Hello everybody- and at this moment in time, everybody is nobody. Maybe one day there will in fact be someone reading this, and if that somebody is you- Hello! Hello from the land of the tedious.

There’s something only creatives who do this seriously know and understand. The glamorous side to this life is what we see on social media. You see endless beautiful shots of creating paintings, or how they look when it is complete. What you do not see in the middle of this process is just how grueling a lot of the busywork can be.

At this moment in time, my perfectionism has inflicted a curse upon me. I have hundreds of listings- nearly 400- from Etsy that were created at various time points, some in 2013, when I was barely getting a grip on what I was doing, and some in 2020, while I am currently working on this project. You can’t get by in this crazy techno world with an aesthetic from 2013. It just won’t work, it won’t feel current, it won’t be popular. Plus, a lot of my work itself needs updating. I need to add more images to certain collections, I need to up my game in every sense of the word.

So, I decided that my shop, and my branding, and all the product images i created when I made these graphics needed a complete overhaul. I have created a style guide, with pantones, recommended fonts, and all.

I have created a spreadsheet with every single item I’ve put on my Etsy on it. That is a lot of products, y’all. I am drowing in work, and none of it is the fun, creative work that got me started with all of this. If you end up coming across this website and it has more than 100 listings on it, it will be a miracle from the heavens. A lot of business owners have ADHD, and I am no exception. This is a project that is the holy trifecta of procrastination… it’s boring, I’m extremely particular about it, and no one can help me with it but me.

Can someone give me a damn gummy bear every time I complete a listing? How do I hack my brain to make this a thing that I can do?

It’s true that right now I am in despair over this… I have already invested a hundred or so hours into it and I only have a pitiful 40 listings up. Google doesn’t know me, doesn’t have any interest in putting me up at the top of the results for a search of my website. It’s unfortunate.

If you’re a small business owner who has been here with me, how did you push through it? Can you give me any tips, tricks or recommendations? Thank you future readers, for reading my long extended WHINE. 🙂