Deep in the Grind

Clawing my way up the corporate ladder, crafting, and writing on the run...

Hey there. It’s been a long time. Just over a month, though it seems like six. 

A couple of things happened that Hoovered my attention away from this little ‘Stack: 

Out of necessity, I’ve been working some serious overtime hours at the corporate job. There’s an opportunity to take on OT, and there’s most definitely a need, so, really, there’s no choice. I simply have to take it. This means 13 hour days or thereabouts. Fun times.

The good news there: I scored a small raise and have made some good connections. Weirdly enough, I like the work.

The other thing is the leather working side hustle. A few weeks back I tweeted about a bracelet I’d made just as a throw-away, one-off kind of thing. Just looking for an attaboy, really. It generated a shockingly big response: something like 240 likes and doubling my follower count. Now, I know these things seem dumb to normal people, but if you’re trying to leverage the awesome possibilities of social media on a shoestring budget, that’s a pretty big deal. 

That one tweet generated more than some vanity metrics - I actually made some totally unexpected sales. Not a lot, and I hesitate to even mention the figure, but it was 100% more than expected. 

So, I ran with it. I went into production mode.

More than creating a whole lot of new leather bracelets, I went to work resurrecting my Etsy store, processes, and even the website, which evidently had gone dormant due to some kind of upgrades with Square, which meant I had to rebuild it from scratch. All of this is still very much under construction, but man, I needed that reminder. There is a market out there, and all I have to do is connect with it and make it easy to buy. 

That, of course, is easier said than done. It’s the whole ballgame. Lol. “How does one sell stuff online?” 

“It’s easy - all you have to do is find and connect with your audience, and make it easy to buy. Simple!”

The urgency is there, as always. Wolves at the door, the family needs…everything, really…and remember - I made that declaration of intent to hike the Zion Subway sometime this summer.