The End of the Journey - Part One

I accept that my journey did not have a happy ending, nor did it just end. And, there certainly is a story, which is only now in its infantile stages of formation. What I do know is that I am in a refactory period when I must take inventory of my situation, and carefully create my next big thing using what I have.

This isn't nearly as dismal as it sounds, because I am infinitely resourceful. But, the operative word, modifying the act of new creation, is "carefully". My modus operandi has always been to act fast to turn disappointing situations around. I can honestly say that I have never been embedded in a mess so complex, so I cannot depend on experience now. Losing my possessions didn't simply cause deep feelings of sadness. That diverted me from my career path, which is a serious issue. The whole point of finishing college was connected with my plans for the things that are no longer mine. So, by habit, I acted [too] fast and created a bigger financial mess.

Just because my future plans cannot be focused on fashion art, doesn't mean I am completely lost. My less than informed action of altering my program evaluation for a lateral career move focused on writing created problems. My plan is a good plan for the long term, but it negatively impacted my financial aid right now. Interestingly, though, it's going to realistically take the same amount of time to completely clean up the mess the botched move made as it will to stabilize finances. I perceive that to be a positive sign. From experience I can trust, interesting coincidences involving timing, even in less than optimum situations, is usually an accurate precursor of better circumstances.

So, for now, I will make the best of what I have left from my entire life, and plan for a better, and entirely different, life ahead. Even though this refractory period seems impossibly long, there is much to jam-pack into it in the meantime. Follow this blog for frequent updates. To carve out more time, and for better communication purposes, how I use social media will likely change. And, for now, this blog is going to be the home of that story, which is already forming for the purpose to be told.

I Want This Journey To End So The Adventure Can Begin

It's true. I do believe I am entitled to a meltdown, and a meltdown might be the only thing that can soothe my soul now. It has been one week since all of my possessions in storage were auctioned. I had already resolved, in my own mind that my only option at this point would be to sell almost all of it any way. In fact, I was counting on those proceeds to help heal the financial mess I have been wallowing in for since February 2017 when I decided to bail out of a home that was killing me.

As always, though, things did not quite go as planned. Extra Space Storage on Fulton Street in Indianapolis failed to notify me of the impending sale, so I did not find out about the auction until two days after it happened. I did keep the facility aware of my contact information, but there had been numerous changes in management. I suspect that Manager #2 was to blame, since she struggled with other issues I had with my account. It never occurred to me to make sure the contact information had been recorded.

The loss of almost the entire contents of my studio doesn't bother me nearly as much as losing some personal items. There is no record of the major events from my life and no photographs or any items that brought me joy and helped me take better care of myself. The sadness is overwhelming, but I am crawling forward, because there is nothing I can do to correct the situation.

I had not planned on having to start completely over from absolutely nothing, but that's what has to happen now. I did already move some things months ago, and there are some projects I can finish when I can purchase replacements for lost supplies. There are also items that don't make much sense to keep by themselves, so I can sell them and not think twice about it now.

And, to add insult to injury, my advisor is hard at work trying to solve a financial aid glitch that is going to impact my survival if we can't do something creative now. I am so weary, but my As are still straight. I don't know how I keep showing up with that when my life is crumbling more and more daily. When my possessions were gone, I hoped that would be the end of this crazy journey, but, obviously it is not. My next steps are to continue on with my coursework as well as I can, and do what I can with my Etsy shops with what I have left.

Please help me navigate this rough spot. There is a "Donate" button in the right sidebar. Or, you can donate directly from PayPal to baisebeige@gmail.com. I will need help with roof-over-head and food-in-fridge issues a little longer as well as with supplies to be able to finish some things to sell in my shops. I truly thought the end of the awful journey would be different and not more of the same. But, it is what it is and I have to deal with it. I do think I deserve to have a meltdown, but it is impossible to even simply shed tears now. The only solace I have is immersing myself with the education and e-tail tasks at hand and hope things change in my favor very, very soon.

Coming Undone

My news is mixed. It's not all good, nor is it all bad. I am stuck in the process of coming undone and I need your help now more than ever.

I moved into a residential hotel in August because this sort of housing is the only thing that closely fits my needs. I had to prioritize mail security and accessibility but compromise on location. After a few small trips to storage, I made the the wrong decision of moving a lot at once.

This is what you can see of the messy situation in my hotel-home in October. This was also the last time I have been able to afford to go to storage. I also cannot technically afford to keep my things in storage, but I pay the bills the best that I can. Most of my supplies and tools, which are the things I need to make money, are still in storage, so the locker expense is costing me significantly more than the face value of the rent.

I am coming undone in both a figurative and literal sense. It is difficult for me to unfasten and unwrap my things by myself and the process is slow. Without having everything in the same place, it is not even possible to unpack everything and create order. Those things are undone, but they are the least of the problem. The coming undone of plans and accepting failure are by far the worst.

There was a plan that got off to a good start and I was able to open my shops as soon as I moved.
The surprising thing was all three shops started producing well right away, but, after the first month, sales ceased and there was nothing I could do to restore performance. Without the ability to regularly list new items, my search rank spiraled downward. I made the mistake of being aggressive and running ads on Etsy. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars later, nothing has improved.

Between storage costs and spending money to try to resolve the storage impact on my ability to do business, I am not able to take care of my basic needs to keep a roof over my head and eat everyday.

I need your help today so I can start over.

I need to go back to the beginning, pay the past due rent on my lockers, hire help for moving and unpacking, and retrieve everything from storage. The process is going to be a little bit slow, because I can do very little on my own at once. The move must be gradual, but it will get done. I absolutely cannot do what you see in the image above again. That was a detriment to my well-being and was probably worse to have done than not done at all.

My shops are a mess. The advertising to make up for the lack of new items to list created enormous shop bills. My textile shop has been suspended for almost one month now. My vintage supply shop and chicken sweater shop are teetering on suspension now again. I am hoping beyond hope that they can save themselves since the sale of just one item in each of them will be enough to turn the situation around.

The most urgent need, and I do mean today, is money to pay room rent and to buy groceries. Storage locker rent and shop bills have depleted my funds to take care of basic economic needs. This living situation should have been sustainable, and I am profoundly disappointed that I find it impossible to come close to doing that.

Somehow, my As are still straight and my advisor admires me for doing that. I don't tell him all of the details, but he has an understanding that my personal situation is nearly impossible to navigate. I don't know how I do it either. Whether or not it is even wise, I am still "all in" with every aspect of my life and have no desire to stop, no matter how awful the circumstances are.

Can you help? There is a donate button in the right side bar of this blog for donations via PayPal. You can also donate directly using my Paypal e-mail: baisebeige@gmail.com.

My Moving Experience ... Part III

I have tried everything to facilitate finding and moving into a new home, but after four months, it has become painfully obvious that I need to do something different.

Please donate to my moving fund. The links are at the end of this post.
Also, please share this post with your social networks, and by e-mail to altruistic friends and organizations.

I have freed most of the next three weeks by working ahead in my current course to help accomplish finding an acceptable place to live and work. There is no break between the end of this term and the beginning of the next one.

Part of the reason I am considerably more anxious now is because my 60th birthday is on June 28th. There's not one living person who would know that unless informed by a social network, but it just matters to me that my birthday isn't awful. And, I am more than mildly concerned that, after being on vacation for four months, it will be challenging to get my Etsy shops to rebound to the same level of performance.

I am sure, too, considering my less than optimum health, that it will take all of three weeks to find a place and slowly move into it. The weather is no longer in my favor.

I have been without transportation now for almost two weeks, but the search resumes tomorrow. Finding a first floor (or accessible) apartment with secure mail is more difficult than I thought, but I will be persistent and am willing to live in less than optimum conditions, if necessary.

The hotel and storage locker rent has almost completely consumed the entire two months of my typical living expenses, which is part of my financial aid package.

I need your help more than ever and right now right now.

Realistically, I need:

• Hotel rent until the end of June. My room rate has slightly been increased to $55 + tax. If you want to pay for nights directly to the hotel, the manager's name and number is below this post.
• Apartment application, deposit, prorated June, and July rent.
• Transportation
• Moving help that will help me move a few things several times per week, and help me unpack, clean items, and put them away. My previous landlord soaked my apartment and everything in it with insecticide, which made me sicker than I already was, and I want to clean things up before I live with them.
• Funds for bills and food.

Here's how you can help:

• Because of intermittent disbursements of money from my generosity fund, please donate directly into my PayPal account. My PayPal email is baisebeige@gmail.com.
• The hotel manager's name is Andy Mugosa and you can call him at (317) 352-0481.

My Moving Experience ... Part II

I am mostly writing this post to be able to release everything that's on my mind and try to relax while things are stable in the present moment. This is night #91 since being stranded in the hotel, and, while trying to remain calm, the anxiety is overwhelming. That magical situation of finding a place that is for rent, a landlord who will respond to inquiries about his ad, transportation to go to see the apartment, a landlord who will show up for the appointment, cash on hand to rent the apartment, and reliable moving help is the most elusive thing. Like. Ever. In the meantime, hotel and storage locker rent eats the cash resources and I have become perpetually stuck.

This is my vacation from school, and I had once again envisioned moving during this period of reduced responsibilities. Can it happen? I don't know. I am now working a little ahead with the homework for the class that starts Monday, because something disruptive can happen, and I want to be ready. I could run out of money and end up on the streets. But, I believe in miracles, especially since my entire moving experience has been a string of one miracle after another and I do believe, to the depths of my being, that my move can be in motion soon.

I have accomplished much since being "location inspecific". I was invited to join an honor society for nontraditional students called, Alpha Sigma Lambda. I aced my cognitive psychology and social media marketing strategy courses. I took these pictures of the insides of my storage lockers when I collected the merchandise and some shipping materials to be able to open my CockADoodleDuds shop on Etsy so I could enter it in a contest. I didn't win but I got a more than average amount of votes, and I am pleased. I sorely miss my Etsy shops and am eager to get all of them open again soon. Some vintage patterns and vintage fabric ended up at the hotel during my botched move, so I am able to prepare them for listing when I reopen. Some Etsy participation is better than none. I also finished knitting a blanket for my teeny camper cot which will be my bed for awhile. Everything you see in the photos above is what I have left from my whole life and I discarded most of my furniture.

I'm going to be very honest. I need immediate help.

My Facebook friend, Ali Shanti, helped me create a generosity fund. You can donate at this link:
https://igg.me/at/HD6XVIxECsU
The fundraiser will be live until my situation stabilizes.

Because the generosity fund disburses cash intermittently and I have pressing, immediate, everyday needs, donations can be made directly through PayPal. My PayPal e-mail is baisebeige@gmail.com.

If you live in Indianapolis, here is a description, in the form of a Facebook note. It describes what I am looking for in a new home. It is probably not the kind of place that would ever be advertised by any other way than a sign on the property. What have you seen? Please comment on this post and share your lead!
https://www.facebook.com/notes/laura-fisher/you-tell-me-where-is-this-place/1302779889771389/

Thank you so much for reading this post. You can also help by sharing it with your social networks, with groups and organizations, and with friends who are in a position to help. On the theme, of helping, just writing this update helps me clear my mind and relax a little. This has, beyond any doubt, been the most challenging situation I have ever faced. But. Still. I am optimistic that I will go home soon, and somehow, life will be even better than before this mess unfolded.

Marketing on Pinterest

I admit it. In the beginning, when I was a beta-tester on Pinterest, I completely "dropped the ball" and failed to see the marketing potential that site offered. Perhaps, I was too mesmerized by the abundance of all things wonderful presented in an endless visual array. Or, perhaps, I was already feeling overwhelmed by social media in my first year online to consider exploring the site further. Just more than one year ago, though, I returned to the site with fresh eyes and began to understand why Pinterest has become a key channel for businesses.

I became an enthusiastic Pinner again, because I realized the target markets for my Etsy business were active Pinterest users. That is a fundamental motivation for any business use of a social network (Charleston, 2016). My own mostly female, Millennial or older, and low middle to upper middle income demographic was well-represented on the site. Many more market segments are well-represented on Pinterest and it is worth the effort for marketers to explore. And, certain "fun facts" about Pinterest may surprise any marketer. For example, Millennials use Pinterest as much as Instagram. And, two-thirds of all pins represent brands and products. Every day 2 million people pin product-rich pins. Considering those pinned products, 87% of users have purchased a pinned product, 72% use Pinterest to make decisions about purchases, and 92% plan purchases using their pins (Aslam, 2017). In other words, consumers create beautiful boards that they use to guide their consumer behavior. Pinterest is a marketer's dream come true.

I used Pinterest as a personal account until I had more than 10,000 followers. For some reason, unknown even to myself, I thought that would help me understand what my followers liked best. Don't make the same mistake. Use Pinterest as a business account from the beginning. Pinning your own content will automatically create "rich pins" with eye-catching information about your product. But, more importantly than that, Pinterest Analytics for business accounts will help take all of the guesswork out of understanding your followers' interests. Insights, providing data on consumer preferences based on pinning behavior, combined with the demographic details about the audience can be used to guide business strategy to generate more engagement that is measured in impressions, clicks, and saves (Pinterest, 2017). Pinterest organizes information to help businesses make wise decisions and also provides tools to collect more data from content. In addition to organic engagement, well-performing pins can be promoted with paid ads to increase reach.

Unlike tweets, or most other social media posts, pins are forever. Users curate them on their boards and they are discovered and repinned by other users, which keeps content in perpetual circulation. The main job for the marketer becomes creating irresistible pins with content targeted precisely using information from Pinterest Analytics. I may have returned to Pinterest with fresh eyes, but those eyes are now wide open. Within that beautiful array of all things wonderful lies unique opportunities for business and all of the tools to achieve success on Pinterest.

References

Aslam, S. (2017). Pinterest by the numbers: stats,demographicsand fun facts. omnicoreagency.com. 

     Retrieved from https://www.omnicoreagency.com/pinterest-statistics/

Charleston, L.-J. (2016). How much social media is too much for your business? Huffington Post

     [AU edition]. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/04/28/how-much-

     social-media-is-too-much-for-your-business/

Pinterest (2017). Pinterest analytics. pinterest.com. Retrieved from
     https://business.pinterest.com/en/pinterest-analytics

Marketing on Twitter

I describe my own experience with marketing on Twitter as a blend of failing forward and learning by doing. I believed Twitter was an ideal platform for shamelessly self-promoting my own content, but in my early days online I had very little content of my own. I did the next best thing. I published sponsored tweets for an online ad agency. I could write the tweet content, and the tweets were automatically posted during times of high engagement. As pennies per click added up to hundreds of dollars, I learned valuable lessons about when to post and the best formats for tweets. Times have changed and Twitter's own sponsored tweet program has driven the agencies from the network. In fact, the appearance of the network is different. Instead of being a stream of text messages, timelines have become visual and tweets with images or video are most effective at capturing attention. I have learned to observe what others do to get ideas for my own projects.

Because big brands have marketing strategies that are not very relevant to small businesses, I have a tendency to visit their profiles, instead of following them, to look for information and promotions. Any business's well-managed social media profile is a place for sharing and discussing content (Ryan & Jones, 2009). However, the small businesses and organizations in my own timeline are a source of ideas and tactics I can model. It is especially beneficial for me to see their tweets in real time and in the context of online chatter. The most eye-catching tweets have "pictures worth 1000 words" and are crafted to complement the text of the tweet. I observe social listening practices to see how small brands engage users and see how hashtags are used for market targeting. Once again, I find myself failing forward and learning by doing as I promote my chicken sweater shop for an Etsy contest. With just one day into the project and just one brand image to promote, I am discovering that the more Twitter changes, the more it stays the same. It's going to take considerable work and patience to determine an actionable strategy to fit my purposes, but my belief that Twitter is a formidable marketing platform is still unwavering.

Reference

Ryan, D., & Jones, C. (2009). Understanding digital marketing: Marketing strategies for engaging    

     the digital generation. [Books24x7 version] Retrieved from

     http://common.books24x7.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/toc.aspx?bookid=31037