How it started/How it's going

I bought some pajama shorts today - 3 pair. With pockets! I didn't really need them but I only had one pair, which I wear often enough that 's annoying when they are in the laundry. The 3 pair cost about $25 altogether. 

Lol wut - right? What do my pajama bottoms have to do with clay? Well, nothing, really, except indirectly. 

When I started writing this blog in 2007, I was making pots, teaching 3 classes a week, & working part time as a receptionist at an insurance agency (I quit that gig in 2011.) Reader, I was poor. Not broke - that implies a status that might soon change - but outright poor. If I wanted a new pair of shorts I went to Goodwill and chose from whatever they had. I actually still shop at Goodwill, because it's fun, & because re-using is environmentally friendly, but the big change is, then I had to. I couldn't just notice that I could use a thing, then hop online & purchase it. Everything had to be budgeted. But yesterday? Needed some pajama shorts, ordered some pajama shorts, end of story.

This is not a rah-rah, follow-your-dreams post. I can think of a hundred things that would have changed this journey from "difficult" to "impossible:" if I'd had any physical condition limiting the amount of hours I could work. If the unusual circumstances that allowed me to purchase a house in 2005 hadn't occurred. Even if I had had children! There were a lot of rice-&-eggs weeks along the way; it's one thing to choose that for myself, along with the skipped dental care, the shaky vehicles that stranded me more than once, the 55-degree house to save on heating oil. It's a whole 'nother thing to choose that for a child, and frankly, had there been a child, I wouldn't have chosen those things. 

But there wasn't, and I did. 

I don't even know why I'm writing this post. I guess because it struck me this morning how much easier my life has become, with even a little bit more money. Anyone who tells you money can't buy happiness has never not had enough. 

This has always, among other things, been a blog about the business of art, a topic of great interest to me for obvious reasons, and also because...idk, it seems like a puzzle to solve. And as with a jigsaw puzzle, you're gonna try some pieces that don't fit. 

I'm still jigsawing an income together. Along the way, I've identified some of those pieces that don't fit:

• Art fairs. I used to love them! In the 90s I was all about the art fairs. But I was younger then, and I lived in St. Paul, which is half a day's drive from at least 25 top-shelf art fairs. Living way up here in Maine, travel & lodging makes those prohibitive. Not to mention, fairs themselves have gotten so saturated that where we might reasonably expect to make 10x the booth fee, we're now thrilled to get half that. The smaller fairs that I could travel to locally are the same amount of hard physical work, for far less money. 
• Co-ops. This one is not absolute. (Actually none of them are!) But, in my experience, the 4-6 days a month you'll be expected to work in the store would be better spent making work or listing/promoting online. Your time is worth money! Don't discount that. 
  Again, not absolute; but at a minimum do the math! They will tell you what their yearly or seasonal intake is; keep in mind that potters tend to be on the low end of average sales, with the jewelers clustered at the top. If they make 36k a season & carry 20 artists, you're going to make lower than 1800 for the whole season. That's <$450 a month for 4-6 8-hour days of work; days that you could be spending making stuff. Doesn't sound so great when you do the math. 
• Some consignment. I'm very choosy about consignment. Any shop on its first year (first 3 years really), or any shop that takes less than 40% commission, or any shop that expects me to pay upfront for the privilege of doing business with them, dismal experience has taught me to stay away. 
• Similarly, those stores where you "rent" a stall. Nope. 

What works has been wholesale; larger, well established consignment stores; studio events; and online sales. I have a few little firewalls: income threads that put a (pretty low!) floor under me in case of dry spell from the other sources: the pottery stairs, sales of the Fine Mess Glaze Notebook & a few tools, my classes, and now Patreon subscribers. I have high hopes for Patreon although it has proven to be a Herculean task to get subscribers there. I don't even know how to do that! But as evidenced by 17 years of posts here, I have a lot of clay related thoughts, I'm probably gonna type em up, and I might as well get paid for them.

Anyway! Time to finish loading the kiln. I didn't get as much done as I hope yesterday, because it was like 90° and 84% humidity. Today's much better! Hoping to fire tomorrow. 

Just looked up this song - seems appropriate!