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.