Monday, December 13, 2010

Conditions

The past few days have had their highs and lows. Some of the highlights have been from working with Jack. I love him so much, and fort building has become a daily activity for us now. Last week, I built him a tiny fort and he asked me to join him for a picnic inside of it. I crawled in and told him I felt like Alice in Wonderland when she eats the cake that makes her grow in the rabbit's house. He asked me "You mean like the mushroom she eats that makes her grow reeeally really tall?" and I said yes. So now he refers to his fort as his Mush Room. I drew him a picture of his Mush Room last week, but he wanted me to draw another one today. So I did and we collaborated on the coloring job. So very fun.
Jack Jack's Mush Room

Jack Jack (he helped me color)
Another highlight would be that I sold two scarves yesterday to my friend's mom and she said she'll probably buy more for Christmas presents! My scarves aren't the fastest thing to make, but I thoroughly enjoy making them. I can crank out two scarves in one afternoon while watching a baking show on TLC or Dexter on Netflix. It's what I love to do, so why not solicit what I'm good at (not to mention in love with)?

 I read an article this afternoon about young entrepreneurs that was posted on Yahoo!. It was really interesting to read precisely what I've been theorizing as to why it's easier nowadays to start an at-home (or online) business than it is to get a job for people with a college education. The obvious first influence is the economy. It sucks. So competition is fierce in the job market, and turn-over is lower than it's ever been. But now you have to figure in the experience your fellow competitors have (The Baby Boomers) in your work field. This also happens to be the age of information, so a Bachelor's degree doesn't mean what it did twenty years ago. It's not that college got easier, it's that our resources have expended exponentially from the Dewey Decimal System and card catalogs in your public library to Google, Wikipedia, .org and .edu websites. I feel old when I think about the fact that I did the majority of my reports growing up in school using the World Encyclopedia set that my mom purchased when she started homeschooling us kids.
You can learn almost anything you want to now just by getting online. There's e-courses in everything from blogging to healthy relationships, cooking to financial investment. There's a Youtube tutorial video for absolutely everything. You can earn a Bachelors degree online, for goodness' sake! If you have the internet, a credit card, and ambition, you're on your way to learning about and doing exactly what it is you want to do with the rest of your life. 
This is the point I am at. I have the internet and some college education, plenty of ambition, time on my hands, and a little bit of money to lay down as an investment. It honestly does not feel like a real job though. I wish I could set normal business hours for myself, but I don't know how I would do that. I'm creative at all hours of the day, so the flexibility I have of doing this at home all the time is phenomenal. It gives me the opportunity to make sure my product is up to my standard of excellence. I'm not going to put my name on something that looks like crap or is poorly constructed. If I was buying something handmade from someone, I would expect near-perfection.


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