After a site implosion last month, I’ve been busy rebuilding the old sites and building a new one. or two O.o (I did manage to salvage this site, thankfully.)

Then life interruptions that seemed to keep popping up rendered my stores orphans, so I’ve been trying to get caught up with that, too.

Right now I have about 20 minutes for a breather; thought I’d post something, anything, just to get back into the motion. So humor me while I think out loud here for a bit ;-)

Since my artistic side joyfully (thankfully!) returned to it’s position of dominance, it’s been really hard to concentrate on anything else. But… that hasn’t been helping any with getting rid of all the piles and boxes of vintage and newer collectibles and books and stuff.

We won’t even talk about the boxes and bags of books that well-meaning friends have sent my way… Oh, not complaining! Love books! Would love them even more if my obsessive side didn’t insist on reading them all before offering them up to customers :/

Anyway, it’s really beyond time to clean up this mess and get it outta my way. So have been trying to work my way through the piles and widen the paths that wind through the house. It’s a slow process: Research, clean, photo/scan, measure, weigh, calculate shipping, write description, list. Not too bad once a rhythm is established, but still time-consuming. Also a bit disturbing when I yearn to be at the workbench or sewing machine instead…

So Incredible Clutter inventory has been getting the majority of attention – some stuff listed, about 100 books ready to go, a kitchen table full of great junque waiting for photos.

Also been getting quilting magazines and books and some craft kits ready to go, with some quilting stuff listed now at CraftCottage.

Etsy shops have unfortunately been put into neglect mode until I get caught up a bit.

A new site almost ready to launch: Lizurdz-N-Lace.com & LizurdzNLace.com (Ya, I know that’s two, but they’re going to be all hooked up together.)

Lizurdz-N-Lace is my photography line. With about a bazillion photos (some that are actually good… heh), I figured it was time to do something with ‘em.

So Lizurdz-N-Lace is the main site with galleries and stuff, perhaps a shopping section though I do have an Etsy shop for that, too. LizurdzNLace is tips & tricks for photos and Photoshop, and images I’m releasing to the public domain (yeah! lots of em!). It’s going to be tons o’ fun!

dancingspirit.us has been put on the back burner for a bit. It’s more of a personal site, and must get business going again before rebuilding this site.

incredibleclutter.com has never been a real site, but is in the works. If I could quit arguing with myself about how I want it to look, it’d be up and running last year…

Working on dancethemoon.us and dancethemoon eCrater store for spiritual and metaphysical books, tools and accessories. The store is ready to launch, hopefully that happens this weekend. Site will take a bit longer.

Then our local water co-op, of which I’m an active member, has approved a token pay for running the site I had up for them. It was one of the imploded, have been getting that rebuilt and ready to launch.

*WHEW* No rest for the wicked!

I’m flattered some people like my photos enough to put them on their blogs. I don’t mind that a bit. What I do mind is when people not only use my photos, but they also use my bandwidth in the process.

I know there are people who aren’t aware that they’re doing anything wrong by doing this, so here it is:

Directly linking to images on another site is known as “hotlinking”, which is considered by many as stealing. You are using someone else’s bandwidth that they’re paying for. (This of course doesn’t apply to photo hosting sites…)

In case you’ve come here trying to figure out what happened to the photo you had hotlinked, I’ve enabled hotlink protection.

Want to use a photo? You can ask, I don’t bite. Matter of fact, if I know the photo’s out there, I most likely will link to your site or blog or at least give it mention, unless it’s a spammer site or something like that, in which case I don’t want the association but thanks anyway.

All I ask is, just give me credit: photo by CRSpeed (or something to that effect), or visibly link back to my blog or the post it came from.

Thanks.

So a couple family members have added me as a friend. Thanks, family members :-p Now I have to make an effort… hah!

Dishes are soaking in the sink, now’s a good time to dig in and learn more about using Facebook. Oh boy. Google search brings up 461,000,000 results on “how to use facebook”. Here we go. weeeeeeeeee!

My first stop was HubSpot. Downloaded the free ebook. This one is about marketing, so will save that for later. Right now, just want to know the basics. HubSpot looks like an interesting site, bookmarked.

Next stop was How to Use Facebook’s Homepage. Followed the link about Facebook codes, which I guess is about customizing. Bookmarked. One needs Greasemonkey, a Firefox add-on, which I haven’t gotten around to installing yet. Guess it’s time… Can use that on Etsy also, should’ve had this add-on a long time ago. I see it can be used with Flickr, too, which is another one I’ve been dragging my feet on… Okay, it’s installed.

Next stop: How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Blog on ProBlogger. Bookmarked. Another interesting site.

Now these sites look great, but I want to learn about personal use (except for the customizing stuff) before I go using it for marketing. Moving on, I find How to Use Facebook on Mahalo. Wow. This site looks great, and this article is just what I’m looking for: Step-by-step on how to use Facebook. Just like the title says. YAY! They also have articles on using Twitter (*shudder* – I know I should jump in, but… ewww), Digg, YouTube, MySpace…

Dishes are calling (okay, screaming…), but now I have a starting place. Bookmarked the Google search, just for good measure. Look out Facebook, here I come! hah!

One would think that if a person doesn’t have a “real” job, it would be plenty easy enough to get things done. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, if I had a “real” job, I wouldn’t have time to eat or sleep.

Ecommerce is my Real Job. Living in the middle of nowhere (75 miles from the nearest Walmart = middle of nowhere) doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity. I love ecommerce, and am very thankful for its existence even though it’s often misunderstood by the “real” people with “real” jobs in the “real” world.

So yeah, I’m self-employed. That alone is a job. Trying to ride herd over my independent nature is no easy task. Add a bit of obsessive behavior and AADD (adult attention deficit disorder), and it becomes a heroic challenge. Instilling order among the disorders is not for the easily-defeated.

Time management plays a HUGE part in my life. Can’t live without it, can’t live with it. It’s an ongoing battle to keep any sort of schedule that isn’t set in 5-minute increments. Those who are familiar with AADD know what I’m talking about. If you’re not familiar with it, check out that link to Wikipedia’s explanation. Here’s another site I just found, looks very interesting: Born to Explore

Fire ant busy at work. Do ants sleep?

So anyway, breaking a workday into segments doesn’t work. I’ve searched for an answer for years now, trying many ideas that just didn’t help. Then I found biphasic sleep and it’s pretty much turned my life around. That link is just for one of many sites that have information about this type of sleep. A quick Google search will bring up a lot of info.

So what is “biphasic sleep”??? Well, you could call it “taking a nap”. It’s exactly what the name implies: two sleep phases. Most people use one sleep phase, or polyphasic sleep – they have one sleep session in a 24-hour period. The biggie about biphasic is that you go with the flow of your body’s natural sleep cycles. These are 90-minute cycles that include REM sleep, which is the deep sleep that we need to re-energize. By going with the natural cycle, you don’t force yourself to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle. When you wake up, you really wake up, as in refreshed, energized and ready for the day (or night). And you don’t need an alarm clock!

Lizard, ready to take a nap.

So instead of breaking the workday into segments, the day breaks up into two days in one 24-hour period:
-7 or 8:00 AM – get up, putz around the house, maybe work a little. This “first day” is mainly for housework or personal stuff, with some time set aside for making things and photos. I do try to get one thing listed in each store every morning, but all the work has been done at night.
-2 or 3:00 PM – go to bed, sleep for either 1 1/2 or 3 hours, depending on how physical the morning was.
-Sometime around 4 – 6:00 PM I’m up for the workday: photo editing, writing descriptions, researching vintage stuff, listing in the stores, etc. This “second day” is mainly for work and making things, though sometimes dishes or something get done or office area gets cleaned or whatever.
-2 or 3:00 AM – go to bed, sleep for 3 to 6 hours.

And yes, there’s still a time management factor, but it’s in bigger chunks, and even in days (laundry, photo sessions, etc. have their own day(s)).
This is like a whole different way of life, and has made an amazing change in quality of life.

Hard to do anything on cool, rainy days. Just way too tempting to stay in bed with a good book, especially when there’s furry critters to snuggle up with.

Well, okay, I take it back. I did download a bunch of calendar templates for Excel. Seem to have a problem remembering what day it is, heh.

Some friends get together on Friday mornings. We started out as a quilt group, but don’t always get much quilting done. Our current (and one and only) quilt has been in the works for about a year now. One day we’ll get the top finished – shouldn’t take but a couple more years, since it’s only a lap quilt…

Anyway, once again I have misplaced Friday. Mr.B called and woke me up about 11:00, then came over to look up some stuff on the internet. Didn’t realize it was Friday until about noon, when I checked the email.

So now I have all these cool templates, even printed out a 2009 calendar (lost the site, or I’d link to that one… sorry). We’ll see how it goes.

Did also find a nice calendar to embed in blogs – has holiday notations – so, if I can get myself to doing this blog thing on a regular basis, it’ll be in my face every day. yippee.

vertex42 is a cool site. Lots of Excel templates. If you’re not already familar with it, check it out.

Stuffs to do. Laters…