting in every possible place people get their social media from!

First off, I don’t want to hire people to do the things I don’t want to do. I will just … not do them, thank you very much! I don’t mean accounting, necessary things, like taxes, I mean… if I’m hiring someone to make something I sell because I don’t like making it… I’ll just stop making that thing. I don’t want to be a boss. I don’t want to fuss with payroll and insurance and things like that. I also don’t want to be so big that I need a cast of thousands behind me. Yes, I have a Shop Elf, but that’s more of an art therapy day for it than a “job”. That Shop Elf is helpful is awesome… but I don’t want to train Shop Elf to eventually take over for me while I sit behind a desk and rake in profits. That’s not my dream.

Second, the kind of people who follow big name social media influencers (I don’t know what any of their names are but the Internet tells me they are out there) probably aren’t the kind of people who are going to buy my stuff. The kind of people who buy my stuff are the kind of people who see a baby head mug in the background of their friend’s Instagram post and go wild for it and hunt me down. Or people I meet at Craft Shows that I’ve seen before and talked to. Or friends and friends of friends. I kind of doubt that someone who puts a jade egg in their vajayjay because whats-her-name from Seven suggests it is going to be breaking down my door for a tentacle mug. I’d rather have a relationship with people who shop from me than pay someone else to have a fake relationship with them on my behalf. (Feel free to tell me if you’re a social media influencer and I have your job all wrong!)

Third, I’m one person and I do not have the time or mental energy to spread myself over a dozen different social media platforms. I was sorry to see Google+ go because I had made some genuine friends through that and I miss some of them but my dudes, I can hardly keep up with my dishes, let alone a handful of platforms. I’m happy with the ones I have (even the ones I ignore, sorry, Twitter, but there are only so many hours in the day).

Lastly, the only time I compare myself to other people who do similar things that I do is when… wait, I’m trying to think of when I might do that. I quit comparing myself to my “peers” in the 11th grade and I really haven’t looked back on that since. There’s room in this world for a thousand or more potters who also dye yarn and make soap, because we all have a different take or different styles and use different color palettes and focus on different things. There are so many yarn dyers and potters whom I admire and champion, and y’all know I can’t walk by a soap vendor at a show without buying a bar. We’re all on our own journeys and while I can admire yours or you can admire mine and we can certainly reach a hand out to each other in friendship (and lord knows those of us in retail have battle stories to trade)… I feel like comparing, measuring, implies a competition and ain’t nobody got time for that. We’re all in this world together.

Wow. Yeah. OK. I guess I had a little bit to say about that. Moving on! Did I mention the Studio Boys are obsessed with the shelving unit I moved over to the studio from the house? Sigh. So much for me getting some extra space to put things.