Two Great Big Exhausted Announcements!

1. Quirkipreneurs.com is LIVE!

Click the image to visit the Quirks

Back in October,  I wrote about a disconnect I’d discovered, having to do with the vision of my business – turns out, I wasn’t in that vision!  I sat down to correct the disconnect with a fresh visualization,  but the first go-round was unsatisfying.

So I closed my eyes, and tried again.

Instantly, I was transported
to the seashore.

I sighed, in that long-suffering way usually reserved for characters in Jane Austin novels.   Why? Because this seashore image, like the previous studio-with-a-view one, had been popping into my mind quite a bit.

But I’m not a big ocean person, and the beach is hardly my dream work environment. I pushed ahead with the image anyway, to see what would happen.

As some of you know, I feel a special connection to chronic depression and bipolar disorder.  Multiple members of my family,  my husband’s family, and several of our close friends and have struggled to get diagnosed, find and maintain treatment.

Each persons path and experience has been different – but one theme seems consistent:  the level of frustration sufferers feel when no one (not loved ones, not doctors, sometimes not even themselves) seems to quite understand what’s going on in your head.

One of those friends recently found an outlet for that frustration:  simple line drawings and text, penciled on sheet of copy paper. One at a time, scans of the comics found their way to my inbox, always with the disclaimer that “I’m no artist”.

I beg to differ.

Thought you’d like to see what I did yesterday:

“Step One: Fall Down.”
Step Two, of course, is “Try Again.”

This is a gift for a Great-Nephew’s baby shower – it’s a 9” x12” pastel & ink collage, based on an old family photo (I added the rabbit ears, they don’t run in the family so far as I know) The scanner doesn’t really capture the subtle, clear colors well, but it’s windy outside and I’m feeling too lazy to reshoot it.  Oh, and you can’t see them, but there are touches of silver on the skates & buttons.

So that’s what I’ve been up to.
And you?

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more
difficult than it is for other people.“
~Thomas Mann

I am a
writer.

Well, at least by Mr. Man’s standards.

I’m not so sure I qualify by my own standards.  See, I think that writers?  They write.But I’ve  dropped all of my of my writing habits this year, temporarily disqualifying me.  Getting started again is tougher than I expected.

Oh, there’s no shortage of ideas to write about. In fact, I think I’ve promised to write no fewer than 5,421 different articles.

This month.

Yet somehow, none of those 5,421 posts have been written, not this month, nor any other.

He’s signed on to be our Poster Child & Demo-Bunny for Quirkipreneurs.
With any luck, you’ll be seeing a lot more of him.
Meanwhile, please give him a warm welcome to the Circus!

Sometimes, serenity just doesn’t co-operate.

For most of 2012, the circus that is my creative life and business was anything but calm and placid – turbulent, demanding, and disruptive yes, tranquil and productive, no.   None of the business plans I had in place saw fruition, the blog fell silent, my freelance clients dwindled, and even the weekly #QuirkyBiz tweet chats suffered.

What’s behind the tornadic upheaval?

My husband and I lost 3 immediate family members in 7 months, all three of them after lengthy illnesses and hospice stays. As a result, I spent a lot of emergency nights, weeks and even months away from home.

There was simply no way to balance the new demands of family with the demands of a just-starting-up multi-faceted creative business.  Because both my family and my husband’s were involved, there was no one free to lean on for extra help.  And now, when things should be settling down, I’m having to take on a much bigger role with the estate than intended.  It’s keeping me off-balance, and all I can say is thank-the-circus-gods for safety nets!

I’m not writing this looking for sympathy.

It’s the holiday season, and that means big, overwhelming things are afoot in the Internet Marketing world. Mostly, it means my email and social media streams are full of high-pressure messages, limited time discounts, big promises and offers from affiliates that pretty much pay you to sign up through them.

How can you compete with that, if you’re the newest Quirkipreneur on the block, trying to bring some attention to your quiet, reasonably priced little holiday offer?  Or as the loverly Michelle of Let’sRadiate put it yesterday,

“How do you promote your holiday special without slamming peoples’ inboxes and making them want to punch you in the nose?”

Damn good question.

Damn good question, with a lot of potentially damn good answers.

The brain has not been cooperating this week, and this morning? Yeah. It’s threatening to explode in a fit of dandelion fluff.  I’d draw you an illustration of what that feels like but, well, the artistic ability of a fluff brain is fairly limited.

But if you are missing my ramblings? Never fear! I wrote a guest post for Jade Craven’s LaunchWatch – it’s all about what I learned from launching my totem promotion, and you can find it here:

5 Lessons From A Launch That Went Wrong
(In All The Right Ways)

Tada!

You can discover their stories & owners here:

Community Menagerie In Progress!