Hey Folks,
I just wanted to thank all of you for your very well-thought ideas about the whole knitting / designing / writing and earning a living at it conundrum.
I was so impressed – and very pleased – with the measured feeling of your comments. Somewhere deep inside I think I was afraid I’d get a lot of either, “You da BOMB, don’t stop!” or “Just grow up, girlie!” and I was really gratified at the depth of thought that went into each comment.
I’m thinking – contemplating. Of course, if a nice well-paying, steady job presented itself to me I wouldn’t turn it down, but I have been spending a lot of time remembering back when I DID have office-type 9-5 jobs, and how I’d look for ANY excuse to “play hookey” – run a package to a vendor, go out of the office for a meeting, etc.
Am I proud of this? No, not really. But I realized at the time it was a symptom of the type of person I am – very much like my father. I don’t like to label myself – I don’t like anyone to label themselves – because often that leads to falling into a pre-ordained personnae which may not fit for more than a week or so. But my dad and I are definitely the type of folks who need challenges presented in unusual ways.
This may be why I gravitated toward the theater – lots of short term goals! And it’s the same with what I do right now. I know that I am a happier person now than I’ve ever been in my life – I was just thinking this morning that folks who’d known me at different times in my life may have thought that I’d had some kind of ‘personality transplant’ But no, it’s just that – money aside – I’m happier in my work than I’ve ever been in my life.
And, although I CAN’T put money aside, I can use some of your excellent comments and suggestions to try to expand on my ability to earn $$ for mortgage. Suzyn had some very excellent suggestions, and although not all of them are on the money, they really got my mind thinking hard.
One thing I think I’ll do is offer some of the patterns for History on Two Needles early, to raise interest in the book and to help FUND the completion of the project. If I wait until everything is finished, I’m afraid I won’t be ABLE to finish. Stay tuned for more info on that, but I think I know the project I’ll be offering as as stand-alone project, I’m reknitting it right now in a different yarn to check it’s universality. It’s a good, short project with WONDERFUL gift giving possibilities…
I’m also thinking of dedicating a portion of my time to retraining myself to return to consulting in an application in which I excel – Filemaker Pro! I’m a database designer – I couldn’t do what I do without a good database of my stitch library, yarn choices, vendors, past designs – I keep just about EVERYTHING organized via databases.
So I’m going to spend some time to reacquaint myself with Filemaker, upgrade to the newest version and actively seek work designing and maintaining databases for companies. I did this for a few years while I was transitioning from full time to part time when my kids were little, and it was very satisfying work.
So, thank you. You made me think, you calmed me down, you made me realize that my ‘sky is falling’ feeling was due – in large part – to the extreme head cold that is finally going away. I can HEAR again! Soon I may even be able to smell again!