3 Things That Might Happen To You When You Start a Blog plus a creativity tip for summer

it's your world - write about it

1. People might get mad at you.

This does not just go for people you write about - although I always tell people - everyone (except for my daughter) is fair game on my blog. I would, of course, never name names (well, almost never).

People who disagree with you might get mad at you. too. You will have to learn to live with this.

2. People might think you are an idiot. 

If you start to get really real with your blogging (and you should only do this if you are really really called to) people could read what you have written and think you are not a person to be taken seriously. This could be true. Many people should not be taken seriously. I should not be taken seriously. Maybe you shouldn't be taken seriously either.

On the flip side -

3. People might think you actually know what you are talking about.

I don't think I have this problem, but you might. I suggest the following disclaimer which I use frequently:

Disclaimer - since I am not an expert in anything and cannot be said to actually know what I am talking about I cannot be held responsible for any actions you might take as a result of reading any of my posts - please keep this in mind if you end up broke, living in your parents' basement playing Guitar Hero and doing sudokos.

(unless of course this is an improvement over your current living situation in which case I will, of course, take full credit)

So, if you have stayed with me long enough to wind your way down to this creativity tip, here goes:

Create routines.

Break them.

(not into a million pieces that can never, ever be put back together - why am I channeling Taylor Swift now! help me Jesus)

What I mean is - you need a schedule when you have a business - things put into little boxes, on calendars and notepads. Your body needs this stuff, too - routine nourishes the body, the soul, the mind and our emotions. Routines are good.

But creativity laughs at routine (and not even behind its back- creativity laughs right in routine's face) - creativity is bad ass, folks.

To be creative we have to break the routine. Not forever - not into a million pieces - we need the routine - we just need to break it for now.

The conscious mind says "whoa, what the hell just happened here?" This happened to me yesterday after I spent an hour watching ants on my front porch.

The subconscious takes over and drops off that little gem your rational mind and routine has overlooked.
 
It's summer, folks, (almost) crush the routine! xo all

(I promise to get to the foundation stuff this week - having too much fun thinking I'm funny right now)

my cupcake is better than your cupcake ....

cupcake war corkboard

When my daughter was younger her school would have a bake sale every month.

Every month.

(every grade took a week so there was a steady supply of junk being fed to our children on Friday afternoons)

I am not a baker. I am not even an almost baker.

(although I do have a very nice kitchen mixer gathering dust on my counter)

Also this baking took a lot of time.

There were a couple mothers in charge of this stuff (the mothers who were always in charge of this kind of stuff) and maybe they did like to bake. I will never know. I do know that for the rest of us, by the time our kids were in 3rd grade and we had been doing this every month since they were in kindergarten we were kind of baked (and not in a good way) out.

I knew there had to be a better way to make the $100 a month we made from these sales. One month I decided to just take matters into my own hands.

(this was most likely right after the 'alleged' food poisoning incident I alluded to in a post a couple years back which some people in town still haven't forgotten - let it go Mrs. H - but which most importantly cannot be held against me in a court of law)

Anyhoo, I had the idea to sell letters from Santa to the parents to raise money instead. I made my suggestion to the "couple mothers in charge of this stuff" and the conversation went something like -

me - "you know maybe we could do something other than bake sales once in a while - give the moms a break and throw some new energy into this raising money thing"

I showed them the order form and Santa letter I had come up with. "I'll just donate the stamps, paper and envelopes", I said.

(I must have been pretty desperate to get back into people's good graces)

supermoms - "well, we don't know Carol"
me - "Cat ... my name is Cat"
supermoms - " oh rrighttt ... well, I guess if you really want to do it - anything for the kids right!"

(and yes, in my memory they really did talk in unison like that)

So, long story short - we sold over 100 letters at $3 a piece. I was very pleased with my little feat and already thinking ahead to letters from the Easter Bunny (and whether it would be illegal or just slightly unethical to do letters from Superheroes) when I opened my daughter's bookbag to find the dreaded monthly reminder:

Please circle and return to school with your child by Monday.

I will bake:

 36 cookies

24 cupcakes

1 cake

What?! Hadn't we just raised enough money to put this whole baking thing to bed for a couple months?! I dialed the supermoms.

"yes, Carol, that letter was a great idea, it did very well - we will put that money to good use, but the bake sales - well, they get everyone involved and everyone really loves them"

(everyone but the bakers I was thinking)

I circled 36 cookies.

(and yes, I do see that getting everyone involved - sometimes has its advantages - and I will admit I was looking forward to the high fives I would no doubt be getting from the other non-supermoms when they heard they would not have to do any baking for 3 months, I did have the implied - but never proven remember - poisoning incident to atone for after all, but I still think this more is more thing is how we all make ourselves totally nuts)

Now, this story popped into my head last night because hubs and I had made a change in something for his business that is netting us an extra $250 a month. $250 a month that he was starting to make plans for at the same time I was thinking "great, now since X is working, let's stop doing Y".

Time is the most precious thing we've got, folks.

This is a battle that unlike the cupcake war I am determined to win.

I hope you are having a beautiful day wherever you are - we finally have some sunshine here! xo all

Why I don't check my Etsy feedback anymore or how to sleep better at night if you sell the things you make

Ah, feedback.

I am grateful (usually) that people take the time to comment on the things they buy from me in the public feedback forum, but please don't ask me to look at it.

This "don't look at it" thing was a gradual process.

It started a couple years ago with a particularly unhappy customer whose cork was "too beige".

Now if he had emailed me about this "too beige" thing I would have fixed him up somehow, probably with a refund, cork is ... well... kind of beige, after all.

But he left me a negative (not even a neutral!) feedback out of the blue, the day after Thanksgiving and then he did not respond to my emails to "kiss and make up".

I thought I would have a coronary.

I imagined every potential customer heading over to my feedback page, cork in cart - reading his comments and saying to themselves "wait a minute, what was I thinking, this guy's right, cork is too ... beige". I imagined "clear item from cart" buttons being hit all over the country.

I lost sleep. I knew I needed a change (not with this 'beigeness thing', but with my reaction part of it).

 I set up some parameters for myself (yes, this is what us obsessive, crazy people do).

At first I wouldn't look at my feedback late at night because if there was a problem it would keep me up. Then I wouldn't look at it late in the week, because if there was a problem I wanted to be able to have it resolved by the end of the week.

Finally I just stopped looking. It's been months.

(I will admit to keeping half an eye on the 100% positive on my front page - but it would take something pretty substantial to move that by this time - I've been doing this awhile) 

And I do not say this in any way to offer anyone else advice - and if you are a new seller - you maybe need to earn a few wrinkles (yes, I blame feedback for what is happening with my eyelids) through sleepless nights over some craziness that hits you out of the blue.

I told another maker this and she said to me "but you miss all the good stuff then".

Ugh, she was totally right, of course - but even this did not dissuade me. 

I am missing the 200 feedbacks that read "I love it" to avoid reading the 1 "this hits my baby in the head when I bend over" neutral.

(yes, there is something like that in there).

Now, this might send you over to my feedback and then you will know more than I do. I will have to live with this. Don't tell me anything that is happening in there. I mean it. I don't want to know. My feedback is like my daughter playing quietly across the room when she was little, even when I half suspected a tube of lipstick might be nearby - I don't want to look.

(and no, this is not the post I am trying to get my nerve up to write - this one isn't even close)

Of course when a customer contacts me with a problem I take care of it - I am not perfect with this stuff and mistakes happen and I guarantee my work with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

I know that my stuff being up to snuff impacts not only whether that customer comes back to me, but maybe she comes back to the handmade marketplace at all - maybe next time she heads down to Walmart for a cheapie - my goal as always is to keep everyone away from Walmart.

When customers email me with their kind words I always print them out and have a huge collection on my bulletin board - sometimes I put on red lipstick and give the pages a big old kiss before I hang them up there.

(even though Olive does a little - cuckoo for cocoa puffs - cuckoo hand signal behind my back that she thinks I don't see when I do this - I truly love my customers, truly I do)

I have found though that when people leave a problem feedback and I write to them to resolve it I never hear back from them anymore.

(in the early days I had a couple kiss and make ups and a couple that could not be satisfied, but now when I respond back to help, I just get ... crickets)

I think the public feedback isn't really about getting the problem solved. If I have a problem with a seller I will email them because I want something resolved. This isn't about resolution. Maybe people just want to say what they want to say ... in public. It isn't personal to them and I get that, of course.

To me, the Jersey Girl with skin as thick as a piece of onion peel, it's a whole other story

And yes, I envy you banana peel girls - except for those sallow complexions, of course - but I just can't be that girl. I've tried. I can't do it.
 
And yes, I also realize something about this will come back to me in some other way to be worked out - because changing the "doing" without changing the "being" isn't long lasting, but for right now, I am just fine with this.

For now, the only one I will be kiss and makeup-ing with is my husband.