If you have your own business in a creative field you will get what I am about to ponder...if not...just smile and nod as you read. As I have come to learn in the last few years as a sole proprietor artist, creating is a small part of creative businesses. The marketing, advertising, bookkeeping, organizing, shipping, sales, accounting, planning, packaging etc takes up sooooo much more time then you would ever have imagined. Now mind you, I began Manic Trout because there was no way I could go a day without creating, so I do still make things a good amount of my time...but the strange situation that I often find myself in goes along the lines of allowing myself to sit down and be creative for hours at a time only when I am done with all the stuff I have to do. The creative aspect of my art career has become my reward for doing the other 90% of my job.

I strongly believe that if I sold a greater amount of my work this could change a bit and I could create more often, as right now I have enough inventory to keep up with sales. One day I may even be able to quit my "day" job and create even more often...but right now I do a great deal of the other stuff more then I get to make anything!

Ironically, the more I have to do, the more I have a creative streak burning to be released...sometimes I can rearrange my schedule and fit it all in, but there are times that the to-do's have deadlines that I have not set and there for I once again have to stifle my urges. Although I will admit that I get more done on all other projects when I procrastinate, as long as I reach my deadlines its all ok, but sometimes I wonder why I am stretching canvases when I need to work on bottle caps...

I like to record my life in a variety of mediums; I am also an image junkie. The result is a multitude of sketchbooks and journals that have been created over the years, noting the events and inspiration of my life. A good deal of these are private, but many, many pages are filled with inspirations and are thumbed through again and again when I need ideas. Of coarse in the past year....when I have had to devote 40+ hours a week to working away from my studio, I have gotten behind...the images of slowed down and need to be caught up on. I am trying to do this right now and have been going through my current working books getting ready to finally update them. I have my ever present sketchbook, that honestly has few sketches, but more of an image catch all and a keeper of lists...with musings thrown in for good measure, I have a big book collecting all the images and notes from the 4 bulletin boards I keep in constant rotation on my studio walls, and I have my jewelry books...one for images and one to draw out my ideas in.

I thought as a way to get myself all inspired to catch up and get back on track, I would share a few pages. Excerpts are from last years sketch book and my current jewelry inspiration book.

Is it a mere coincidence that the holidays in the cold months are pretty much just a reason to sell mass amounts of candy...and that the last holiday also brings the warm weather and with it the inclination to show some skin and a slice of (hopefully) flat stomachs. Easter is now behind me...I have a stomachache from the jumbo bag of jellybeans I finally finished and I am done for the season! I am running regularly to train for the half marathon...going well thank you, I am lifting the weights, walking Faye often and even doing Yoga twice a week. Yet I continue to feast on sugary goodness and taint all the hard work that I have been doing. Is there even a point of eating so well if I just eat a bag of candy at midnight?

I want the warm weather, flowers and energy of spring to get here already! Faye does too..I may dwell on this for a while; it’s not supposed to reach warmer then 45 degrees all week...

I have been confronted with the subject of success a great deal recently and this has led me to wonder a bit about how I define success to begin with. A few times over the past few years I have revisited these thoughts and I do realize that perhaps what I define success as will be ever changing, but at the moment I am unsure of how I feel right now. Is it a measure of my dreams coming true, or of reaching a certain monetary level, or a passing of multiple milestones in life that I want to pass... Do I consider myself already successful at some aspects and failures at others, or is it a more straight forward then that. I do know that I feel success can be fleeting...it can go away once achieved just as fast as it came. Will I never feel successful because it creeps up you when you least expect it....like the 5lbs gained over the winter that goes unnoticed until you try on a bathing suit...Will I ever feel as though I have success because I will always be reaching higher and moving onto the next definition while my previous one is conquered? How do I stop the nagging in my head that I must work harder, better and longer then the day before if I have no idea what I am trying to accomplish...ahhhhh...tomorrow is another day....

It was warm here in the northeast for about 5 minutes, and in that 5 minutes I was very inspired...I went on a creating craze the other day and conjured up 5 new necklaces! Check out the newest additions to The Paris in The Springtime line...there's something for everyone...a combination of vintage lucite, sparly glass, fuzzy yarn and all in big and bright colors! My personal favorit is the Bijou...

Which I did not even realize until the next day that it mimics the painting I am in the misdt of...very interesting...