Yeah, I'm Weird That Way

I re-open my dormant Etsy shop to sell my doilies, and the pixels are barely dry on the screen (can I reinvent the metaphor?) when I get obsessed with embroidery and start stitching purses, tea towels, and whatever I can get my hands on.  List those, and now I'm off doing watercolor art for Redbubble and Spoonflower (Spoonflower designs are still going through the vetting process, so it's empty right now.  Bookmark for later!).  I keep switching revenue streams.

I need to focus.

I think I'm desperately searching for a workflow/method that helps promote my zen.  There is a lot of stress in my life right now with an alcoholic husband in denial, three zany dogs, and a child on the autism spectrum.  Between my allergies, side-effects from anti-histamines, and other factors, I've been having panic attacks.  Zen and calm are very important.

Am I sharing too much right now?  Probably.  But it feels relevant.

There's also the fact that setting up for clean, crisp Etsy photos is a pain in the butt.  The only unused corner of the downstairs is the area by the fireplace, and it's unused for a reason.... bees.  Somehow honey bees have nested between the chimney and the body of the house, and they keep finding a way into the house... somewhere.  Before I rearranged the living room, the main lamp was attracting and killing somewhere around forty bees A DAY.  That's a lot of freakin' vacuuming.  Now they just die all over my photography setup, and I'm pretty sure I'm wiping pollen, not dust, off of all those surfaces.  Achoo.

If you're at all aware of the bee colony collapse syndrome, and how the planet's bees are dying or disappearing, then you understand why I don't want to have an exterminator come kill them.  Besides, my tomato plants need pollination.  What would be really good is learning enough beekeeping skills to know how to move them from our chimney to a beehive.  See?  Lack of focus.

Meanwhile, it takes an hour for me to set up for photography with all the dusting, adjusting, and cleaning of what is supposed to be a pure white background so I can get my white balance just right.  If I do all this for photos of two or three items, it feels like a colossal waste of time.  But if I wait until I have a decent number of items to shoot, then weeks will have passed, my shop looks dormant, and I have a crapload of pictures to upload and listings to write up all at the same time.

Listing ten items at once is not the way to do Etsy.  It just isn't.  There's a brief uptick in views/page hits every time something new gets listed singly.  Throw in three items at once, the numbers don't increase at all, and that's wasted opportunity.  And if I list everything all at once, but then only publish one item a day, I'll start second-guessing my copy, or the photographs, and then I waste a lot of time on rewrites and fiddling with photo filters.  NONE of which is creative or zen.

Sigh.  I'm 46 years old.  You'd think I would have discovered my routine by now.