Evaluation of Doom

Trying to balance home life, art, writing, online shopkeeping & maintaining an online presence is definitely an exercise in lunacy most days. Fortunately, I’ve plenty of experience with madness. And thankfully this is what I’ve wanted to do since the onset of teenager-y trauma dubiously known as puberty. Not that I knew of the interwebs back that far but I knew that somehow a way for me to affordably do all this had to come about elsewise I’d need to start plotting apocalyptic type things as a coping mechanism.

At the start of this year I’ve been just taking some time to look back at what it is I’m doing, and be extra thankful it’s all come within my reach now. Took the 1st week to really evaluate the different aspects of Bent Realm Studios.



It’s bound to be a quarterly occurrence too. The things I looked at were: each of the shops, active & not, that I have, my blogging, my project development, my scheduling process & so on.

Making sure not to neglect too many of my regular duties, I threw a lot of time and thought into this seven day gauntlet. Much to my irritation certain decision attempts wavered back and forth. How I loathe being a waffle. However 2010 was largely about finding my direction & footing with this whole living my dream scenario.

And without further ado here is much of the results of the evaluation-

• Dropping oDesk as a provider (keeping account in case I want to eventually hire there) 
• Keeping my stupid myspace to give the new format a chance to do stuff for the entertainment aspect of what I do (that & the fiancé still has one, not about to let anyone else be his #1 friend on there whether he uses it or not, grumble grumble). 
• Not bothering with my Deviant Art Print Shop for the next few months, but gonna try to show up on the site more. 
• Dropping the Facebook page for Indy Shopkeeper Chat but keeping the group just started for it. 
• Dropping my Fiverr shop, there just isn’t time for a $5 micro task shop in my life, especially since, my cut is significantly smaller than that. 
• Dropping the Studio Supply Shop aside from needing more time than I can devote to it, I’ve made zero money with it, and the notion that promoting it may detract from the other more important stuff I’m doing – the amazon associate program may be discontinued for Illinois residents soon if a certain law is signed by the governor. To me a sign to drop the shop portion of what I’m using that program for. 
• Etsy – Keeping the account til next eval, but not using the shop. 
• Same for ArtFire 
• My frustrate-y blog situation – Dropping Bent Realm Chronicles completely, moving some categories to the help topic blog. Dropping the Indy Shopkeeper Chat blog, will re-route that url to a landing page for the project portions of which will be on my RedGage profile. Resume using the Samples From Bent realm Studios blog as a portfolio but approach it a bit differently. Try to post to Artistical Exploration at least 10 times a month for now. Make a posting schedule for my Poetry. Increase my Decadent Angels efforts. 
• I will also up my production for both my zibbet shop and my zazzle shop since I’ve found them to be so enjoyable. 
• Make writing for my projects a much more habitual thing. 
• Make improved efforts on my current alpha projects as I call them. 

Well, hopefully all that goes well. Definitely more focused this week as a result so far.

What do you think of my mad plots? Have you done any kind of similar evaluation process on your creative & related business (if you have one) recently? Have you had any similar decisions giving you a hard time? Have you found a solution?