Hooky

I'm playing hooky today. I didn't plan to; I signed onto the Internet with every intention of getting work done. But after a couple of hours of catching up on my "fun" blog reads and watching Muppet videos on Youtube, I realized how much I really need a day to be totally unproductive and just rest. A random day off in the middle of the week that doesn't involve burying pets or going to funeral homes or taking care of the estates of deceased loved ones.

I think when you wake up in the morning already crying, it's okay to take the day off.

It might seem like an easy decision, but it's not. Business has been slow and we're teetering on the brink of financial destitution, so I've been working overtime to generate some income. I set up a new Etsy store for graphic & web design, which still needs more stock added to it, and launched a monthly graphics subscription club. But so far, nobody's buying. I've been working my butt off to generate client leads, and I keep getting bites, but I'm not closing any sales. I even took an online class on ethical salesmanship that guaranteed increased sales, but it hasn't made a lick of difference. So it's pretty frustrating, and certainly isn't helping my stress-levels.

Cue the well-intentioned and not-at-all-judgy e-mails telling me that I should go get a job at Walmart or McDonald's because my business is clearly a failure. I love those e-mails.

Anyway. I have one more product that I want to hurry and get on the market before I go back to writing full-time for Demand Studios until things pick up. I got pretty burned out on DS last year, but at least it's a paycheck. But before that starts taking up all of my time and energy, I want to put together an online course on blogging for businesses. There are plenty of courses out there on how to blog AS a business, but I haven't seen any targeted at businesses that want to add a blog to their web sites to improve SEO, generate leads, build credibility and trust, etc. So I'm developing that, and hopefully I'll be able to develop an audience for it (if you think you might be the audience for it, you can sign up here to be notified when it's ready to launch).

I'm also thinking about putting together a chapbook of my short stories and Ficlets to sell. And possibly re-editing and re-packaging This Old Haunt and going whole-hog with the self-publishing instead of just throwing it up on Scribd. But I probably need to get a few DS articles under my belt before I can make time for that.

But today, I'm going to put my feet up and watch TV and videos and maybe get some exercise and practice my bass and read something for pleasure. Work and money woes and packing away Bobo's things and cleaning the carpet stains in my office can all wait for tomorrow.