Weekly update. . .weird week

This will be short. . . I didn't accomplish squat this week. 😅

Well not in a business sense, I spent Monday driving to and from the dentist and getting my teeth cleaned. The rest of the week I made some progress on resetting for photos, but I still need to iron the new backdrop before I start shooting photos again. 

I am almost finished re-stocking the house colors bracelet bar. 

So, I guess that's almost something. 😅 Twice I have sat down intending to finish this bracelet but both times I have been disrupted and distracted by cat neediness. Merlin is super cute but he's also a needy lil' momma's boy somedays, he jumps on my bench kicks the rings around and then crawls up on my shoulder, so I have to hold him instead of working. 😏  

Weekly update . . .I hate photography

It should surprise no one that I do not like photograph. Ok, let me re-phrase that, I appreciate good/great photography and recognize it as a skill/talent. . . I just don't have. 😒 I took a photography class way back in high school, ya' know old school film developing, print making, lab work, it was cool, but I was not good at it. I had fun but most of my photos sucked, like 1 in a 100 would be ok. 

So maybe I should find it comforting that nothing has changed. 😐 ~Newsflash~ I do not, I find it incredibly frustrating, I keep trying, better camera, hands not steady get a tripod, better lighting, adjust the settings, adjust the lighting, just keep trying. Now I am living in yet another "new" house with limited windows, weird lights, and to my horror . . . colored walls in every room. 

I have been trying all week to photograph the art. I have tried different sides of the room, shifting the lighting, draping the easel trying to get more white in the picture to balance out the blue-ness of the walls.

I am not really happy with any of the hundreds of shots over days of trying. The cloudy raining days the colors look off, other days the angles were off, and the varnish just reflects the lights and everything is fuzzy. 😣  

Yes, fuzzy as in my camera refuses to focus, a feeling we share. 😅 Now none of this failure or frustration changes the fact that I have a ton of canvases to photograph and list. Nothing changes the fact that I have to have photos to list them for sale on the website, so I have no choice but to keep trying different things until something works. Current thinking is I need to hang a large drop cloth/backdrop so I'm not shooting against the blue but it's a rental house, so I don't want to make a bunch of big holes in the walls. Also, the small side table I'm using isn't big enough, I want to set up the easel next a vase or something, ya' know, set a scene but there's not enough room. 

So, this week has been kind of a bust and I feel like I didn't really accomplish anything, except learning that getting good photos in this house is going to be harder than I thought. 😏

Weekly update. . .I give up

I've been feeling it for a while, growing depression over "social" media or the lack of social-ness in mine at least. Meta sucks, that is a fact. The ever-changing algorithms and rules just suck, I worked for years to build "followers", but they never get shown my posts so what the F was the point?!!?  Seriously, from the facebook page, instagram, threads, pinterest, this blog even, what is the point of any of it if no one sees it, reads, interacts with any of it?

Years ago the multiple accounts in RainbowMaille's name seemed like a good thing (I thought) because it made the search of my business name a full page of google results, and being easy to find was supposed to be important. 😐  However, these days it doesn't seem to make any difference what I do, how often I post, or even what I post. The fb page is a "business" page so I tried to keep in business-y but no one interacts with it much. The instagram was supposed to humanize me as an artist, so show multiple facets of my life, but again not a lot of interaction. Threads is new and stupid and I still don't get the point of it so I don't use it much, but I've tried and yeah little to no views or interactions. Pinterest gets the most traffic and views but still doesn't generate sales, likely just people looking for ideas they can make themselves. 😏 So yeah really what the heck is the point of any of it?

I posted this adorable photo of my tiny kitty taking up the whole couch and made a joke in the caption and fb showed it to 18 whole people none of which even liked the photo 😕I mean how can anyone not like a cat photo?!?! 

Seriously the last thing I posted on threads was a link to the last blog post and even though I have 99 "followers" it was only seen by 6 people 😞 it got 1 like and that was my childhood BFF. 

So really what is the point? What am I doing wrong? Why is life a freaking popularity contest? And how is the awkward, social anxiety riddled high-school loaner supposed to get anywhere in this hellscape of "social media"?!?!  Well according to facebook I just have to pay, boost every post is their "Tip" and at ridiculous rates. The most recent suggestion about the previous post suggestions for only $140 they will show it to almost as many people as I have followers, yeah, I do not believe their promised numbers because time after time they have lied and failed. 

also since when does one have to "boost" a cat photo, facebook was built on people sharing pet photos 😕😞

I started trying to look for some local craft events, because in-person sales are often better than online, but you still have to use things like facebook to find local events. And in typical social media everyone lies fashion, the first event I found that sounded like it might be good for me was lying about its' location. 😠 Naming an event "Indianapolis" anything when the actual event is in Kokomo an hour away from Indy is a blatant LIE to me. WTF?  Like who does that? It is a gross misrepresentation, literally false advertising (it was a sponsored fb post) and there are people in the comments trying to justify the lie. 

 

For those that aren't familiar with the area

Kokomo is NOT Indy, when I look for local events, I want actual LOCAL events not stuff that is an hour or more drive. When I commented on the post that it was false advertising and their lying about the location will prevent me from considering vending with them instead of addressing my comment, they just deleted it.  

So, someone tell me again how great facebook is and how important to everyday life and business this pile of lies is, because I'm not buying it, literally I do not believe it and I'm not paying for it. 😐 

Now you just watch because of the clickbait-y nature of the title this will get more attention than anything else I posted this year. 😒 Which will just prove and support my point that the entire "social media" concept is about psychology and manipulation and the dishonesty at the core is what I really have a problem with.