Five quotes: Action

A nod,
a bow,
and a tip of the lid
to the person
who coulda
and shoulda
and did. 

Robert Brault, 'A Poem Missing the Word Woulda'. www.robertbrault.com

Men expect too much, do too little. 

Allen Tate.

I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.  

William J. Lock.

Action will remove the doubts that theory cannot solve. 
Tehyi Hsieh.

Carpe diem! 

(Seize the day!) 

Horace. 

Before long, this year will have become last year. If you have plans, enact them now.
Happy new year, everyone.

With thanks to The Quote Garden.

Tweet

Five quotes: Integrity

No amount of good deeds can make up for a bad attitude. 

Attributed to Optimus Prime. 

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. 

Confucius. 

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. 

James D. Miles.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.  

William Shakespeare.

Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough. 

Arthur Freed.

With thanks to @suresandy1, @feistycoach, and The Quote Garden.

Tweet

Ignorance is power

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. 

- Doug Larson 

When I first started trying to make a living as a self-employed jewellery artist, I knew nothing. 

In the following three years, I learned how much I did not know. 

I am now slightly horrified at how ignorant I was, and how little research I did. 

I am also immensely grateful.

If I had known how hard it would be, I might not have done it.

First Light Over Glacier Bay by thechadandhope on Etsy

 The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible ... and achieve it, generation after generation.
- Pearl S. Buck 

(With thanks to @grapechick for tweeting the Doug Larson quote.)   

Tweet

When you feel like giving up ...

When you feel like giving up, 

remember why you held on for so long in the first place. 

(Source unknown.) 

With thanks to @motivationlive for tweeting this.

Here's a link to Chris Guillebeau's excellent blog post 'Ever Feel Like Giving Up?'

Tweet

The Power Of Not Giving Up

To every artist, entrepreneur or blogger who has ever struggled; who has ever experienced poverty; who has ever wept with frustration and desperation over their career; who has ever heard the words, 'You're crazy - you can't do it - it's impossible - give up before you go bankrupt - you're an embarrassment - grow up and get a real job' ...

I offer this blog post by the one, the only, the formidable Naomi Dunford.

Have the tissues handy. 

The Power Of Not Giving Up - One Blogger's Story

Tweet

The Journey to Ithaca (read it slowly)

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never
set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor,
Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become,
with so much experience,
you must already have understood
what Ithacas mean.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

With thanks to Chris Guillebeau for quoting this on his blog.

Peace be all your journeys.

Lawrence of Arabia

"Nothing is written unless I write it."

- T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence Of Arabia.

Lawrence Of Arabia is a long, fascinating film. The line above sticks with me.
The Bedouins with whom Lawrence travels fatalistically say, "It is written!" whenever they encounter a situation that they feel cannot be helped. 'It is fate; it is beyond our control; it is futile to try to change it.' In one scene, the redoubtable Lawrence retorts,

"Nothing is written unless I write it."

How much could we change if we stopped believing that it couldn't be changed?

An Old Chinese Proverb

I am completely enamoured a fan of Chris Guillebeau's 'The Art Of Non-Conformity' blog. The guy makes more sense in two sentences than most people make all day.

Recently I finished reading his e-book '279 Days To Overnight Success'. Specifically, it's about making a living as a professional blogger, but, like most of Guillebeau's writing, it is also about doing anything that people say cannot be done.
At the end of the e-book, he concludes with this old Chinese proverb:

the person who says

something is impossible

should not interrupt the

person who is doing it.

Long live those of us who believe in doing the impossible. 

Perseverance: the new black.

Annie is the jewellery maker of Ferosh Kitty Designs. Recently, she was Zibbet.com's Featured Zibbeter. On reading her interview, a particular sentence caught my eye: "And I’m a believer that perseverance is the new black!"

I love black.
Black is only one colour (in fact technically it's not a colour; it's the absence of light and therefore the absence of colour); it doesn't have shades or tints the way green and blue and other colours do; yet it can be dangerous, formal, mysterious, intimidating, enigmatic, aggressive, clean, precise ... think black cats, ninjas, hit men, top hats, limousines, formal calligraphy, the night sky ...
Black does not compromise. You can't negotiate with it. It is what it is, and if you want a lighter or darker tone then you're just going to have to look elsewhere. Black just is. When all other colours have faded away, all that will be left will be black.
(Literally.)
'Perseverance is the new black'. I like the nod to fashion there. It seems appropriate for artists to talk about perseverance in visual terms. 

Perseverance is a common trait of those who change the world. Research Thomas Edison, Sir Edmund Hillary, Marie Curie, or any other important person, and the chances are high that perseverance was the key to their achievement.

As Calvin Coolidge famously said, 

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

(If, like me, you love quotes, here is an excellent trove of perseverance quotes. You're welcome. :-D)

Perseverance is the new black.

When all other skills and abilities have faded away, perseverance will still be there.
If you want to achieve something great, perseverance is not just the new black: it's the one and only black.

Roger Ebert

I follow, via E-mail updates, a blog called Copyblogger. Its tagline is 'copywriting tips for online marketing success', but, like most of the blogs I follow, it often talks about things that are bigger than just copywriting or marketing or the Internet.
Let me share this powerful Copyblogger post with you. It's about using what you have, and what you love, to overcome whatever filth life throws at you.

Whiteleaf Jewellery update

A few more things to look forward to in my new brand.
I'm very pleased with the photographs. For some reason the Whiteleaf jewellery has been shooting much better than the Silverlight stuff.

The launch is on Monday. I have this evening and tomorrow to work on it (I don't work on Sundays, in order to avoid burnout), and then it's The Big Day. (To be followed in a couple of months by another Big Day: the rebranding of my Silverlight line.)
I've been gearing up for this for so long ... I'm actually nervous. This is how I make my living, after all.
The first two shops will be on Felt and Zibbet. Eventually I plan to have Whiteleaf shops on Etsy and possibly ArtFire too. I can't wait to see how they look - with their gorgeous banners expertly designed by Doctor Riptide to match my business cards and stickers - filled with the beautiful earthy jewellery I've been designing for the past two months or so. Will the look be coherent? Will everything meld together as I have planned it to? Will people like the new style and lower price points?
Right, I've got to go and make jewellery. My first order from Happy Mango Beads arrived last night and so I have new treasures to play with ... er, make stock out of.
Three sleeps until the launch.... 

Hard work ... and more hard work ...

I am a chronic Etsy browser.
Most New Zealanders are not familiar with Etsy, so here's a little description: Etsy is an American based, international, online marketplace for handmade and vintage goods and supplies. If you are an artist or craftsperson of any kind, Etsy is arguably THE foremost place to sell online. It's a browser's delight: a veritable online world of beautiful, handmade goods with personality and individuality - many of them eco-friendly, recycled, vegan, or organic as well. I'm almost certain that a person's entire life could be supplied and maintained solely with items purchased on Etsy.
If you are looking for it, and if it's a physical object, then the chances are high that someone will sell it on Etsy. And while you're looking for it, you'll find a bunch of other things that you (a) had no idea existed, and (b) didn't know could be bought online. Homemade vegan marshmallows. Soap that looks like a chocolate truffle. Italian-sausage-scented lip balm. A fabulous coffin-couch.
And that's just a little taste of the delicious buffet that is Etsy.

One of the features that I really like on Etsy is their 'Quit Your Day Job' interviews with artists who make their livings by selling their work on Etsy. One sentence that crops up repeatedly from these full-time, self-employed artists (besides 'work on your photographs'!) goes along these lines:
"I have never worked so hard in my life".
For someone who is at the beginning of the journey towards full-time artistic self-employment, that's an intimidating thing to read.
I have never worked so hard in my life. 
From all accounts, that's what artistic self-employment requires. A tonne of hard work.
It must take even more hard work when you are trying to succeed in a crowded marketplace - and, while I don't know the statistics, I would guess that the Internet is now the biggest and most crowded marketplace on Earth.

It must take even MORE hard work when you are trying to succeed in a particularly crowded corner of that marketplace: jewellery selling. For some reason - and I find this fact intriguing - the jewellery category on any and every shopping website is one of the most crowded; and on handmade goods websites the category is invariably the biggest - sometimes by 100%. I just checked, and a moment ago there were 1,420,338 jewellery items listed on Etsy alone. At the moment you read this, there will probably be even more. In a forum thread on the site, one jewellery seller gave a conservative estimate of the number of jewellery sellers on Etsy: between 7,000 and 10,000. Remember, that's just the jewellery sellers, and it's just on Etsy.

Suddenly that sentence - I have never worked so hard in my life - is put into perspective. One starts to realise that none of the full-time Etsy sellers in the 'Quit Your Day Job' interviews got where they are without working their tails off. 

I have heard many successful people say that luck is a fallacy. Luck does not exist. If you want to do something difficult (such as becoming self-employed or climbing a Himalayan mountain), forget about luck. Or better: re-name it. Call it 'work'. Hey, they both have the same number of letters, and they both end with 'K', so the switch should be relatively easy, right? (Sarcastic laughter.)

Samuel Goldwyn, the Hollywood movie producer, said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." (Another favourite Goldwynism of mine is “If I look confused it’s because I’m thinking.”)

I have never worked so hard in my life. And the harder I work, the luckier I get.

To be honest, it's not a hugely appealing prospect. Is hard work ever appealing?

I guess it depends how badly you want the results. 

And I think this is where a lot of us stumble: we don't want it badly enough.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
- Epictetus.

Epictetus was a Greek Stoic philosopher. (His life was quite interesting - here's a link to the Wikipedia page about him).
I could write pages about the dozens of ideas in this simple sentence of his, but I think it's better if great words are left to stand alone sometimes.