Short and sweet: don't panic

There are eighteen days until Christmas, and not just my blog readers but almost everyone I can think of will be busy – if not frantically busy! So let's keep this short and sweet.

Here is a suitably short and sweet – like an iced biscuit – blog post by Crissy Herron of IndieBizChicks.com. It contains four quick tips to help you keep your sanity and your business in one piece over the busiest time of year.

Don’t Let Your Biz Fall Apart During The Holidays

Also, remember the immortal words that are inscribed on the back of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: 

And here's my own best bit of advice for this time of year: 

Keep Calm, 

Carry On, 

And 

Enjoy. 

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

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.

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.