ArtACA is HOPPING, the art buyers did follow the artists there, and I have a bid on Island Tree, one of the two pieces that I gave added visibility to because I put a lot of work into them.

I did not know till now that I was holding my breath on it, because my art has been selling reasonably well at eBay, very well for it being whatever I feel like drawing and not commissions done on the spot for people. But with only three ACEOs posted, one getting a bid that fast bodes very well for the new site's energy and traffic!

And for my going on doing colored pencil realism ACEOs, because those are the ones more likely to sell. I still want to do a nice raptor for ArtACA too. I love doing raptors and got the whole book of raptors photo references. Plus Amazon sent me an ad for a volume on three owl species that I wish listed, same author, I would trust it's the same rich detailed treatment on poses and life and photos and diagrams, beautiful anatomy drawings for carvers let me visualize the birds in three dimensions and change the references dramatically.

Maybe I'll splurge and get the Owls book with the money. :)

I've got some kind of stomach bug now. Basically it's a Man Flu. I'm feeling sorry for myself and sick as the proverbial dog because this is not my everyday pain and trouble, this is something new and different and icky unfamiliar acute on top of it blech. I did not sleep last night because I was too nauseated and gassy and had a sore throat. I'll wait it out and Kitten's dosing me with echinacea to get rid of it faster. I'm eating buttered toast since that's the only thing I can keep down that settles it at all.

I was scared my debut on ArtACA would fall flat on its face even though my friends' art was selling and bounding along like always if not more so. It's wonderful. I really like the site and will definitely be at least splitting my listings between ArtACA and eBay, especially if eBay's changes start ruining my sales there. The art community is the same art community, which is very cool. I'm still a mod on the eBay group but I've been offline a lot during this exciting time because I got sick blech flu ick whine.

I don't vomit. If I did I might have actually felt better, but I've got a convulsive paranoia about vomiting and never manage to do it well, it always goes through my nose and makes me sicker. I hold it back until it's so involuntary there's no control, can't make myself do it. So if vomiting would've helped it's not an option. Lots of antacids for the gas are helping though and that's good. Glad I've got a large bottle of that stuff right now.

I have also been dealing with some deep stuff while doing The Artist's Way program. I ran into some philosophical disagreements and it needed serious sorting. "Take what you need and leave the rest" applies in spades. It takes work to sort out how much is Christian ideology -- nondenominational but distinctive in its outlook -- and how much is general observations on creativity and effective ways to fight through what I think of as social blocks.

To gather enough courage to fly against all of the vast number of people who discourage anyone from taking the arts seriously or doing them at all, even for fun. Because that discouragement is real and bitterly common in this culture. But in looking at it, I think that maybe I'm looking at it backwards and it's not psychological but logistic. I need to know that I can survive self employed. I need to make the leap in a way that I will never fall back down as far as I did in the shelter years. I do not want to go through that again.

Getting a good agent is one of the best ways I could make sure that I do have a career, a stable steady career, not just rise and fall meteorically. Someone that can do a lot of the business stuff from a business standpoint without fibromyalgia limiting stress -- who can function in the fast lane. Who could actually make it through an airport and fly somewhere for a meeting, actually sit in a restaurant for one or an office without needing special chairs, and talk on the telephone without sliding into stress-induced fibromyalgia fog and an asthma attack. I'm a good writer and not a salesman of any stripe.

I have to look at whether I even have a problem with creativity. kkitten42 and I talked about it and she thought it was a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle, my doing a creativity workshop. But this week's material did open up a real problem and I will have to spend some time thinking about it. Also doing the morning pages has been interesting -- doing journal longhand and limiting it to what fits on three pages is pretty cool and I've been keeping that up. If I got nothing else out of it, that is a very good practice and it's been generating some interesting results.

I came up with a short, powerful two-paragraph opener that's looking for a novel, and when I figure out who that is, I will have something incredibly cool going on in my life. Novel Next is boiling over, because this NEEDS to be written. And not as biographical, as fiction. I have had a pretty happy ending to my adventures and am very grateful to be here living in one of those fallow periods in life that don't make good novels, like Bilbo's more than a half century in the Shire being an Ex-Adventurer. I like that bit and would like that bit to go on being that bit and even more comfortable the longer it goes on, which it's been getting. Maybe that's the key to my writing something deep, just rip it out and see where it goes.

As I sit here calming down and letting the latest dose of my meds affect me, pushing the pain down from level eight to level seven, I'm coming to the conclusion that today was mostly the result of that jarring waking at eight in the morning. I should have sensibly crawled back to bed and gotten the rest of my sleep. I would have had much more energy for posting on boards and would not have been typing, then stopping five minutes to think of what to say, then typing again. And might have had the less foggy judgment to do the painting early and THEN answer all my emails and eBay message boards and stuff. I don't have to sit on the forums every waking hour. Just come through once or twice a day and post to the interesting threads.

I got into a panic and that snowballed. I'm coming down from it to realize just how petty that is. If I don't express my burning opinions till a few hours later, the threads will still all be there to express my burning opinions on. And I may be more eloquent in the expressing.

I have a couple of commissions with no deadlines and I'm fretting as if they're due tomorrow, or at least this week.

If I felt good I might do several artworks in a day. I've done that before. So why not relax and accept that tonight I'm all foggy sick and bewildered? And that tomorrow my capacity to draw stunningly well will actually get up rested and return.

Oooh, and my mat cutting article got accepted to EmptyEasel.com which while a nonpaying market is an awfully cool and classy one that has very wide readership. I get the newsletter and enjoy reading all the articles every week, and I know he has a huge circulation. My links will get that circulation when my mat cutting article goes up. So I'm a happy cat. How could I get so stressed that I didn't notice a really cool acceptance letter? I almost typed "rejection slip." It's not! That's habit! LOL

It's an acceptance letter to a cool online publication that I've been fond of ever since I first clicked on it -- and he's a very good editor. Look at the quality of the current articles if you doubt that, this is a very cool publication. The newsletter's handy, it always gives you links to the last week's articles and to the upcoming week's articles when they're posted.

Here's my EmptyEasel article link: Mat Cutting Made Simple: How to Cut Custom Mats with Logan Team System 2 -- enjoy! It can save you money if you're an artist to get the Team system instead of buying an expensive mat cutter and they'll still come out well. Enjoy!