coming out of the cave

Over on the Girlfriendology group on LinkedIn, Donna of Pajama Paycheque shared a link to her post “Combating Loneliness When You Work from Home.” My response is a bit too long for a comment, so I decided to write about it here.

I have worked at home full time for a total of seven years. It can be somewhat isolating, and I do have times when I don’t leave the house for days at a stretch (especially when the weather is nasty — that’s one of the perks of working at home, actually). LIke Donna, I look for opportunties to get out among people during the week and find that just being near other people is enough to counteract the isolation of working solo.

This past year has been my busiest ever for both of my businesses, and it’s looking to maintain that trajectory for the next year. Here’s how I stay sane.

• I go to the rec center twice a week to do the weight machines and walk — a total of an hour each time. It’s not really a social thing for me, but it does get me out into the world, and because I usually go in the middle of the morning, I can reap the benefits of it being less crowded. I listen to This American Life podcasts or music on my iPod, and it’s a great time to let my mind quietly work on things in the background.

• I also attend a yoga class once a week. I’ve been going to this same class for almost three years now, as have a few others in the class, and we look forward to seeing each other and catching up on Fridays.

• In nice weather, I add a walk in the neighborhood on days I’m not going to the rec or to yoga, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on how much I other stuff have going on. The weights/yoga/walking all help with keeping me in shape, too, since I work at a desk most of the time.

• I make a point to head out to a local coffee shop for a couple of hours at least once every other week. Most of my work requires too much concentration to work there regularly — some people can focus well with lots of background noise, but I’m not one of them. If I have a bunch of rote work on my project shelves, I’ll gather it up and head out. The coffee shop is also a great place to spend brainstorming and planning time — it can help to be outside of your normal environment to do these things.

• Probably the most important thing for avoiding isolation has been participating in e-mail discussion lists and forums. I have belonged to Copyediting-L, a discussion list for copyeditors and others in the publishing business, for seventeen years or so. My listmates are my colleagues, and the list is a fantastic resource for advice, reality checks, respectful discussion about points of grammar and style and just about every other topic under the sun, and even comic relief. I would be lost without this list; I learn something new from it every single day. I participate in several other lists and forums as well, across a variety of topics that interest me. As you can imagine, it can be quite easy sometimes to be drawn into a timesuck with such things, so I try to keep an eye on the time I spend on lists and forums and make sure it’s not getting in the way of getting things done.

• Twitter. Hallelujah! When it first came out, I didn’t quite get the appeal of Twitter, but once I got it — wow. I love this low-key way of staying in touch with friends, family, colleagues, and random strangers throughout the day. (To a lesser degree, this applies to Facebook, too. But it seems like Twitter comes with less drama.) TweetDeck keeps it manageable for me, and I don’t sweat it if I don’t read everything.

• I do my grocery shopping and other errands during the week when I need a break from work. This lets me take advantage of less busy times at the stores — it can take twice as long to shop on Saturday than on Tuesday — and also gets me out among people.

• I try to schedule one or two weekday afternoons off each month to go do something fun — a museum, the zoo, exporing a new neighborhood, a long lunch with a friend, stuff like that.

I’m lucky in that I don’t have a set schedule; I tend to work in chunks of time spread throughout the day and week, rather than sitting at my desk from 8 to noon and then 1 to 5. This flexibility was one of the most important driving factors in my decision to work at home, and it’s one of the things that allows me to do what I do to stay connected to the outside world.

What about you? How do you battle isolation?

Taking Risks

Part of running a business is taking risks and making calculated gambles. Once in a while, you get burned.

Late last May, I was contacted by Queen City Emporium in Springfield, Missouri, to see if I would like to consign my items in their shop. Consignment is when you place merchandise in a store and they pay you when it sells. Typically, the store keeps 30–40% of the sales price, and you receive the rest. Although many sellers will not consider such an arrangement, consignment can be a very good way to get your items out there without a lot of fuss, as the store absorbs the cost of promoting the merchandise and making the sale — no time spent marketing, going to shows, packing and mailing individual orders, etc., on the part of the seller. I have several consignment arrangements in place, and, until now, they have all worked very well for everyone involved.

I am especially cautious about consignment arrangements with shops that aren’t within easy driving distance of my home, so I took some time and did a little research. I Googled them and their shop and saw nothing that looked out of the ordinary. I checked Google Street View to be sure that the shop and the area were actually as described. I searched for websites of other sellers they had listed to see if anyone was complaining about them, and found nothing of the sort. The contract they sent seemed typical of other consignment contracts I’ve entered into. Not seeing any major red flags, I sent them twelve necklaces with a total retail value of $452 the first week of July.

Consignment contracts spell out reporting and payment schedules and details (e.g., previous month’s sales paid by check on the 10th of the month or some such), among other things, and when the sales reporting date had come & gone, I contacted them for information. I was told that they were a little behind in getting the reports out, but they were working on it, but never received the promised report. Then I got busy with other things and just let it slide. In October, I contacted them again and was given a similar story, with a similar result. Just before Christmas, I made a note to follow up after the holidays and ask for my items to be returned. I was preparing to do just that yesterday when a (now closed) forum thread in the Etsy forums caught my eye. (Head to the Etsy forums and do a title search on “Queen City Emporium” for a big eye opener, if you so desire.)

It seems that I am not the only one in this situation. As of this moment, there are known to be at least 35 sellers who have sent more than $25,000 in merchandise to Queen City Emporium and have not been able to get current, consistent sales reports or payments out of them. Several of the affected sellers are contacting others known to have merchandise on consignment there based on lists provided on the shop’s website and blog, but I would have never known there were others in this situation had I not accidentally stumbled on the forum thread, since I’m not listed as a vendor on their site.

I was fairly lucky in this situation. Because I had no history or in-person contact with Queen City Emporium, I sent only a dozen pieces, rather than the 20–30 I normally supply for consignment. Because I use a pricing formula that is made to accommodate wholesale and consignment, my materials cost is only a fraction of the retail value; those who price closer to materials cost are out a lot more than I am. Because I itemize, I can write off the materials cost — although not the lost time — as a loss on my taxes. And because I make sales through a number of venues (shows, Etsy, others shops and galleries), this loss is a smallish blip on my yearly sales.

Yesterday I filed a complaint with the Missouri attorney general’s office, as have many of the other known affected sellers. Today I am writing my merchandise return demand letter, although, based on others’ experiences, I am not confident that my merchandise will be returned in saleable condition, if at all. Today I am also putting into place some new policies and safeguards to limit my future exposure to this kind of scam.

Consignment will continue to be part of my business plan, but I am going to be focusing much more on wholesale arrangements, especially for out-of-area shops. A distant shop that wants me to consign is going to have to meet much more rigorous standards and pass a more thorough investigation before I’ll be willing to consider it, and if an arrangement is made, I will be limiting my exposure to loss until the relationship is well established. And, recognizing that I should have been following up on this situation more closely and more forcefully, I have made some adjustments to my procedures to ensure that missing sales reports and payments won’t be allowed to slide.

Obsession

I’ve spent the last couple of months experimenting with torch-fired enamels, and my enamel work is finally ready for prime time. I love the simplicity of the iridescent stamped copper cups along the bottom, but I’m beyond thrilled with the way the stacked pieces along the top came out.

These pieces will have their public debut tomorrow night at the Velvet Box open studio and trunk show (details in the sidebar).

Expand-o-rama

No, not my waistband after Thanksgiving, although I did have two full meals in the space of three hours on Thursday. I’ve added two new shops and a show to my portfolio.

Blush Boutique in Cleveland Heights is now carrying a selection of my sterling silver and etched copper pendants. Blush is a great little shop on Coventry Road, just a few doors down from Mint Cafe. They have a lovely collection of clothing and accessories for women.

Gestures Gift Shop & Gallery in Rocky River also has sterling silver and etched copper pendants, as well as sterling silver earrings. Gestures features work by a large number of local artists — there’s something for everyone.

Lampwork artist Jen Pitts of the Velvet Box and I are teaming up once again for an open house on Friday, December 10. Jen will be opening her new studio in Berea to show hundreds of handmade artisan glass beads that fit most popular collectible bead bracelets, including Pandora, Troll, Chamilla, Biagi, and more. I’ll have several dozen new pieces in my existing lines and will also be debuting my newest line of enamel work. There will be demos and food and fun people to meet and mingle with. If you’re on Facebook, please RSVP on the Facebook event page, and feel free to invite your friends. RSVPs are not necessary to come, but they help us get a better idea of how many people to expect for planning purposes.

Showtime!

My denial of the change of season (snow last night!) hasn’t prevented the days and weeks from continuing their march forward, and here it is, the start of show season.

I’m starting out tonight with a trunk show with several other artists (Brenda Traffis, Deb Perry, Linda Hahn, and Sandy Cseplo) at Bead Q in Chagrin Falls.

Sunday is the Beachwood Arts Council Holiday Craft Show, a new one for me.

Next Saturday is Basket of Treasures in Westlake. This is my second year for this show, and it’s a huge one.

Friday after Thanksgiving is late night Big Box Detox at Blush Boutique on Coventry. I’ll be there starting at 9 p.m. (yes, that late) with Kathy of Smashing and Chris of Copper Leaf Studios and a few others. We’ll be there until midnight or so.

Early December has a couple of private events, then I wrap it all up with the mother of all shows, the Cleveland Handmade Last Minute Market on December 18, the Saturday before Christmas, at the Screw Factory in Lakewood. If you live in the Cleveland area, you don’t want to miss this one. Last year we had a couple thousand people through the doors. It was busy all day, and it was a great atmosphere and a great time.

Hope to see you out at a show this season!

Rocky River Fall Arts Festival

Today is a bit of a rush getting everything ready for the Rocky River Fall Arts Festival tomorrow. It was a great show for me last year, so I’m looking forward to doing it again.

I have a number of new etched copper pieces and stamped sterling silver pieces to bring with me, and I’m hoping to get a chance to finish up a few other pieces this afternoon.

This show will be the last hurrah for a number of older styles of chunky bracelets, too. They’ll be $10 off tomorrow, and anything left over will be taken apart and reworked into new pieces in the future.

If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll stop by and say hello. My tent will be close to Stino da Napoli again (and I’m hoping this time I’ll be bright enough to remember to order some takeout as I’m breaking down).

Friday? Really?

This week has been a bit of time out of time. For the first time in many, many months, I’ve had no editing projects in house — I was able to wrap up one a little early last week, and the next has been delayed — so I’ve had a whole entire week to just . . . putter. It feels weird. I spent the whole week not really having a grip on what day it was, not really consulting my to-do list, not dealing in absolutely-must-get-dones. When I went to bed last night, I could have sworn it was Tuesday night. Really.

I started Monday with a bit of a brainstorming session, knowing that I had at least a couple of free days ahead of me. I took my tea out to the front porch first thing in the morning and made a new list of all the outdoor projects I wanted to tackle in the next two years or so, just to get them out of my head. (I’m easily distractable when I’m working in the yard; I always see a dozen other things that need to get done that I don’t want to forget to do, and before I know it, I’m working on a bunch of things all at once. I needed some focus here.)

I’ve been working on the rock wall out front all summer, digging out this horrible invasive ornamental vine that is near impossible to get rid of (chameleon plant, or Houttuynia cordata — never, ever, ever plant this horrible thing in your yard). Earlier this summer, I pulled all the rocks down from one end of the wall and dug up the dirt behind it. This was actually a good thing, because that part of the wall was way too steep and the rocks were always tumbling down off it anyway, so I was able to take advantage of the opportunity to lessen the slope a bit. Then it got ridiculous hot and I got crazy busy, and it sat for a while. This past weekend I had time again and the weather cooperated, so I was able to get more of it dug out and partially reassembled.

Monday, as I sat with my list staring at the rock wall mess, I decided that today would be the day it would get done. The Lowe’s car-loader-upper guy was skeptical, but I assured him we could get those three bags of rocks, four bags of dirt, and eight bags of mulch in the Saturn. With room to spare. And we did. (I kind of wish they’d send the car-loader-upper guys home to help unload, though.) I got the rest of the rocks put back in place over top of some landscape fabric, and dumped the broken bricks, cinderblocks, and drainpipes that had been hidden under the rocks in my scrap pile back in the woods. I filled in around the rocks with the dirt, dug a trench next to the driveway and filled in with some rocks to help with the drainage, and put a nice layer of mulch over all of it.

Then I mulched this section in the backyard that I’ve been meaning to do for a few months now. (See “easily distractable” above.)

And then back to the front to dig some more of that stupid vine out of areas that don’t have rocks. All in all, a very good, productive day. There’s still about thirty square feet that needs to be dug out, but it got hot again, and I moved my attention indoors. Those of you who follow me on Twitter or are friends on Facebook saw what I bought, but it’s going to have to wait for another post for all the gory details.

This Song Has No Title

There is a song titled such on Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I love that song, as I do most little ditties that clock in just over 2:00 on my favorite artists’ albums (hello, “Nightingale Song”), songs that say something interesting but aren’t full-fledged anthems and yet were fun enough to include on the album.

Titles stump me, more so than writing itself. The big blank space before all that other blank space. The hardest thing in J-school for me was coming up with something to write about. If someone gave me an assignment, no problem, but sniffing out the story just wasn’t my thing. So I’ve been working on trying to ignore that space at the beginning, to leave it there to breathe a little and just start in on the guts, to let it flow and see what happens.

I haven’t been doing that here much — waah-waah, bad posting habits, self-flagellationcakes, zzzzzzz — it seems like everything has been flowing better on paper lately, in those few spare moments there have been to focus on mental output rather than input. And it’s been all about developing projects and classes and brainstorming for the next book, nothing yet share-worthy.

It’s been a busy summer. Despite my vow to schedule myself lightly this summer and not let another pass by without fully embracing it, I found myself in June with a mountain of projects on my desk and a major event to coordinate and a case full of nothing new for my summer shows. I haven’t really taken much of a break since spring, and even back then it wasn’t enough. So, hello, August, with your leisurely pace and minimal must-dos and very few standing obligations.

Last weekend was the Avon Lake Summer Market, always my best show of the year, but especially so this year. It was the first time they did a two-day show, Friday night and Saturday, and it was lovely. It seemed a little busier on Friday than on Saturday, but it was steady throughout, and I was able to move out much of the older stock I’ve been carrying around and am sick of looking at. The rest is getting disassembled and some of it reworked into new pieces.

And speaking of reworking, it’s time to get up to the studio, to clean up and put away the detritus from last weekend, to knock out a few special orders, and to start work on some new things that have been lolling about in the back of my head.

whither summer?

Target has shrunk their summer things down to one pathetic little aisle and have had the back-to-school stuff out for a couple of weeks now. The lady at Lowe’s told me the citronella oil lanterns just inside the entrance were all they had left and that they’d be going on clearance soon.

It’s July.

This constant pushing ahead, pretending it’s two months later than it really is, drives me up a wall. What do you do when a hose springs a leak and you need to replace it in August? When your bathing suit tears? When a tree branch levels your patio table? You’re SOL, because you’re not going to find replacements in the stores.

Why do we have this urge to live in the future instead of enjoying the present? To push and push and push, until Christmas ornaments are out before Halloween, swimsuits hit the stores in February, and annuals appear at the home stores weeks before they can survive in this climate.

Don’t get me wrong. Project management is one of my things, and I understand needing to plan ahead and all that, but it’s getting ridiculous.

I want to live in the here and now, to not mourn summer before its time, to enjoy every last sunshiny breeze and juicy downpour.

Tetris

I’m a puzzle girl. I like putting my brain through its paces, figuring out how something goes together, knowing that there is a solution and if I’m patient enough, it will eventually reveal itself.

Even though I have a Kindle subscription to the Plain Dealer, I still subscribe to the hardcopy Sunday paper so I can get at the two giant crosswords and the sudoku. (Yes, I know you can get those online, too, but it’s just not nearly as satisfying to me to work those online as it is to sit with pen in hand and cat in lap.)

The week past and the one coming, however, are ruled by real-life Tetris. Tetris of the calendar + to-do list kind. On my plate right now are:

I know I can make this happen and still maintain my sanity. But well-wishes are still gratefully accepted.