I just handed over a whole bunch of my greeting cards to Marta, owner/operator of Good Day Shop in Arcata, CA. Her art consignment shop is going to be a perfect fit for me!

She is building a vibrant community around the store—she hosts music events and art openings at her shop, and has plans to expand to rent studio space to local artists and artisans if her plans work out!

https://dolphin-decagon-3e8c.squarespace.com/ [dolphin-decagon-3e8c.squarespace.com]

She was incredibly kind, helpful, and generous to me today. I couldn’t have asked for a nicer guide to help me figure out what I was doing. Incredible person!

I’m SO happy!!! I have literally half a rack of greeting cards that are all mine! Right by the counter! I’m ecstatic!

Got up at 5:15 this morning to go to a con (actually a manga/anime flea market with some artists). Was it worth it? Not for the money, I sold a single comic and one sticker sheet
But for the nice conversations with con-goers, connecting to fellow artists and that one guy who bought Rock Bottom after explaining to me which BL/Yaoi he read and liked, absolutely yes.

My hands are so sore… They’ve been put through the wringer from weeks of packing, gripping boxes and shoving them around, unpacking, assembling and disassembling shelves… It’s flat out painful. They’re so swollen they feel like tight little sausages…

Any advice? I’m trying to draw, but I don’t think I can. I’ve put Eucerin lotion on them and I’ve been told compression gloves can help. Any other words of wisdom? They’re just kaput right now… <sigh>

I thought I might share a little retrospective of different projects I completed during the year.

This year has been a life-changer for me.

• I left my theatre teaching job of 25 years to enter a new career.
• I made a Patreon that failed.
• I left Facebook & Instagram for good, and mourned a bit.
• I decided to move out of the community I’ve lived in for 33 years.
• I left Etsy and moved my entire storefront to the fledgling Goimagine, ending my POD offerings.

It’s been a doozy of a year.

But the one constant I’ve found is the joy I feel when I make my art. It counterbalances all the angst and hopelessness I might sometimes feel when things get dark.

It’s a tough world out there right now, and it feels very much in my face all the time! Haha! The only thing I feel I can control is whether I let it control me. The barbs and hooks within life’s grip sometimes make things feel… overwhelming. But my happy place is my art. And I’ll continue to do that no matter what comes. Because they can’t take that away from me.

I’m SO PROUD of what I’ve made! I am happy to celebrate it! I’ve grown so much! I made some lovely stuff I’m really surprised came out of my own hands and head! I’m so excited for the future!

So no matter what comes I will only move forward. I’m not going back. I can’t. I won’t.

I've made the mistake of signing up to several news media accounts, and many folks I follow post things with good intent but it still increases my anxiety and sympathetic outrage.

As per the meme, I'm choosing sanity button over being socially informed. I'll be muting a lot of accounts and filtering words for the next several weeks so my heart and hope aren't eviscerated in the long term.

Time to lean into light and beauty and kindness for a while.