The Beginning of Something Great

So it’s been awhile since you heard from me, I know, I left you with SZA and disappeared again. (In case you missed my last blog post: https://goo.gl/xdrCVJ) I’m sorry. I am working on being more consistent, which is a challenge for me. Nonetheless we are here today and I have great news. This year has been rough for me, between the stress of family relationships, suffering friendships, an unsatisfying love life, wavering health and coming to terms with past trauma, it’s been a turbulent year. I had to face my demons, cut off family who I was really close with and I discovered that someone I truly loved was not who I thought they were, I was devastated.

Although life dealt me some blows this year, I also met someone who gave me back some of the confidence I had lost from a previously devastating relationship. I went on a cruise to Nassau, Bahamas to St. Thomas and St. Kitts on the largest cruise ship in the world, I had the time of my life and sang horribly for several nights at karaoke. In St. Kitts, I let two vervet monkeys sit on my head and my hand, one of whom had on a tutu and a cross. You can imagine my amusement. I went to Vermont and hiked a trail all the way through for the first time ever. I sat on the mountain, prayed, meditated, and journaled about how it was going to get better, about how I was going to get through my pain. There was still beauty in my struggle.

The struggle that I couldn’t find so beautiful however, was my finances. I am a college graduate, unemployed, but freelancing my life away, in debt with school loans up to the third floor ceiling and feeling so overwhelmed by my ability to tackle it all. Now, I know I am not the only one, but I can’t afford to think about that, literally, I want to know how I am going to manage this seemingly immense responsibility. Most jobs hiring are not in my field or interest, should I get hired just to be miserable and quit again? Should I stick it out and try to make it work? Honestly, I have done both and only found myself more depressed and miserable with my life as a result. But then it came, one of those epic days you spend with your best friend and you feel inspired, you feel like things are really going to change, but how? I am sure most of us, if not all of us have had this day, but what did you do to see this positive source of energy through? Did you ride it out or let it die? Most of us let it die.

But October 10th was a new day, this day had a challenge. My best friend challenged us to set a financial goal to accomplish within seven days by any means necessary, meaning whatever way I discover I can acquire my goal, use it and see it through. Now, at first I thought here she goes with another crazy idea, I thought it was impossible, but then I checked myself. Why was I so quick to be negative about something that would benefit me? Self-sabotaging thoughts don’t get us anywhere but most of us have them and have yet to stop, check ourselves, and check our thoughts. The wheels began to turn in my head as I tried to come up with something plausible to accomplish. I was researching like crazy and I came across this article about a group of poets who charged about $225 per hour to create haikus for people at events, I didn’t even think a poet could be paid so much for something so simple. (Read article here: https://goo.gl/vTEcQ5) Now I am not the Haiku girl, I am just using this as an example of the possibilities in poetry.

Lo and behold, just before 12AM hit, I called my best friend and told her my idea, Poems for Profit. I am going to take quotes and phrases that I have stored in my notes forever and recently and turn them into a form of stationery on note cards, postcards, wall stickers, and whatever else I can put them on to appeal to potential customers. I have had many ideas: grand ideas, in between ideas and small ideas. This was one of the small ones to me because I had to start from scratch with very little money to invest into it, but what made it so great is that it didn’t have to end there. I had more ideas spewing out for that idea and that was exciting me. I could expand on the idea, use it to express and sustain myself, but most importantly to brand myself. The thoughts of how many opportunities I would be opening myself up to was now the focus of my excitement. I had my business name, the tag line and the phrase that was the inspiration to my inspiration:

“Death to the Starving Artist and birth to the Indulging Artist, because we all deserve to eat!”

Sincerely,

Phonetic Wisdom

Visit my shop here: Poems for Profit by Phonetic Wisdom