Author: Dana Seilhan

Maybe I am just too impatient, but I was really not impressed with what was involved in opening a RedBubble store. These will all seem like minor issues but here’s what annoyed me.

1. Their sticker interface is just weird. I wonder if they are even aware that people still buy old-school bumper stickers. I have no problem with what sticker shapes and offerings they did have, but they had absolutely no template for a normal bumper sticker in normal-bumper-sticker dimensions. I like bumper stickers. I want to design some. I couldn’t with them. This was a real bummer.

2. I uploaded one of my photos. That I took thirteen years ago. That I’ve seen no images similar to in the thirteen years since. And no one at RedBubble told me there was a DMCA issue. But RedBubble decided they had to investigate to see if it was REALLY my photograph. Which I did not learn until after they’d figured out that yep, it was probably mine. Assholes.

3. Why do I need to upload five items to go live in the shop? And once I uploaded the five items, why wasn’t the shop live immediately?

So, yeah. Cafe Press it is. I can’t use my old “studiorandom” handle there because they mysteriously made that shop disappear, but I came up with a different one and we’ll go with that for now. The idea is to use this as a stepping-stone to see which of my designs, if any, are successful there so that I might print them myself eventually. I have aspirations of acquiring an Epson tank printer and using it to do sublimation mugs, and at some point I want to teach myself screen-printing too. I don’t yet know what I would do to make bumper stickers, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. It will probably involve vinyl. Wish it wouldn’t, but that seems to be what’s most available to home-based makers.

Irrelevant point right now, at any rate, as I’ve got no home to base my making in. Another reason to use print-on-demand.

Anyway. I’ll link to it in the sidebar. There will be stuff there when there is stuff there. Have fun.

I installed this theme thinking it was going to have a portfolio feature. Alas, that’s only available on the WordPress-hosted WordPress blogs, which is lame. But there are plugins you can install to add the portfolio functionality. So that’s what I did.

Obviously there is no arty stuff here yet. Part of my life turning upside-down has involved me throwing out/ burning (in Dad’s fire pit, when I was staying with him two autumn/winters ago) a lot of old stuff I didn’t like anymore. It was no great loss, believe me. And I’ve not been creating to make up the lack, either, not that I had a lot to begin with. I seem to like to focus a lot of attention on a few pieces rather than get faster at producing many pieces, which has been a major obstacle in my Being An Artist.

Part of it has involved not being somewhere with easy access to a scanner. I do own a scanner, but it is part of a 3-in-1 printer device so it’s very clunky to deal with and lives in a storage locker right now. Acquiring one that is more transportation-friendly is an expense I really can’t justify right now.

But pretty soon here I intend to start creating small pieces, and I will simply photograph those and share them here. So there’ll be a portfolio at that point.

I also want to do a little bit of text-based digital stuff (I am not well-equipped for digital drawing), for the purposes of print-on-demand. And when I get that set up I’ll include those products too. I don’t know if I’ll be able to add links to the portfolio items, but if not I’ll just include information in the captions for where you can buy them.

The print-on-demand stuff will be at RedBubble for now. I have reasons to not want to use RedBubble, and certain of my pocket friends* know what I’m talking about, but I also have zero equipment to make my own stuff. I wanted to change that while I was still housed, but I am not now housed and that equipment would just wind up in the storage locker even if I could afford it, and I can’t. Not yet.

I also need to get more eyeballs on my mischief. I mean it’s not going to sell until people know it’s there, and people won’t know it’s there til I put it there ARGH.

So RedBubble is a stepping-stone, that’s all. I don’t intend to have a permanent relationship with them.

I’m also going to play it relatively safe on content for now. I hate to do that, but the idea is to start generating income doing something besides delivery-driving, so I will do what I need to do with the tools that work for me. I take comfort in knowing they’ll be helping someone their staff would despise if they really knew me and how I think. Serves ’em right. Next time, don’t play favorites, fellas.

You cannot know how frustrating it’s been to come up with stuff and then not be able to do anything with it. Overall, believe it or not, my life has been less stressful than it was, but I’d like to make it less stressful still.

Anyway. Onward.

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*Pocket friends = my friends on the internet, whom I most often interact with using my phone. I got this lovely term from my pocket friend Vicki, whom I would totally go drinking with if we were in close geographical proximity. That’s true of a lot of them, actually.

Hi. I’m Dana. I make stuff.

Hi, Dana…

My life’s been completely turned upside-down. It’s taken me a while to get clear on what’s going on and what I should do next, and that process isn’t finished.

Part of the process has been realizing that the working world is a lot different than I remember, and it wasn’t a picnic when I was last in it, either. I’m not a snob or a princess and I don’t think I deserve to be spoiled but I keep running into evidence that the people who employ see the people they employ as a bunch of dumb animals meant to be moved around to do this and fix that with zero consideration for the dumb animals’ needs. And so much of the available work just seems pointless. I have an account on LinkedIn, and most of what I see there are rich people in make-work jobs that I could not explain to you in simple language upon reading the description. This is what the world’s burning for? Really? Why? Meanwhile I cannot even get simple consideration for my health issues if I want to earn more than minimum wage, and I can’t get it at minimum wage either.

And that’s when anyone looks at me for a job. Which they mostly don’t.

And that’s when I’m even suited for the job. And I’m mostly not.

It’s my fault. I had twenty years in which to get myself sorted, and I did keep starting attempts at it, but for various reasons I faltered and failed. I ask myself over and over why I did that, and there were a lot of factors involved, but at the end of the day there’s not a lot out there I actually want to do. The things I want to do don’t make a lot of money unless, like, you become a huge hit on social media or something. Which most of us never do.

And, well, I’ve pretty much hit bottom, or very close to it, so I thought, Well, as long as I’m here, I might as well do what I want. There really aren’t any rewards waiting for me for putting myself into situations I hate or can’t keep up with. And it’s more often the latter. I have to get my life more sorted than it is before I might develop any physical capability for some of this stuff, and I have to go through certain biological changes before I lose some of my disadvantages for other stuff.

It’s been very frustrating. I am tired of being frustrated. I want better.

So… I don’t see why I shouldn’t mostly just do what I want. I still have to pay my dues and do something that doesn’t pay as well as I’d like, but right now my expenses are minimal and I’ll take the bullet.

(Not literally.)

(I feel that, as an American, I should specify that. Metaphor. METAPHOR.)

But I’m not going to kill myself with that stuff once I get a few important goals out of the way. I need to do what I want to do. I have not gained a single solitary fucking thing that I wanted to keep in life by doing what I didn’t want to do. I’ve done almost nothing but what I didn’t want to do for the past twenty years, and all it got me was ruined. Back to the drawing board.

Literally! You get to see what I do on my drawing board now. I keep saying I’m going to do that. Now I have nothing else to do. I don’t even have a social life anymore. Hell widdit.

Stay tuned.

A NOTE: In the incarnation of this blog previous to this one, I mentioned a mug I had on sale. That account has disappeared, with zero accountability from Cafe Press, and the username isn’t available anymore either. So that’s fucked. I’ll have to figure out something else because I’d still like to design mugs and shirts and things. I’ll poke around, and then we’ll see. Again, stay tuned.