Slight Case of Flounder

I am in the sort of mental state where that post title makes me imagine turning partway into a weird sideways fish, and I can't determine whether that mental image is hilarious or sad. 

I think I'm going to go with hilarious.

Anyways, right now the part of my brain that chooses which of many tasks I need to work on has ground to a halt, as it often does.  As usual, this is mainly due to an excess of choice and uncertainty regarding what to prioritize...  I get so conflicted about which task I should be focusing on that I become very easily distracted and often wind up aimlessly caroming around the internet (latest landing point: Ze Frank videos).

The latest round of indecision goes a little like this (in list form, because expressing my conflict and confusion in a stream-of-consciousness-type manner worked a little TOO well, and you would have had no clue what was happening around you after reading it): 

• We're leaving for GenCon in two weeks, I should get stuff squared away for that... but I'm not sure what I'll need to bring other than the usual H.A.T.E. gear, and that'll only take like a day to get together (including wash & iron time).  Maybe I should wait until after the pre-con meeting on Sunday, then I'll know what I'll need?
• So I should actually prep for the next Deeplight, because it's only a few days after GenCon, and I won't be able to get anything done in the time between the two.  There's a bunch of relatively easy new inventory items I want to crank out before the event, and I could really use a proper sign rather than a sheet of parchment paper...
• But wait!  I have a couple commissions that I've been sitting on for months because I won't be able to deliver them until the Old World event in September, and I'll be ridden with guilt if I sew other things before I finish them...
• But I really should paint the fiancee's LightStrike gear before GenCon, which takes a while, and what if it turns out I'll need to pack or build a bunch of other stuff I didn't even think of until the meeting?

Did you notice how item #4 was pretty much a different version of item #1?  Yeah, you see where this is going:  Absolutely nowhere.  Theme and variation in a Moebius strip of project-related anxiety that mostly just leaves me playing games on my phone while I try to reach a decision.  And this isn't even touching the around-the-house stuff I should also be doing...

I think I'm going to spend what remains of the afternoon unpacking & squaring away the last of the debris from the Elmholm premiere (which was great, by the way - no sales, but some good conversations, and I actually got to get out of the booth and play quite a bit, so I had a fabulous time), before something tries to mildew...  Hopefully with a couple household tasks out of the way, I'll be able to get some clarifty on the big projects.

P.S.:  Entirely different note:  This is the first post with an Amazon Associates link and/or since I set up my AdSense account (although the AdSense ads might not show up yet, since I'm still in the confirmation stage).  Any feedback?  It's not too busy or give-me-money-ish, is it?

Fly-by Update

Oof!  So much for posting at least once a week... I'll get the swing of this eventually.

Freefall was excellent.  Have some pictures!  Everything went down smoothly and with minimal drama (well, out of game, at least ;) ), so I think we may have even convinced the event organizer to keep it going for yet another year.

The fiancee is using up his vacation time, so last week and this week are like a giant weekend... which means a lot of much-procrastinated-about home improvement projects are finally done or underway, but I've managed to do next to no prep for the Elmholm premiere or GenCon...  Panic may be required sometime soon.  But in the mean time, it means I ended up skipping the Last Hope event in favor of a quiet weekend looking at butterflies, at least in part because I wanted to avoid the dreaded "pack for one event while simultaneously unpacking from another."  Also because butterflies are awesome.

It came to my attention this morning that my all my Etsy listings had expired without me notice... I've renewed the listings, so everything's back up online and it's all fine, but clearly I need to either pay closer attention or rejigger my notification settings or something...  (Related note: I'd love some feedback regarding product pricing - I may post a poll in the near future.  I'm pretty sure my prices are fair, but they are on the expensive side, especially for a new shop, so I'm wondering if my generic inventory needs to be knocked back a touch.  Thoughts?)

I'm in the process of signing up for AdSense right now (the page is open in another tab).  If I can't get ads for things I actually support/use myself (I'm hoping for LARP weapons or other such complementary goods), then I won't bother keeping them on the blog, but hopefully I'll be able to generate a little trickle of supplementary income this way.  I'm going to be doing a couple other things to create a revenue stream soon (as I threatened to do a few posts ago), pretty much all of which are cribbed from ByRegina's list "10 Non-Icky Ways to Make Money Blogging" (her blog is full of excellent advice for self-employed types, mainly focused on blogging, but there's a lot of helpful general scheduling/organizing type stuff, too).

I promise to make a better post, with topic transitions and everything, sometime soon.  Until then!

Such events. So prep. Many busy.

Well, it's that time of year again.  The time when nearly every weekend has a Thing happening on it, and the few that don't are reserved for sleeping.  Don't any of you dare invite me to a Thing on this, the first weekend of July, because that is my last and most vital weekend on which to prepare for the onslaught.  And boy, howdy, do I need to prepare for this summer's events...

First up is this year's Freefall Game on July 12th-13th.  Freefall is an amazing Firefly/Serenity themed airsoft LARP hybrid run by the guy who taught me how to LARP in the first place.  This is its 8th year, so while it still definitely fits in the 'verse and flavor of everybody's favorite prematurely cancelled space western, it's also definitely taken on a life of its own and then some.  I've been playing (and occasionally helping brainstorm for) this game since year one, it's my favorite annual event, and most of my favorite gaming friends and event designers (and my fiancee) are people I've met at this game over the years.  I'm doing a lot less prep for this year's game than I have in the past, but for me, "less prep" just means "we already have everything we need to set up our 3-room compound with RFID-controlled locking doors, so all we have to do is load it in the truck."  I also moderate the game's official message board, which has been super quiet and needs more people to post on it.

Then on July 19th there's a Last Hope non-combat game in Mauston, WI...  I really hope to make it to this thing, because the last time I made it to an event was in February (and before that, October), and I'm starting to feel like a poser.  But it will really depend on how strapped for prep time I feel, because...

...Elmholm Colony of LarpCraft is having its premiere event on the 26th, and I've agreed to vend at said event.  I was a little hesitant when first considering it, because of how soon this event is coming up (and how many other things I'm trying to do at the same time), so I don't know that I'll have much more to offer than I did at the Deeplight premiere, but I'm starting to get really excited about it.  I feel like I actually have some idea what I'm doing this time around, so even if I only have time to add a few little things to my inventory (I'm thinking that slipcovers to disguise 3-ring binders and notebooks would go over really well) and improve my signage, it will still be great to go in and set up with just those couple tweaks made and see what happens.

Brief respite... a whole two consecutive weekends of not hauling costumes and props with us.  Not totally empty weekends, mind, one of them has a wedding in it, but it's local, so it doesn't really cut into my prep time for...

*dun dun dun*

GENCON.  Hoo boy.  As I mentioned last entry, I'm going to be helping run the Here At The End demo event, "One Man's Trash," at GenCon Indy this year.  Strictly speaking, my fiancee and I are there as trusted warm bodies, and Extreme Event Prep is mostly optional and self-imposed, but dammit, I want this to go spectacularly well.  So a lot of back-burner projects for H.A.T.E. are getting moved right up to the front in an effort to make everything look as cool as possible.  And, since I'm going to be in a (admittedly rather small) spotlight whilst wearing garb I've made, it would be severely foolish of me NOT to bring a large stack of business cards... which means I need to put on my graphic design hat for newer, more detailed business cards (my current ones just have my email and portfolio site addresses on them), and then my web design hat to make sure all of my various websites are properly updated before the (hopeful) traffic increase.  Which doesn't sound like a lot, but there are a bunch of little fiddly bits to each task that can make it all hugely time-consuming.

And then, Deeplight is having its second event, a whole three days after we get home from the con.  So all the stuff I'll be scrambling around getting ready for GenCon?  That's all going to be happening during so-called "breaks" from building inventory and assimilating any shop-running lessons I learn at Elmholm.

I'm pretty sure that September is rather busy, too, but two months is as far in the future as I care to do any detailed planning...  I also have two commissioned gambesons in progress with nebulous deadlines somewhere in the middle of all this, and I'm halfway through replacing the shelves in my fabric closet (rendering my sewing room slightly unusable for the time being due to the sea of fabric adorning every surface).  Challenge: accepted.  Wish me luck!