Crazy Days of Autumn

Life has been crazy lately... thus leaving me little time to update this blog, unfortunately. :[

With Jon in China for the semester, things have been rough. This is the longest we've been apart, and it definitely shows. I'm sure my parents are ready to strangle me, because I can't help but say "Damn, I miss Jon!" out loud at least 5 times a day. The 12-hour time difference doesn't help either. We try to keep in touch through email and Skype, but it's tough because his evenings clash with my classes, as well as my evenings with his. Needless to say, we can't wait for winter break!

I've been taking Biology and Public Speaking this semester at my local community college, and as easy as it may sound... it's not. My Bio teacher is a former teacher of embryological development at another college, and definitely knows her stuff. The class is twice a week, includes a lab, and runs from 11:30am - 2:20am with a 15 minute break in the middle. We have a lab quiz every week, an exam about every three weeks, and two lab practicals (basically my midterm and final, which includes questions about stations with microscopes and models). It's pretty hardcore, but I've managed to keep an A average. Public Speaking has been pretty crazy as well, seeing that public speaking in general is an unpleasant task... I have to say though, running a YouTube channel has actually made me better at it. I'm also sitting on an A average in that class, but heck... If I can't keep an A when I'm only taking two classes at a community college, then I must be doing something very wrong!

In addition to being heartsick and having my head buried in Biology notes, I've been taking on quite a few projects.

1.) My YouTube channel! If you haven't noticed yet, I've been making a boatload of Rage of Bahamut videos for the past couple months. Incredibly, people like them and I've actually managed to waste 1500 hours of peoples' lives. I've never been so proud to do something so horrible! But that aside, it has netted me $40 from ads, and as an unemployed college student living with her parents, any money is good money. I've been trying to upload a new video weekly, which can be kind of tiring because I no longer enjoy RoB as much as I used to. Ah well, it's cash in my pocket.

2.) SHRIMP. TONS OF THEM. Okay, not REAL shrimp, but clay shrimp! I've been in talks for months about doing an order for someone with a restaurant in Costa Rica, and finally we worked all the details out about two weeks ago. I was working like a madwoman to fulfill the order, because I had a deadline to meet: Oct, 20. This wouldn't be that tough, but it was because this wasn't a dozen shrimp... two dozen shrimp... This was an order for 100 CLAY SHRIMP, not only of different sizes, but different ring positions for hanging. I had to hand-sculpt 100 shrimp, put ring pins in 50 of them, head pins in 50 of them, bake them, cut and ring the head pins, and then glaze all of them before packing them away and shipping them off.

25 of the stylized shrimp, glazed and ready to be packed.

Needless to say, it was the most difficult, yet rewarding experience in my crafting career thus far! I have to admit, I did bite off a bit more than I could chew... but after sacrificing all of my free time, some sleep, and a little bit of my sanity, I was able to finish and get them to their destination on time.

3.) My room. Oh my gawd, my room is a disaster. You see, I haven't even been sleeping in my room for months... I sleep on the couch in the basement. Yes, I officially live in my parents' basement... embarrassing to a point, but I don't really feel ashamed of it. Losing 6 years of my life to depression really put me behind schedule in just about everything, which includes cleaning up my room. It's a mess of binders, notebooks, papers, books, and everything else I've amassed since middle school. I've started cleaning it up starting with my bookcase, and after two shelves I'm terrified at the task before me... I already have filled a giant plastic tub with all of my books, half a box with stuff I want to sell, and a box of things I want to keep. There is just so much stuff to sift through, but I keep thinking about the goal of this cleanup: essentially packing up everything for my future life, having a room that only has the things I need now in it, and making some cash. I've already found a vintage 1981 Garfield candle, some jewelry, and discontinued toys among the clutter, along with junk that I can sell at a tag sale for a buck or two.

Not to mention I still need to get onto working on Jon's and my scrapbook of our years together at UNH, get my driver's permit, and various other things....
I swear, sometimes it seems like there's not enough time in the world.

So that's basically my current autumn insanity. I can hardly wait for winter break, where I can just relax!

Our Commitment to Handmade and more

I admit it.
I've been incredibly lazy.
I could make a million excuses, but that just wouldn't be rational.

Here is the current news in the world of Maddie...

1. I have changed the gawd-awful layout at last. It's not a huge improvement, but it should be easier on the eyes. I am still debating whether or not to put a background image or not, but I like things rather plain... after all, it's the text on the blog that makes the blog, not the pretty embellishments.

2. I -do- have some new post-style earrings available, but they haven't been put up in my Etsy shop yet. To be completely honest, Etsy has really gotten me down lately. If you aren't a follower of Regretsy, you definitely should be now. Recently, April Winchell, the author of the satirical blog and leader of the "fat jealous losers" (it's an old joke that I'm sure only Regretsy veterans will understand) that make up the Regretsy community, released a bombshell... That the Etsy featured seller, Ecologica Malibu, whom they interviewed and wrote a cupcakey little article about, was in fact a dreaded reseller. For those unfamiliar with the term, they are people who buy factory-made items, tag them as handmade, and sell them for a profit. In this case the seller was buying Balinese boat furniture wholesale and selling them as handmade pieces that she claimed she had made herself. This goes completely against Etsy rules and guidelines, but they have initiated a great cover-up and cover-ass by saying that Ecologica Malibu is a "collective" and that doesn't break any rules.
This may not seem like the biggest deal ever, but Etsy is a -handmade- marketplace. When resellers join the picture, it's just a fancier version of our good friend eBay. Handmade is extremely important to me. It was the whole idea of a handmade market place that made me say "Hey, I can do this!" and attempt to work with clay in the first place. Making sales and knowing that somewhere out there, somebody else will be holding and enjoying something I created... It's an amazing feeling and incredibly rewarding. Now that Etsy has begun to lose its integrity as a handmade marketplace, I've found it much more difficult to make sales and my listing fees are greater than my profits again. I also don't feel like I want to be a part of a website that doesn't care about its own sellers.
I'm considering making the switch to a WePay store if things don't improve with Etsy's handmade policies. Of course, that means a huge decrease in viewership. So...

3. ...I'm considering expanding Hello Interloper. Right now there's the blog and there's the shop, but if I do end up having to make a move to WePay I'll be buying my own domain and building a website. Hopefully that will give Hello Interloper more of an audience, or at least a better sense of legitimacy. I'd most likely have to put up ads to support site costs though... or, you could just all click an ad here on this blog, it makes me a quarter, haha.

Well, that's about it. Hopefully I'll stop being such a lazyass and update more often. Now that classes are drawing to a close, there's a good chance I'll be able to update weekly.