I mentioned I felt like I was spinning my wheels health-wise a few days ago. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels in general lately too.
Lots of plans and ideas, but no action on them.
I think this is partly a matter of fear - of failure, of wasted time and money experimenting (because my perfectionist self insists that "failed" experiments are wastes), of wearing myself out.
It's also an issue of TOO MUCH STUFF running around my brain.
I want to start selling crafts online.
Do I go with Etsy or Artfire. Or both?
I have ideas about branding and packaging and photography style and theme (an overall archaeological theme). Do I do that stuff now or wait until I actually have an inventory of stuff to actually, you know, sell? Also, I am intimidated by Inkscape and Scribus, etc. I have a start on part of my planned logo, but I still have Inkscape-fear.
What about bookkeeping? Will I go nuts with that? I already have some excellent spreadsheet setups, but, but, numbers are the debil!
Oh, and what do I actually sell? The overall theme here is archaeological/Egyptological inspired stuff (I'm being vague out of an additional fear that someone will
steal my ideas!!!eleventy!) :Looks around shiftily:
- Amigurumi patterns (that I need to actually make and write and layout and test and make look purty)
- Jewelry (that I need to actually make to be sure it isn't hideous because at the moment all the designs exist solely in my head and run around and mock me when I'm trying to sleep). And do I stick with all polymer clay (with the exception of findings) or do mixed media pieces? There's a learning curve here as well - I haven't done much jewelry. How much experimenting (and therefore time and money spent) am I going to need to do?
- Fascinators and hair bobbles (that won't necessarily fit with the rest of the theme, but are easy and fast and fun to make)
- Hand printed textiles?
Photography:
My hands shake. I suck at photography. The light is bad. I hate fiddling with stuff. I do have awesome ideas for settings and composition though. And a tripod. And a husband who is a photography hobbyist.
So, in general, I look at all of the above, get overwhelmed, twitch a little and then go back to aimlessly surfing the internet and reading about nuclear weapons or UFO accounts or mid-19th Century European royalty and politics instead of doing anything productive. I read various blog posts from various awesome people in the crafty world talking about a lot of the stuff (the crafting, not the UFOs) above, but I still do *nothing.*
It's a little bit like the classic paper-writing conundrum of getting so caught up in research that you never actually write anything. Or getting so caught up in collecting sources you don't so much read them as acquire them.
So - how do I kick myself in the ass/brain? And how do I do it in a way that doesn't wear me out physically or mentally?
