What's Everyone Up To?

I can see new articles flooding through, but it seems unusually quiet on the forum here.  

I know that Paul's been busy, as he's suddenly become very, very famous in Runescape circles.   I believe that HollieT is busy with Zazzle.  I've actually been working on my eBook between articles.  

So what's everyone else up to?  

*lays out a cyber buffet of lovely refreshments and cake*  *waits for everyone to partake, and steels myself for people complaining that my internet food is - against all the odds - even worse than my real life cooking*

Hey, I'll eat anything. Thanks.

I've been really working on my store too, and to make it even more fun, my computer has decided it can't remember - or rather it's running out of memory. I bought an external hard drive and moved all my stuff over and it liked that. Then it kept losing the free space. I was racing to delete things to try to stay ahead of a crash. I wasn't getting much work done.

Then I realized I had a few extra dollars for some ram memory. So that got ordered yesterday. I'm hoping I can get some work done in the meantime.

I've been working on three lines of business cards and stationary

http://www.zazzle.com/ragtimelil

writing, writing, writing. worrying about the big Google update this weekend and the effect it'll have on my income. Going to the New England Flower Show tomorrow.

Driveway living in the rv, visiting/tending to stepdad in Chicago suburbs - so not a "magical time" at the moment...can't keep a daily routine for nothing right now, so "work" and forum time are minimal!

I "liked" Lil's zazzle store so I'm quite up to date on her new products - and I love them all - you really do have the touch!

I was working furiously on a lecture I have to give. It's part of a panel of professionals and I was doing nothing else than researching the topic and now I am waiting for some feedback from colleagues I respect. At the same time, I am working on my book.

And my daughter can call me any time now to tell me she's on the way to the birthing center to give birth to my first grandchild. Mind you, I don't have much to do about that in the meantime, but it is exciting daydreaming about the little one.

Thanks, Sheri and congratulations!!!!

Writing.

Publishing guest posts on my blog.

Polishing legacy articles and posting them.

Working at my day job.

Being ill with a cold.

Having regular run ins with the bus drivers and passengers in this area (the drivers often don't speak great English and some of the passengers are odd!)

Undertaking housework when well enough.

Staring at this thread for the last 9 hours - waiting for new posts.

*refreshes page*

*refreshes page*

*refreshes page*

I've been really busy with work and personal commitments lately. Really wish I could carve out more writing time. But I'm trying!

Me? You can guess ;-) Correct! Organizing the translation of my book in other languages and busy promoting it. Oh yes, and refreshing my book's sales pages to see the books "flying" of the virtual shelf. Life is good ;-) SY

Zazzle is keeping me busy.  I've had a number of customers to do custom work for.  And someone who wanted to buy an image from me - turned out it was from Pixabay, so I sent him there.

These are the months that I make the most money at Zazzle so Spring will find me creating and promoting mostly.  Not much time to write a worthy Wizzley page.

Congrats Sheri on the grandbaby on the way... how exciting! 

And congrats for all those sales Sam!  ya!

It's really cool getting these glimpses into the lives of busy writers and artists.  Sheri, your news is really exciting!   Do we get a heads up when the news comes?  

For that matter, how's Jase getting on with fatherhood?  

Pam, I was interested in you saying that Zazzle sales are up right now for you.   This has been my slowest month to date!

JoHarrington: 03/16/2013 - 10:07 AM

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Pam, I was interested in you saying that Zazzle sales are up right now for you.   This has been my slowest month to date!

Wedding season....

That's what I was thinking. Every niche has it's own season. When I was selling hand dyed roving and yarn, it really slowed down over the holidays. It just wasn't a holiday item. But in Jan and Feb I'd be going crazy. Everyone was spending their holiday gift money on themselves!

Slow for me too but I've been promoting and getting more visits. Just no sales.

Trying to be patient...

It is great to hear about so many creative things going on with all of you.  I think that there are so many talented people here in this community and it is really inspiring to a newbie like me to hear about all of your projects.  Well... except the housework part!  I am allergic to that. 

I have not really published anything anywhere for year now!  We moved last April - 2012.  We have 4 kids, 2 dogs, 1 fish and 2 bearded dragons so moving was a major event.  I got the kids settled into their new schools and daycare for the remainder of the school year and then started construction on an in-ground pool in June with me acting as the general contractor and hiring and managing all of the subcontractors.  What a pain in the @#$ but it was much cheaper doing it that way than hiring a turn-key contractor.  I goofed off the whole summer playing in the pool with the kids while publishing only a few articles here and there.  I started back to school at the end of August taking a few Anatomy /Physiology and Psychology classes while getting the kids back to school in September.  Those classes kept me very busy and required many hours of study.  I finished the Fall semester with all A's and I enrolled for Spring semester starting in January ready to honker down and learn more about the human body.  My goal was to get a degree in Nursing but that got cut short when my oldest son (13) got diagnosed with Bipolar in January of this year and I had to drop all of my classes to focus on him and his school work.  His grades have gone from A, B, and Cs to mostly F in all of his classes.  He had gone into a major depression, shut down and did not care about anything.  Now there are weekly counseling appointments for him and bi-weekly appointments with his doctors to find the right medications for him.  I am basically in 7th grade right now as I have to keep up with his daily assignments, talk to his teachers daily (7 of them), and work with him every night on getting it all completed and turned in so he can pull up those Fs and hopefully pass his grade.  I am also fighting his school system to get him the help he needs and has needed for a long time.  That requires a lot of research, emails to the school, and meetings with them monthly.  All the while having many things to do for the other 3 children and the husband.  That brings me up to now - March 2013.      

I have sooooo many ideas for zazzle stores, articles, blogs, etc. and write it all down in a notebook when things pop into my crazy mind.  I have pages and pages of topic ideas just from all of the things I have experienced over the past year.  Not to mention all of the great new beauty products I have tried and could review since that is something I enjoy doing.  I get so frustrated because it is all still written down in a notebook and not published somewhere. 

The good part is that it seems my son is getting back on track with school and life.  I am no longer in school and don't think I will go back anytime soon.  I really hope that I can start taking some of these ideas that I have written down and turning them into SOMETHING very soon.  

There I go again rambling on and on in the forum.  Sorry.  Jo will probably rephrase it to "what's going on with everyone EXCEPT Angel" the next time she posts!