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Saturday, June 01, 2013

Hiatus

It has been a while, since I have posted here.

I have been "on hiatus" from doing much with sea glass and beach combing. April was pretty much "eaten up" by travel and doing "family things." In May, I spent a lot of my time focusing on my writing business (which is one of my "day jobs") which has been suffering somewhat from a "lack of attention," for several years. Subsequently, I spent several weeks restructuring my rare postage stamp business (my other "day job"), in large part due to some of the changes and new rules taking place at eBay.

A pile of red seaglass-- bright, but all pieces are quite tiny 
Being able to work from home for a living is a blessing in the sense that I love not having to "go" to work, and I get to work with things that interest me, and I can do so on my terms. On the downside, if you don't "keep your eyes on the ball" at all times, it's easy to allow things to get neglected and fall behind... especially when you have-- as I do-- multiple "micro businesses." My point being that whereas I would love to just "play with sea glass" all the time, I really can't afford to. Finding "balance" in terms of the time I get to spend with each of my interests is an ongoing challenge-- and has been, since I took to full-time self-employment back in 1999.

Over the last couple of years, I have also become increasingly aware of just how much sea glass truly is a "shrinking resource." The fact that there is less and less to be found hasn't diminished my love of the beach, but it has decreased the volume I am able to offer the rest of the world as a seller. I have been collecting since I was a "wee pup" so these days I do sell most of what I find-- I only save maybe a handful of exceptional and unusual pieces for my personal collection, out of each 1,000 pieces I pick up.

This fall, I am hoping to do "something" with my photographic "library" of sea glass. Over the years, I've amassed some 50,000 high quality digital images of sea glass, and I am considering turning some of the best ones into frameable or framed prints, maybe greeting cards, possibly even a picture book of sorts. I'm a bit of a stickler for quality, so this is only going to happen if I can determine that I can come up with something "truly special" for the world's sea glass enthusiasts. This is just personal opinion, of course, but there is just too much mediocrity in our world...

In the meantime, I've been sorting some of my "old bins" of sea glass, and hope to get both the eBay and Etsy sea glass stores "re-stocked" in the course of this month.

Hope everyone had a great spring, and looking forward to a beautiful summer!