How I Do It

Not too long ago, Twiggy, one of my fel­low lampworking-forum mem­bers, said to me:

I don’t know how you keep all your online stuff up to date, run a forum and actu­ally get to melt any glass.

As I told her:

Ha ha ha. The secret is I DON’T do it all as well as I look like I do. I don’t keep my online stuff up to date very well. About once a month or so I will go over to each site and play with it a bit so that it LOOKS like I’m keep­ing it up. I’m really bad about con­sis­tently list­ing stuff on Etsy because I’m find­ing it to be a PITA. If I had a bit big­ger name I’d just set up a shop­ping cart on my web­site and list most stuff there, just a few things else­where to make myself visible.

Luck­ily I don’t depend on this for my living!

Also, since I have a full-time job as a com­puter sci­ence pro­fes­sor, I can call a lot of the com­puter stuff, includ­ing run­ning the forum, “pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment” and kill two birds with one stone that way. Sneaky, eh?

I learned how to fake “hav­ing it together” long ago.? Of course, there are times when the facade crum­bles — if you want to come visit me, you bet­ter be com­ing to see ME, not a clean house!? Yep, one of my tricks is that house­work is a low priority.

It’s also still true that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do every­thing I’d like to do.? So I give lit­tle bits of my atten­tion to this, and that, and the other, here and there.? Every thing gets its lit­tle bit of my life; noth­ing gets all it wants.? It’s all com­pro­mise, and it works because it has to — because it’s how I work.