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| [ because there haven't been nearly enough pictures of the girl on this blog, some gratuitous baby shots - five of them to be sort of relevant to this post. ] |
i get a lot of questions about how up front and open and honest i am here on the blog. i know this is a business-linked blog, but i have never thought of it as a business-specific blog. it's a blog about my thoughts and worries and all, and it just so happens that much of what i think and worry about now is my business.
but this was a blog long before up up creative was a business. it has been a blog that has helped me through a lot - through grad school, through new-motherhood, through postpartum depression, through leaving my phd program after six years in, through moving home...
the thing is, i need to be up front and open and honest here because in "real life" i'm pretty guarded. but even more than that, i need to be up front and open and honest here because one of my biggest fears is that i'm the only person who feels the way i feel about things. like that i'm the only one who loves her children so so so much and who loves being their mom but who really dreads the day-to-day tedium of parenting. it scares me that i might be the only person who feels like that, and yet the rational part of my brain knows that probably most moms feel like that, and i need there to be people out in the world who are willing to admit it.
and if i'm one of the people then maybe some of those other people will come find me and we can admit those things together.
i also need to know that there are other proprietors of indie businesses out there struggling to figure out how to make this whole life-as-the-proprietor-of-an-indie-biz thing work. i need to know that there are other people who obsess about things like profit and branding. i need to know that it's possible to succeed and i need to know that we all think this is so so so hard.
when i'm sitting in my living room on a saturday afternoon, with two kids demanding my attention and a husband on the roof doing roof-fixy things and 45 greeting cards to photograph and list in my shop, and when i realize that i want to cry really really hard because sitting in my living room on a saturday afternoon under these specific circumstances sucks and is hard and isn't at all what i want to be doing, i just need to tell someone else that this is what real life looks like and i need to know that other people's real lives look like this, too.
i love it that lots of my favorite bloggers prefer to focus on the good in their days, and i don't by any means want to be the one who always harps on the bad things. in fact, i think that being honest and open and up front here on the blog means that i have to be as willing to be positive as i am willing to be scared, frustrated, or otherwise negative.
i spend a lot of time trying to step far enough back to take in the big picture. it's the way that i cope and it's the way that i create what i hope are balanced, fair depictions of my life. of life in general.
i got to thinking about all of this because last night i sat on my son's floor, his three-days-into-preschool-cold keeping him awake, and i just felt plagued by all these thoughts that seem too horrible to share: things like how maybe i work so hard to avoid my life, or how i really just wish my husband could stay home all day long, too, because then maybe it would seem easier doing this whole stay-at-home thing. or things like how sometimes i just wish wish wish i could go back to a life in which there was no one other than me-just-me who would keep me awake in the middle of the night. of course back then i kept myself up plenty, insomniac that i used to be. at least now that i have kids i get more sleep.
maybe.
the only way i could go to sleep last night was to promise myself to share a few of those things today. to open up a bit so that the thoughts don't have to feel so scary. i hope that my own scary thoughts help you see that yours aren't so scary either, and that you're not alone in them.
-- julie
this is one of those things that i've been planning and planning and planning and then on friday i just decided it was time to finally do it already.
since their creation in january 2009, up up creative's "crazy love" cards have been consistent top sellers. well finally, they've got their own home in a new shop on etsy. there, you can get your own custom sapsucker™ card (new!!!), order in bulk, or even purchase your holiday cards from the sapsucker shop.
whee!
prefer to shop my personal e-commerce shop? fret not! when i roll out my improved e-comm site in october (designed to make customization and wedding-invitation ordering much, much easier), the sapsucker™ cards (and all their accompanying products like the saver sets and custom sapsucker™ cards) will be included there.
i'd say i'm about 75% of the way to a big release of 34 brand new greeting card designs based on my top-selling crazy love cards. in fact, i'm ready to release them except that my photos from today didn't turn out well and i need to make another attempt.
{shaking fists} damn you, product photography!
here's a preview for you loyal blog readers. 25 of the 34 designs. click on the image to see it larger for full effect.
do you have a fave?
when we moved back home from ohio, taking a 50% pay cut in order to do so, we knew it would come to this point. honestly, i am amazed that we have made it just about two years without my having to get a job. but here we are: i need an actual measurable income for 2011.
while i certainly could go get a job (returning to work at starbucks like i did in my grad school days, or teaching english at a local college or university, say - both would probably put more actual money in my pocket), my business is at a point where i have tremendous faith in its ability to thrive. folks from martha stewart living and cleo magazine (in australia) and even one still-to-remain-nameless conde nast mag (!!!) have been contacting me about featuring my work in their articles. i pick up new clients weekly and make sales in both shops daily now.
so where is all the money going?
it's going to supplies and equipment and advertising. it's going to product development. it's going to pay the babysitter, without whom none of this would be possible. but almost none of it is going to me.
it's time to focus on the bottom line a bit more, coarse as that sounds, because if i don't i'll be closing up shop and trading my attic studio for an apron and some close-toed shoes. and that's a switch i just don't think my soul can afford.
ever since that whole postpartum depression thing when evan was born, i've had a fascination with fear. at the time, i found myself plagued by all kinds of strange fears: a fear of showering, a fear of lying on my right side, a fear of tomatoes.
now that most of my illogical or otherwise bizarre fears are gone, they seem sort of funny; but at the time, they were as real as being afraid of a nearby bear or bee.
this fall i'm conquering a new fear - one that's a far more common fear as fears go, but one that's far less logical than my seemingly nonsensical postpartum fears. i'm conquering a fear i have of participating in the 2011 sketchbook project.
i cannot figure out why i'm scared to do this other than the fact that i'm scared my sketchbook will, um, well, suck. ah, that oh-so-common fear of failure.
but suck it will just have to do if that's the way this project's going to go because i've paid my money and i've received my sketchbook and i'm 100% committed to seeing this silly little fear destroyed, demolished, and otherwise de-feared.
if i really get my nerve going, maybe i'll share some of the sketchbook pages with you. wouldja like that?
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[ this seemingly random picture of my quaint little city was snapped from the roof of the hospital parking garage. i was up there feeling pretty freaked out and i distracted myself by taking this photo. i took daily pictures of brian, too, but they're kind of hospitally so i decided to exclude them from this post. ]
what a week. or two-plus weeks, really. here's the condensed version:
brian was sick. then he was sicker. then maybe he was getting better. then maybe he wasn't and we went to the hospital for surgery that he didn't end up having. then we came home. days later, he was really sick. which is when we went back to the hospital. this time when i came home, he stayed there.
for four days.
and now he's home but the recovery is slow.
because he has enteric fever. or he had it. or he's sort of halfway got it? i don't know.
i especially don't know because he didn't get a definite diagnosis, but rather a "probable" one. even after every organ was scanned, every bodily fluid cultured, the best we got is this: the head infectious disease doc thinks that's what it was, and he treated brian for it, and brian slowly got better.
the end.
during the course of all this, i of course got sick (from exhaustion), and i had to close the shops for the first time ever. kids were shuffled, babysitters were called and canceled and called and canceled. grandparents were mobilized and mobilized again.
this whole experience was a major eye opener. here i was a few weeks ago saying how thin we're spread and then brian gets sick and suddenly we're spread thin enough to poke holes in us.
it made me realize just how close to the edge of things we are: how close to the edge of health, of our finances (thankfully brian has excellent health coverage through work, so this whole enteric fever thing won't ruin us or anything); how close to the edge of patience and energy.
it also made me realize how fragile my business is. how me-centric. i've spent two years cultivating something that needs my constant attention. there is no room to breathe. my business is not even the tiniest bit emergency-proof.
i spent many hours at brian's bedside (the hours when i wasn't playing word games on my iphone, anyway) wondering what to do about all that -- how to make the business a little hardier, how to give brian and i a little more breathing room, you know, that kind of stuff.
having the shop closed for five days has been nice, i've got to admit. i've been getting an average of 90 more minutes of sleep each night, for one thing. and i've basically ignored twitter and facebook and email and all those things that help me feel connected to a larger community but that at the same time eat up precious time. the time off will definitely give me fodder for figuring out a slightly easier way to do what i do.
but anyway i'm back now. the shops are open, as of 3:30 today. things are slowly settling back into place like cats who've found their favorite position on their cushions. funny how these crazy weeks pop up and shake us till we cry and then just recede into the background like shadows, eh?
as promised, a new illustrated desktop wallpaper for september, and it's a beaut if i do say so myself. i've had it on my own desktop since last week when i finished it - just needed to have it right there in front of me all the time. download it here.
look for the next wallpaper design on october first. in the meantime, keep reading!
