A Punch to the Gut

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm currently living in a situation where someone else is paying the rent and bills.  That sounds awesome and makes me sound lazy.  In fact, I'm working my butt off to get this little business up and running.  But I'm still tied to this living situation.  Yesterday, like so many times before, I was told that, due to an unforseen problem, we basically have no food money for the next three weeks.  We also don't have money to pay my medical insurance, and a few other things.

I started my little art business with no money.  OK, I probably had a buck in change, but for all intents and purposes, I started with nothing.  No phone.  My computer died right after I started, and all that.  But the biggest thing going against me was that I had no place to borrow money to get started.  I was unemployed, and for a variety of reasons, haven't been able to find a job here.  To make a go of my little business, I had to put virtually all the money I brought in back into the business, to build up a reasonable amount of start-up capital.  But because I live in a house where the head of household simply refuses to live within their budget, I get nickel and dimed all month for the little bit I do make.  It's one financial crisis after another, most of them self-caused.  As a result, my little art/writing business is on financial life support.

So why don't I leave?  Because if I leave, then I'm starting a business while on the streets.  That's pretty damn hard as well.  I'm in a frying pan versus fire scenario, either option is really hard.  But I've committed to creating my own business and I just have to keep plugging along, day by day.  But it is sooooooo fucking frustrating to have people really stoked on my artwork and not be able to afford to make prints of drawings or other things I can sell.  This is when my background in BMX freestyle and skateboarding come into play.  I make a mistake or fall.  And I get up and keep working.  Quitting doesn't enter the picture.

This blog seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn't.  Check out my newest stuff  at Get Weird Make Money.

Johnny Appleseed and Grandpa's Orchard

I remember seeing this cartoon in school as a kid in Ohio.  Johnny Appleseed was actually a real guy, and he wandered the general area of Ohio I lived in from 4th to 8th grades.  Once when I was about 12, a friend took me deep into the woods.  Normally this meant an afternoon of fishing or playing army.  But on that particular occasion, he wanted to show me something he found.  It was an old gnarled apple tree that was still producing apples, the only apple tree anywhere in that patch of woods.  He thought it was so old, and in such a weird spot, that Johnny Appleseed himself might have planted it.  He could have been right.  We both ate part of an apple, even though there were pretty green, just to say we'd eaten an apple off a tree planted by Johnny Appleseed himself.

When I was a little kid in Ohio, My grandpa and grandma on my mom's side lived in a pink duplex in Mansfield, Ohio.  Mansfield was the actual area where a guy named John Chapman went around planting apple trees in the pioneer days, earning himself the nickname "Johnny Appleseed," and spawning a legend.  All of us kids in northern Ohio heard the tale of Johnny Appleseed.  My grandpa Mayer was many things.  He was a German immigrant who'd come to the U.S. as a kid, worked his way through college, and went on to be a pharmacist who never made a single mistake at work his entire life.  He was also an avid gardener, and was usually out working in his huge garden when we'd show up on the weekends.  Unfortunately, these aspects of Grandpa were overshadowed by the fact that he was a really mean drunk.  My memories of him as a kid were this big guy with no shirt working in his garden.  Then he'd take a break inside, watch golf on TV, and drink a quart of Stroh's beer.  Then he'd go back out into the garden and repeat the process.  I've seen him drink five quarts of beer on a Saturday, and he'd get meaner and meaner after each one.  That sucked, because he could be a really cool guy... when he was sober.

In addition to the huge garden, grandpa started planting fruit trees in the backyard when I was four or five.  He planted apples, pears, plums, peaches, and a walnut tree, along with a lot of berry bushes.  For the next few years he pruned and fertilized and nurtured those scrawny little trees, which seemed like a lot of wasted work to my little brain.  But on a good day, he'd show off each tree and tell us how, if he took care of them for the first few years, those trees would grow hundreds of fruits in the coming years.  Sure enough, those first scrawny trees started yielding fruit.  By the time was was about ten, every trip to grandma and grandpa's house in the summer or fall would end with a big basket of fruits and vegetables to take home.  In a similar fashion, grandpa rented out the other side of the duplex, and wound up buying the duplex next door and renting that one out as well.  He ultimately took back half of the backyard of the second duplex, and planted a bunch more trees.  Those trees, as well as the duplexes, returned huge bounties for the rest of the time they lived there.

So what does my grandpa's orchard have to do with anything, not to mention Johnny Appleseed, who planted apple trees in Ohio 200 years ago?  Starting a business is a lot like planting a garden or orchard.  In the early days and years, you do a lot of work that you don't get paid for.  But if you plant the right seeds and fertilize and nurture them, then can return an amazing bounty in later years.  As I start my little business around art and writing, I keep grandpa's orchard in mind.  Today I was reading a book about business and social media in today's world, and even these guys immersed in tech used the apple tree metaphor.  I'm not just drawing pictures to make a few bucks.  I'm trying to invest a lot of time and effort in building a business that will not only allow me to do a lot of creative projects in coming years, but will hopefully have a long term positive impact, a little like Johnny Appleseed's  and grandpa's fruit trees.

But I live in a household where I'm the only one who does any long term thinking.  I'm continually harassed about not making enough money in my first few months of starting a business with absolutely no money.  In effect, every single day I'm encouraged to "chop down my apple trees" and buy a single apple. This is frustrating as fuck.  But I'm not in a position to move to any other situation at this point, so I just have to grin and bear the onslaught of negativity.  The point here?  Keep planting your apple trees and guard them against anything that might destroy them, especially the people who don't think about the future bounty those trees will bring.

I'm no longer writing this blog, check out my newer stuff at:
Get Weird Make Money

Boom Boom... Out Go The Lights

For the handful of people that read this blog, you know I'm a middle-aged guy who is starting over in life after quite a few years of trials and tribulations.  I'm currently living in an apartment that someone else pays for.  While that sounds like a good deal, the lack of rent is more than made up for in negativity and unnecessary drama.  Yesterday was a prime example.  Lying in bed yesterday morning, I heard someone wrenching on something right outside my window.  I figured it was the maintenance guys working on the heat pump or something.  I rolled over, and slept some more.

When I woke up later, I noticed my clock was blank.  "Crap.  The power's out," I thought.  So I got up, threw some clothes on, and took a leak in the dark.  I checked the rest of the apartment, and yep, the power was completely out.  It wasn't just a single breaker.

It turned out that the power got shut off because the master of this household (which obviously isn't me) just hadn't paid the bill completely.  I was able to draw my pictures by sunlight for a while, but the drama level quickly went through the roof, and I got very little work done.  As usual, I tried to calm things down initially, and to add some rational thought to the situation.  That's what always gets me into trouble here, rational thought is NEVER welcome in this apartment.  Long story short, I got kicked out of the apartment twice yesterday for offering my point of view, and a non-family member bailed us out.  It was just a bad day all around.  Hope today goes a little better.

I'm no longer writing this blog, check out my newer stuff at:
Get Weird Make Money

Achieving Your Goals

This clip of Jim Carrey shows the most extreme example of visualization and goal setting that I'm aware of.  It worked for him... it can work for you.

When I was in high school in Boise, Idaho in the mid 80's, I used to joke with my dad that I didn't really need to go to college.  I told him I wanted to start my own business, and that I didn't need a degree to hire myself.  We laughed and didn't think much about it then.  Well, I know he definitely wanted me to get a degree, but he didn't push the idea too hard.  I really did want to own my own business.  But I was incredibly shy then, and didn't have the personality to pull it off, though I tried a few times.  Now, three decades later, I am finally committing to building my own business.  Much to my surprise, I'm starting it with artwork, which seems one of the sketchiest possible ways to start a business.  I didn't even think of myself as a visual artist when I started this six months ago.  I was desperate in one sense, despite a wide variety of job experience over 30+ years, I could not get hired for ANYTHING here in this small North Carolina town where I wound up.  There are many reasons why this might be.  Maybe employers think I'm too old, too fat, too sketchy (since my last career was as a taxi driver) or something else.  But it became very clear I wasn't going to find a job here, let alone a well paying job.  Most other people in this area, facing the same prospect, would double down on applying for jobs, or try to get on Social Security Disability, which is seen as a career path in this part of the country.

But I spent most of my life in and around the actions sports and entertainment industries.  I've seen dozens and dozens of people start businesses and do projects starting with very little.  With that background, I simply made a decision last November to create my own job.  It was as simple as that.  My artwork was the only thing I'd made money at in the past years, though very little money.  I realized I had to step up my game artistically, and I started my business with absolutely no money.  I did a couple of drawings for my sister to earn my first little bit of cash, and I kept going from there.  I was living for free with my mom, in an quiet little apartment, so I had that going for me.  But we're always in financial crisis, which has been a big challenge.  I had no phone, no money, very few art supplies to start, a tired old laptop, and a background in blogging.  No one, not one single person, thought drawing pictures was a good idea.  Some of you realize that means I did have one more thing.  A belief I could actually do this.  I'd made my dreams happen, some of them, anyhow, decades ago as a BMX freestyler.  I know from experience that the "impossible" is actually possible.  That is the biggest thing I had going for me.  Then my laptop broke.  It didn't crash, the hinge literally broke.  So I was starting a internet based art business... with no computer.  My next few drawings paid for an old, but functional (barely) refurbished laptop.

As 2016 was starting, I realized I needed to raise money to really get this idea going.  I decided to go with a crowdfunding campaign, specifically, a Go Fund Me page.  I built the page and set a goal of raising $1,000.  I'll be honest, that seemed absurd four months ago.  I had no idea whatsoever if anyone would contribute.  For the first few days, they didn't.  Then my mom's best friend Linda took pity on me and donated $20.  It was a start, but would anyone else follow? I didn't know.

I looked at my approach, and revised it.  Instead of asking for donations, I raised my asking amount to $25, and offered to do a 12" X 18" original drawing for anyone who contributed, or a larger drawing for $50.  Like Jim Carrey in the video above, I started visualizing drawing pictures as well, though not near as intensely as I should have.  I started getting orders for drawings.  They started coming from people I hadn't talked to in years or from people I only knew through Facebook.  Now, about 31/2 months later, I've reached my goal when I include the drawings now ordered.  Officially on my Go Fund Me page, I'm $110 short, but I have orders to cover that.  I achieved what initially seemed like a ridiculous goal.  So I'm successful, right?

Yes and no.  I reached my monetary goal, that's true.  But it took me much longer than I'd hoped.  I wanted to earn that $1,000 in a few weeks, and buy a shelving unit to store my supplies, stock up on the Sharpies and paper and other supplies I use, have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account, and most of all, buy a good digital camera so I can start shooting my own photos to draw pictures from.  Well, I have a small stockpile of art supplies, but I'm low on certain colors of Sharpies.  My checking account in running on empty at the moment, mostly because I had to spend much more than I hoped on basic household stuff, like food and prescriptions and all that.  The good digital camera is still sitting in a store waiting for me, I haven't even come close to buying it yet.

The lessons here?  Goals need to be specific.  Visualization does work, but you have to actually do the work after you visualize it.  There are always other, unforseen expenses when starting a small business.  There are always aspects to the goal we don't think of.  For example, I visualized achieving my goal to earn $1,000 with my art, but I didn't get around to visualizing buying and using that digital camera.  Most importantly, goals are about building a belief that something will actually happen.  Also, goals are an ongoing process.  In six months, starting with literally no money, I can now call myself a "self-employed artist/writer."  But I'm not truly making a living yet.  So it's time to ponder on the goals I just achieved, and use what I learned to set the next set of goals to raise me to the next level.

Generally speaking... I'm stoked.  Things didn't turn out quite how I wanted them to, but then, they never do.  I'm off to a slow but solid start to building my own business, and that's what it's all about for me right now.

I'm no longer writing this blog, check out me new stuff at:
Get Weird Make Money

Who Was Jane Jacobs?

This video above is Dr. Richard Florida, who has given us a new picture of economic development and where we are as a society right now with his concept of the Creative Class.  At 31:13 in this clip, he mentions Jane Jacobs, who was a great mentor of his.

Much like many other days, many of you went to the Google homepage today to find a doodle about some woman you never heard of.  Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jane Jacobs.  So who was Jane Jacobs?  She was a woman who wrote several books about cities, and how people interact in cities.  As Richard Florida mentions above, she saw her biggest contribution to the world as figuring out that it's the interaction of a diverse group of people that ultimately form small businesses, start-ups of larger businesses, and every other kind of "progress."  Economic development, at it's very core, comes out of these interactions of people in cities.  Jane realized that factories and multi-national corporations improved efficiency, but they themselves didn't cause economic growth.  It was people getting together, talking, arguing, brainstorming, and drinking that led to new ideas.  Those new ideas turned into a variety of things, from bands and art projects to small businesses, social movements, larger start-up businesses, and inventions and innovations of all kinds.

At a time when society is literally in constant and massive change, we need all the good ideas we can get as a species.  Jane Jacobs, who never got a college degree or accepted an honorary one, was the person who simply watched and saw the magic happening around her in Greenwich Village, and reported it to the world in her books. 

I'm no longer writing this blog, check out my new stuff at:
 Get Weird Make Money