Last Summer, we found ourselves exploring the English Botanical Gardens adjacent to the Ballard Locks. Together they receive over million visitors a year. The botanical gardens span over 7 acres with more than 500 species and 1,500 varieties of plants from around the world.

I always love walking through the gardens at dusk because the light streams through the trees and creates drama.

As we round the horseshoe of the gardens and walk past the clearing of the locks, we stroll by the Administration building. The rose garden is set up like a victorian square filled with a variety of unique roses.

There’s a lawn section near the administration building that showcases tiger lilies and Crocosmia. Together they create a ring around a cluster of trees. One evening at dusk, I was on the hunt for a great shot of the budding crocosmia. Walking around the ring, I discovered this large bee at rest. I was mesmerized because I had never seen one just laying about.

I wondered if it was resting or dead?

I was more excited by the idea that I found a unique accent to highlight for my composition. (I think someone referenced that as ‘the golden cow’ but I need to look that up.)

Untouched, the composition is strong.

What I want was to emphasize the focus on the bee and have the bee pop off the line of buds. In order to do this, I need to de-emphasize the stems and background. I envision the stem of the crocosmia receding further into the background.

But how to do this elegantly?

I used my SONY NEX-5R to capture the resting bee. At home, I transferred the image to my iPhone 6 where I could use my favorite photo apps. I use the Enlight photo app because of the layer feature I love so much. (Please note that I am not getting paid for name dropping).

The first layer is a texture that I created. I have several dozen textures that I’ve created to help create atmosphere and further capture my distinct point of view.

The second layer is the resting bee. I reduced the opacity and adjusted to taste. You can see how the texture shows through adding dimension to the composition.

The third layer is the resting bee again at full opacity. I reduce the opacity when I create the 3rd layer -as an overlay- so that I can line up the image. When I’m confident that my eyes are telling me the truth when it comes to lining up the elements, I’ll turn up the opacity. Now is time I erase the areas that surround the bee and a few of the buds.

Last, I add my watermark. It’s a png file with a transparent background. The Enlight app gets finicky with pngs. I sent a note to the developer about working with png and he states that his app doesn’t support it. Well, actually it does. Although, it only supports it about 85% of the time.

After the developer updates his app, I find that the transparent background converts to opaque without warning.  And it’s a real pain to discover this last minute. So FWIW, you may have to regenerate your pngs when you update your app.

Last tip: When you’re looking for your watermark.png file on the iPhone, it should be completely black. Try importing it on a layer and you might find that it works after all! As you can see in the top left corner in the collection of logos that the square is completely white. I thought for sure it that as I imported it that it would be just a block of white on a layer. Boom! I was happily wrong.

Now mind you, it took me hours upon hours to discover this formula by myself. Sure, I saw what others were doing, but as a graphic designer and fine artist, I’m always thinking in layers. This is where my head is at, yours may not be. So don’t be too quick to get frustrated like Sherlock Holmes who has aspirations to be a virtuoso violinist with only an hour on the violin and no lessons.

The final composition once again.

Giving my composition a home.

Shortly after moving in, we realized that much of our art was buried in our dense storage unit.

Ugh!

We made an effort to get into the unit to find items we desperately needed (like a sewing machine, summer clothes) but too exhausted to think about digging everything out. We weighed the option of buying, making, collecting new art. Thus, we decided that if we were going to collect art, that we really needed to love a piece before we brought it into our new home.

Since I love this composition so much, we agreed to have some kind of economical piece made to feature the resting bee. My next step was to go back into the application and reformat it to fit the portrait composition. I measured the space I wanted to fill and found a canvas printer online that was able to print the piece to my specs.

It now sits majestically on the cantilever shelf in our transitional kitchen.

I so love this color combination. I love the gradient and the texture -it supports the color of the budding flower and allows the bee to pop just as I wanted him.

So… What do you think? Would you try an app to help pop your favorite moment?

If you love the Resting Bee as much as I do, I have opened a quiet little shop on Pixels where you can purchase canvas prints and other accessories with his image.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers, Lisa

Follow me if you want to learn how I transform mundane activities to special occasions with gaming.

I have this uncanny knack to gamify anything. I suppose I’m a bit competitive, but I swear it’s healthy! Girl Scouts honor!

I gamify small activities throughout the day just to keep me interested in the mundane task. Much of it has to do with time. For instance: How fast can I clean up my desk in 15 minutes? You’d be surprised how fast 15 minutes fly by! Much like deadlines, I love the hear the swoosh as they whiz past.

Gamify is a new buzz word in the tech industry.

The challenge for businesses who want to attract millennials is to capture their attention and keep it long enough to engage with their brand. The only way to do this for the squirts who have the attention span of a gnat is to create a game with their service or product.

This year, in my new city of Seattle I wanted to throw a birthday party for myself.

For the most part, I am not completely thrilled with my birthday (dysfunctional family and all that) but I do enjoy making new friends. So, with the few folks I can now call friends, I invited them over to enjoy homemade chocolate cake, wine, beer, and some nosh. I took advantage of the rooftop clubhouse called the Lighthouse in our apt building. I reserved the space that includes a kitchenette, living room, tabletop shuffleboard, flat screen tv, and music adapter. This is the top floor that has sweeping views of Seattle. One friend calls it ‘the million dollar view.’ Yah, we certainly have that!

Another part of my new life is that I want to get to know as many progressive people as possible.

As a couple of introverts, we tend to stay in. Because Seattle is filled with way too much to do, we still have to make plans to get out. It’s a real struggle for introverts. Honest to Goddess. I have about 2 hours of public face time a day and then I’m depleted of energy. Imagine me as one of those tall red scary inflatable sky dancers you see at car dealerships dancing to the music that’s playing on your car radio. Suddenly, when the power is cut off… pffffffsttttttttthhhhh! Down I go.

So, when I decided to throw this party, I’m reminded that it’s usually the hostess who sets the energy level.

The first thing we needed to sort out was how the guests were going to make it to the rooftop without an escort. Andrew insisted that someone was going to have to play doorman and escort, running up and down like a madman. I insisted that there was a better way.

My inner creative likes to take quiet time to identify the challenge and then provide several solutions. The easiest way was to design wayfinder signs.

But how were my guests going to know these signs were for them?

I have a cartoon character named FatCat that I’ve been cultivating over the past few months. While I have indoctrinated FatCat to my new business as a coach and guide, I took the liberty of using him in my private party.

My art, my executive decision.

As I designed the wayfinder signs, I decided to continue FatCat cheekiness. My adult friends are pretty low-key individuals. After long days working for the man, they’re pretty tired, too. Labelling my friends as party animals is the anthesis of their demeanor.  I wanted to transform the prejudice of their difficult day into a sigh of relief.

When my friends as guests reached the lobby doors, they were greeted with FatCat and his various sign instructions.

I realize now that if my reserve signed said, “Reserved for Party Animals,” it would have been very charming. Alas… Hindsight and all that.

Once the wayfinder signs were produced, I needed to solve the challenge of getting my guests passed the secure apartment doors.
Each major entrance has modern call boxes that allows one to scroll through tenant names. Each tenant has a dedicated 3 digit code that you can press on the screen that calls my mobile phone. Once I’m cognizant enough to realize that it’s the front door calling me and not some random fax, I press a number to buzz the doors open. This took a few tries but I finally got the hang of it. So glad it wasn’t raining!!

To skip the nuisance of scrolling through the hundreds of names, I sent my guests a graphic that includes FatCat and directions on how to get in.

You may not think that the above story was about gamifying. But in a UX (usability) sense, it is. I gamified my challenge to move guests from outside a locked building to the rooftop without any human intervention.

Were there hiccups in the process of this minor experiment? Sure. But the results were at least 80% successful. That’s a win in my book.

The following story outlines how I recovered a potentially boring party into a sparkling event.

This event was filled with the requisite food and drink that one would have at any birthday party. But this birthday party was for adults who knew very little of each other. The one thing that brought them together was me and the reason for that was celebrating my existence in a new city. I suppose we could discuss birth and rebirth, but that gets too spiritual for my tastes, not to mention biblical. Yack.

As I devise a plan for fun, I think of games.

My first go-to is Cards Against Humanity, but I have to be among friends to consider such a raucous activity. So, that’s out. Board games? Nah, too confined. Karaoke? Nope. Charades? Nope.

I look around my apartment for an object to launch an idea.

A-ha! I found my tired pad of Seattle themed Madlibs I bought last year at the local Bartells the first week we moved in. I wanted to get to know Seattle as quickly as possible. I thought that taking this into the bedroom and converting it into naughty Madlibs would be a sexy play with my favorite husband. We played it a few times and then it became my overlarge coaster for my water glass.

Now, to turn this tired game into a satisfying event for everyone, I had to create a strategy for the game. Based on my experience in design usability (UX), there are a few things I had to evaluate fast. Moreover, time and energy are two areas to consider within the territory of play and mind games. So,

• What’s the premise of the game? Make a single premise or your guests get confused.
• What’s the ultimate goal? Make it clear, make it easy.
• Do we pit the guests against each other like dodgeball or to the game itself like golf?
• What various hurdles do the challengers have to jump over to pass to the next section for the game?
• How many hurdles are there? The fewer hurdles, the lesser the prize.
• What relationship do the hurdles have to the goal?
• How much time do you have to play the game? Unless the night is about one big game, make the game short in the grand scheme of the night.
• How strenuous is the challenge? Be mindful of the clothing your guests are wearing and their physical limitations.
• Will the guests be willing to play after a long day at work? Assume their day was exhausting and have very little energy in reserve.

Additionally, have a balance of wins and rewards. Don’t make your guests think too hard. Guests don’t want to look foolish and an exhausted brain tends to generate increased vulnerability.

I know that my guests have a sense of humor; I wouldn’t befriend them if they didn’t have one. Unsure of how wide or deep their humor lies, I as the hostess give them humor parameters. I encourage irreverence. This tells them a little something about me –as if they didn’t already know- and I learned this from playing Cards Against Humanity. The strategy is that the players (challengers) must know the dealer well. The better you know the dealer, the greater chance you have to appeal to his/her sense of values –and dark humor.

Second, I know that I cannot dominate their time. I want them to have fun and not be at the mercy of my medieval whim as though one were held hostage with Caligula.

For the sake of brevity, the game has one short premise.  

Complete the Seattle theme Madlibs anonymously and I must guess who wrote it. Use words only I would know to help me identify you. This gives them an opportunity to reach back into our shared experiences and generate a new story. The object is that they want me to guess who they are so they win a prize. The prize is of my choosing. Naturally, it came from my treasure chest of handcrafted gifts. Because I have an abundance of CalligraphyDog note cards, I brought enough to gift each guest -and they did have to work for it.

I wrote the rules on an envelope.
The reality is that I printed the envelopes with the rules because of my degrading handwriting and stuffed a random Seattle theme Madlibs sheet into it. I presented a time limit because I wanted to read them aloud at the party. This would give everyone a chance to laugh and take home a prize.

Laughter is a big part of my life because this helps everyone relax and let our guard down together.

As I read each one aloud, my friends got to enjoy each story unfold as it was written. Usually, I’m damn good at site reading -my music background taught me that. But after one glass of wine on an empty stomach, I got loopy. I could still site read but I wasn’t really comprehending the story. I heard laughter on occasion and I hoped that laughter was with me and not about me. ;/ I doubt it though because no one has the ability to mock as well I as I do.

Competitive, much? Nah. It’s a natural talent.

The first three set the tone of the difficulty. I’m surrounded by smart friends and they made this tough for me to guess the writer. (Hmm… perhaps I just found a new name for the game: Guess the Writer.) As I completed each Madlib, I studied the handwritten words. I hoped one would jump out at me to announce the writer.

I couldn’t guess the first three correctly so I set them aside and continued to the fourth. Huzzah! I guessed the writer. Shew! I guess what they say is true about audience participation: my guests were rooting for me and wanted me to win.

So, this gave me the start of my dopamine drip. My brain started to induce a feel-good state that overrode my loopiness. Huzzah again! Suddenly, I was on a roll. I correctly guessed the following 5 anonymous writers. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! It was like I had coerced the one arm bandit into giving me bells and whistles and triple cherries on the dial. My guests were amazed at my skillfulness and frankly, so was I.

I returned to the last three.

It was down to my husband, my cousin and his wife. I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I didn’t recognize my husband’s handwriting. Then again, I was loopy. I looked over the 3 side by side and then recognized the rounded lettering. Yep. That is Andrew’s! Interestingly enough, I didn’t guess my cousin or his wife’s writing either until the very end. I had to guess between the two and remembered that she said that she doesn’t swear. One of the Madlibs including the word “f*cking” and that’s how I was able to decipher my cousin from his wife.

In the end, the game was a rousing success -at least I think it was. Keeping the usability challenge super simple is key and that’s tough -almost as tough as my smart friends.

As I sit in my car today, I’m gamifying.

Those tall inflatable characters in front of car dealerships that I referenced earlier? I watch how they find the tempo of the music floating in my car streaming from Sirius XM.

It doesn’t take much for me to smile at the silliness and coincidence of the dance. It’s almost like a dance off against the traffic light. As I sit at the light watching this goofy air filled cartoon flip and flop street side, my husband and I are taking bets on whether the light will change before the dance off finishes. Meanwhile, we begin to chair dance in our own seats and sing along with the tune. Okay, let’s be real -I’m the only one chair dancing like a dork.

Three things we learned today (plus an additional 4):

• How to turn a ho-hum party into a sparkling event
• Anything in life can be gamified
• Create a single premise
• Don’t hold your guests hostage like medieval Caligula
• Be mindful of the time and energy to keep stress levels low
• Be sure your guests are willing to play
• Have great parting gift prizes

Thanks so much for playing along!!! Have a great night and don’t forget to spay and neuter your pets!!

Saying Good Night and Good Luck!

Cheers, Lisa

• First year to build
• Second year to distribute & sell
• Third year to determine the success of your product(s) or service(s).

TIP: Everything has a formula -even art

As I learned this, I saw this as a woman’s pregnancy divided into trimesters. For me, that made sense because trimesters are phases and sequential phases can be a formula.

TIP 2: Once you know the formula, it’s no longer magic.

For now, I measure success of any long term project in 4 equal phases. While the first 3 are hardcoded as:

1. Kickstart the project
2. Begin selling the project
3. Measure ROI of the project

The fourth phase asks: Do we continue or tweak or dump the project?

I wanted to know if Raleigh was ready for my work and an incubator was the first place to begin our grassroots shop. Originally, I measured the success of building my new incubator shop in 18-month increments. The number 18 is derived from how many months we spent in the incubator.

• First six months to build
• Second six months to sell
• Third six months to determine the success of the shop space

First Six Months

This is where we determined how we wanted the shop to be set up.

My target audience was already defined and my plan was to design the shop for my ideal customer. We decided to divide the space to have a formal place for customers in their office attire to shop without the fear of getting dirty.

We signed the lease in September. Shopped at the local hardware store for laminate flooring & paint, and local vintage shops and IKEA for furniture and display stands. We renovated the entire space ourselves -elbow grease and all- to make the space sing unlike any other incubator.

We opened in October.

Unfortunately, no one was walking into our small shop because the incubator was labelled as “studios.” People dressed in office wear do not like the idea of getting paint on their Prada’s, thus, they did not step foot in my studio during their 9-5 routine. Within a few month and keeping track of foot traffic, I got the creatives in the incubator to agree to change our signage to include Blake Street Shops and Studio.

TIP: Shop is a call to action. Because shop is an active verb, this changed the positioning of the incubator and the perspective of customers. Huzzah!

I concepted and designed the logo

Despite the hiccup in foot traffic, October, November, & December were incredible. We made 2x, 4x, 8x our rent consecutively.  It was the selling season and we were new -customers see this as a novelty. January we did well, too, as customers had cash from Christmas. February and March were low because foot traffic was low. People shopped in April, but not for Easter. Some bought Mother’s Day gifts in April.

Although the incubator made a brand update, awareness remained difficult. Our space in BSS was essentially in a closet, tucked away from the beaten path and the people who did pass our tiny window in the tunnel -with their faces planted in their phones- never looked up with the slightest curiosity. It was very disappointing.

Being a government town, Raleigh wasn’t set up for retail or as a walking city.

It set up a park that became a tug of war with the transient population. This population spilled over into adjacent areas, making the thought of walking alone a dicey proposition. So, the downtown area had a stigma that it couldn’t shake. I’m not sure a 16 milion dollar renovation is going to help that.

Another Southern customer observation: They park in front of a shop, walk in, walk out, pull their car out only to drive it down a block and park to repeat the process. Their heads are down the entire time looking at their phone rather than engage in their own curiosity. So unfortunate as they’re missing so much between the block-to-block destinations.

Second Six Months

The Summer brought in low foot traffic. I continued to participate in local and regional shows simply for brand awareness. Customers no longer wandered in for two reasons: Raleigh isn’t a walking town and they were running errands before they head out of town for the weekend at the mountains.

Traffic began to pick up in September. Customers used their lunch hour to explore and shop while it was nice.  I began to offer to customize and personalize their gifts (notice I didn’t say my products) to help boost sales.

Fall and holiday sales were dismal. We had awful weather -a record rain season that flooded our town nearly every day. The torrential and pounding rain kept customers from driving downtown. Downtown Raleigh is a destination and because there are one or two retail shops, they chose not to make the effort. I didn’t blame them, but it was tough not to.

When I finally had a lonely couple wander in just one week before Christmas, they indicated they had finished their holiday shopping.

On Amazon.

That just killed me.

This is when I decided to tweak my postcards to include how to add my products on your Amazon wishlist. Not to be confused with having a shop on Amazon -because I didn’t.

Third Six Months

The damn rain finally let up and we saw more customers walk in early Spring. Many of them had budgeted for personalized or custom gifts so this lifted my spirits and my account.

I continued repping my business on a myriad of levels.

Anywhere I could get recognition and brand awareness to meet my target audience was considered with my business planning. We exhibited at any local shows that would have us. These included festivals, business alliance, art walks in neighborhood shows. I also experienced bias and shunning by many natives. Despite that, I continued to hustle and form partnerships to make my business work, but they didn’t want us.

We were outsiders. Read: We weren’t native

We weren’t native of North Carolina, didn’t attend school (high school or college), or attend one of the 1000 churches in the bible belt. After sending in my application to the Handmaids market 3 times and getting rejected (because my work wasn’t good enough) they -and many others- encouraged us to send in our applications because they wanted our money.

Meanwhile, I continued to do regional shows that made sense to us and were within one day of driving to return home. These included juried art shows and tradeshows. My motto is to always be hustling.

At the same time, the incubator was outgrowing its usefulness.

Politics, lack of professionalism, and harboring fugitives were not what I had signed up for. With 18 months under my belt, it was time I made a move to grow.

Beyond this personal learning experience of my first incubator, I use these 4 steps for every project I endeavor. You can, too.

Have the 4 simple ways to measure your success helped clarify your goals? Please share your insights below, I would love to hear them!

Scoring a free boat ride to see my new hometown Seattle,
Lisa

I know it’s been over a year and I am compelled to get them published. I thought I might post many of them incomplete -think Paul Harvey, radio broadcaster- and then return to finish them as time permits. So bear with me as I put the finishing touches on them.

xoxo
Lisa

I can’t even explain how ungodly that time was for me. For us.

Are you familiar with the boiled frog theory? That was me over the course of 6 months.

SMDH.

Six months later, I look at this draft and realize that extreme edits are necessary. Bear with me.

Seasons
Seasons come and go without regard to time. Everything has seasons and it’s time for me to recognize when something’s time has passed and move on.

The blue duotone image of the Seattle marina I made above was when we visited Seattle in October. The quote reads:

A Ship In Port Is Safe, But That’s Not Why Ships Are Made

Obviously, the universe is telling me that now that things around me are changing, I too must change.

It’s been a fucking tough year and I for one, can’t wait to turn this ship around.

Andrew’s mother died Labor Day weekend. While she planned for everyone except herself, her decision -or lack thereof- placed a stop halt on anything we had planned for both business and personal. We had custom orders in the pipeline, big shows lined up, and the holiday schedule to attend. Usually, our season was commonly met with excitement and a bit of anxiety –but that’s the way of retail.

When we opened ourselves to the possibility of moving to the PNW in late Spring, we didn’t know that the lazy Summer would be met with trying to outrun the dire of portent.

Suddenly, there were so many plates we had spinning in the air that we had to constantly address them with frantic haste.

Too.many.plates.

Every hour of every day we were reprioritizing everything that seemed to matter: family, business, customers, house, new life, friends and not in that order.

Every.single.hour.

We had to essentially abandoned our shop the month of September due to fact that we had to attend to Andrew’s in-firmed father and manage his 24 hour care. We couldn’t fill orders, complete projects or custom orders. No money was coming in.

No matter how I strived to answer customer queries, many of them were met with unkind remarks about me as a business person. Oh, how I so enjoy armchair theorists and their predilection for publicly shaming anyone who doesn’t meet their dreamy standards. Read: dripping sarcasm.

Honestly, this crushed me.

What I do remember is back in June we had our State Farm rep come in and review our policy with us. One question did arise: What would happen to the business if one of us were to get hit by that proverbial bus?

Silence.

Good question, tho. What would happen?

A few weeks later, who knew that question would be answered through the death of a close family member?

My spirits weakened and we did our best to meet our posted business hours, but didn’t always make it. To my recollection, I think we decided to at least be open Thursday – Sunday. This left Monday – Wednesday open to go visit Andrew’s dad on a weekly basis, continue finishing our custom projects, and renting a storage unit to begin culling our house from all the business grey goods we had packed wall-to-wall in the basement.

We were overwhelmed with the growing number of plates spinning with priority.

Each day, we were faced with hard questions that resulted in cutting back so much of what made our business excel. This included suspending personalizing gifts much earlier than we ordinarily would and ceasing custom orders indefinitely.

Our plan was to put our house up on the market by Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, that never happened. We were so goddamn busy with 2 shows in November, closing shop mid-November and clearing out product and removing all remnants of ceiling and floor, and selling displays on Craigslist that I barely kept my act together.

I was in the middle of shit going sideways.

Mid-November we had our annual Piedmont Craftsman Fair. I had to do everything in my power keep my game face on. It was probably one of the most depressing weekend in my life. One I hope to never relive. While at the show, I experienced even more devastating news and just couldn’t keep it on. I found myself hiding in the alley (behind our booth) where artists normally store their crates and packaging, crying. Mentally weary. Exhausted.

Three months of back to back relentless ice balls and we still haven’t had time to grieve. 

The next week was the final week of our shop being open. It was really tough because its amazing how ones mind remembers the horrible things people say. Of course, people think they’re being funny when they say, “Oh, you’re closing. So that means everything is 80% off.” I bluntly reminded them, “No. We aren’t Target. Our gifts aren’t made by children in China that one just throws in the back of closet like a forgotten toy. Our pieces are special and if I don’t sell them today, I know that I can sell them in Seattle.” Of course the dbag walked out without buying.

Not much else sold because: in the SE, supporting small business isn’t a thing. 

Meanwhile, I’m struggling with time management because Craigslist (CL) customers aren’t showing up for the appointed times. The most ridiculous arrangement was when one customer dickered for days about picking up the flooring (costing me hours of phone time w/him), he then whined about not wanting to collect it on the very last day of November because of the pouring rain. Try explaining with the utmost patience that the landlord would charge a full months rent if everything wasn’t evacuated by midnight -all without losing your cool.

TIP: Schedule all your appointments 1 week prior to the real due date. This will save so many headaches.

Like magic, Andrew received a phone call in the middle of hauling bundles of laminate flooring to the customer’s borrowed SUV in the pouring rain. The news: His dad no longer needed to remain in the house alone with ghosts -the ideal living center had a room that opened up. Thankfully, the center was located just minutes from his daughter’s home in MD.

News doesn’t always come alone, however. In my life, there is always a glitch.

We had one more show to get through -Boylan Heights Art Walk- and then flying out to Seattle on Tuesday for a few days to find a place to live. As I mentioned, news doesn’t always travel alone, it brings it’s little brother glitch. Moving Andrew’s dad was supposed to happen the same week. FML

At this point, we’re going up to my FIL’s house every single week checking on him, paying bills, reviewing 24 hour home health care and dodging angry swipes from Cujo the cat. Three hours away, this was always a full day event. It took some convincing w/the other side of the family that we couldn’t do everything -and we certainly weren’t going to cancel our travel plans. They had to step up and make the trip w/dad.

Adding one more spinning plate to the mix, during the months of October & November, we were creating lists and lists of home repairs that needed to be made before bringing the house to market. We were exhausted just making those lists, not to mention the idea of tackling the tasks. Fortunately, I think the universe heard our cries and brought forth a former neighbor to help us out. We had to pay him of course, with the little money that we had –but we were already killing ourselves.

During the last art show, John offered his services and I eagerly agreed. I had confidence that he could help us without too much grief because of the work I watched him do on his own house. So, we gave him a list, a key to the house, and directions to the treat jar for the cats while we were away.

Since June and as often as we could, we were scouring Zillow, Craiglist, Apartments.com, and other resources for place to rent in Seattle. It was so stressful watching anything we bookmarked disappear within a couple of hours because of the high demand. Being in Seattle was a bit of a respite, despite its inherent stress factors.

While folks were settling in on Christmas Eve, we were enduring some back breaking work of packing up books, supplies, and then trucking them off in our daily deliveries to the storage unit. While I’m agnostic/atheist, I do look forward to scheduled holidays in the US -they offer time off. Unfortunately, the past several months didn’t grant us that luxury. At the very least, we opened a bottle of special wine and watch the annual Doctor Who Special.

At this point, our hope was to get the house up on the market by the new year. Once that was done, we’d have the luxury of getting together with friends that we’ve neglected and pushed away to get this shit done that has weighed on us so fast and so heavily. Again, that wasn’t in the cards.

Upon our latest adventure to Seattle, we came home with a major project ahead of us: Scraping ceilings. Oh dear Gawd, what a mess.

TIP: Plan for 5 days when scraping your ceiling. First day is easy: All scraping. Seriously, here’s a HowTube video. Seriously easy. It’s the next 4 days that are killer: Patch, Sand, Repeat.

TIP: For sanding, use a special dry wall sponge instead of sand paper -this alleviates a ton of dust normally created by sandpaper. Bleck!

January was spent clearing, decluttering, and transporting more stuff to the storage unit. By this time, I think we had already rented a 2nd unit. OMFG.

Back in Seattle for another few days in January, we looked separately and together with our Real Estate broker at several homes. We settled on the idea of renting an apartment because we needed to fully immerse ourselves in the new lifestyle. We needed to do this as quickly as possible to find our tribe and test the waters with our designs. We were finding disappointment around every corner. It wasn’t until we realized what we were consistently hearing was that no one would rent to us unless we had income. Having one’s own business wasn’t good enough -especially if we had suspended all making due to no workshop.

We needed jobs.

Great. On top of all that we are enduring, we need to job hunt, too? More damn ice balls.

So our next plan was to get the house ASAP -even if one photo of the house we took many years ago in the idyllic Spring. Get it sold so that we can use the profit to move our belongings and pay rent. Scary risk, but we were all in. There was nothing left for us in Raleigh to bank on.

Must.push.forward.

We managed to get our house up on Zillow mid-February. Watching all the house hunting shows HGTV, we managed to stage each room during the process of updates: Clear, Stage, Photograph. Wash, rinse, repeat.

After a few showings, we realized through talking w/potential owners that the adage about not showing your own house is true. There are a variety of reasons why this is true. We know how to talk about product and making it all about them, but one thing stuck out as I was reading one young 20 something: She doesn’t want to envision two 50 yr old somethings having sex in her new bedroom.

Ew. I get that.

Suddenly, I’m turned off!!

That’s when I decided we needed to back away from this part of selling. So, we contacted Molly, an old client I had many years ago designing real estate flyers for her. Thankfully, in our region, our house was an easy sell for her.  While our house was on the market for only 16 days, many houses sell in our area within 5. Naturally, running on fumes we started to get nervous.

I guess the biggest stress factor for me was leaving the cats in the house alone. We did crate them, but I just didn’t want anyone tormenting them. Of course, that’s the lack of sleep talking.

As potential home owners marched in and marched out, many of them were depressed that it wasn’t a showcase home. Thanks HGTV. You suck. What we needed was a small family who had an abundant amount of coping skills. Like the Internet without a sense of humor, many 20/30 somethings have no coping skills. SMDH. Really?

One day, a quiet couple arrive with their agent… and 2 very young girls. Oh crap. We have to leave our cats with two erratic and unpredictable rug rats. We played the ‘we’ll be downstairs while you walk around upstairs’ game and same rules for when they traversed to the lower level. As I just mentioned to the mom that the cats don’t like children, the little girls screeched and twirled in front of their crates -taunting them. Their screams raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

OMG I’m so tired, please don’t tease the cats.

Things progressed well and I felt that they had made their decision to buy. I asked the little girls what their favorite part of the house was and of course, they bellowed, “The kitties!!!!!” After that little white-knuckled event, the couple (sans girls) came by a few days later for a second walk through. Later that evening, I was elated when Molly called with the good news.

Fast forward 25 days: March 26th rolled quietly by and that’s when Andrew decided we should celebrate. The Due Diligence had passed and the new owners were formally going to take possession of the house in less than one week! Hall-fuckin-luia.

Now that we can pull down several spinning plates, we still had a few more to keep balanced:

1. Finding a place to live,
2. Obtaining bank statements indicating we had the cash to pay for rent,
3. Arrange for the boyz checked out by the vet,
4. Getting plane tickets for all 4 of us to fly out permanently on April 15,
5. FIL’s house cleared out, renovated, and ready for market. Oh yah, that!

I don’t even think that was an exhaustive list. I honestly couldn’t remember hour-to-hour as stress and chaos just ate my brain like a tapeworm zombie.

Fast Forward to Today

As I mentioned in the beginning, some expectations have come to pass -for better or worse. I am full of remorse that the relentless experience of ice balls being thrown at us every day prevented us from enjoying time with our friends -or- enjoying time with each other.

Now, we’re doing our best to settle in, however, we’re still pretty exhausted. Some days I feel like my brain is much and I’m spewing only word salad. As a result, I have gained a tremendous amount of weight and I am pretty sure I’m dealing with adrenal gland failure due to the shit storm of 2015.

We still feel like tourists here in the PNW and I anticipate feeling this until we’ve endured a couple of winters. We have already managed to change our health insurance, so I finally get to see a doctor (read: not a quack like I had in NC) to figure out my ridiculous hypothyroidism, try to control my leptin resistance, elevated cortisol levels, and correct any possible adrenal gland damage. #goodtimes

Regardless, I am in a better place. A much better place, thank Goddess.

Cheers!
Lisa

The winding path that spreads 28 miles (we trekked only 2 miles of that!) took us along the canal that was excavated almost 100 years ago.

Magically, these stone structures appeared on the quiet banks of the canal.

In any other place, they would have been rampantly knocked over and destroyed. But here, in Seattle, is another quiet reminder of respect and esteem the residents have for one another.

This serenity of this scene is overwhelming enchanting.

Peddling onward,
Lisa

At the event, they also announced a new Improv Class that was scheduled for the next evening at the same building. Sure! Why not? If it’s anything like Who’s Line Is It Anyway, it should be a blast.

Also, it was structured to improve communication in the workplace.

Huh? How is improv going to help me in corporate ‘murica?

That evening, we were introduced to Andrew, an actor and improv business coach of Jet City Improv. Unfortunately, we started late due to late arrivals, but he managed to teach us a few tricks to help our communication skills for both work and home.

If you know me, you know that I mention that there is formula for everything and on occasion, I publish customer scripts for artists who want to build a business.

One trick in particular on listening resonated with me, because as Boromir states, “One does not simply rant!”
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8261" src="https://creativegoddess.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/boromir-onedoesnotsimplyrant.jpg” alt=”boromir-onedoesnotsimplyrant” width=”335″ height=”335″ />

So here it goes: On Listening, er Ranting…
We all want to be heard. In order to be heard, we must first be acknowledged. Many times the miscommunication stems from the lack of acknowledgment. From what I was taught, listening is a two-part structure:

1) If a person is ranting (and our initial reaction is to jump in and fix), we must allow s/he to vent it all out. Instead of jumping in and detouring the rant, bring your closed hand to your mouth and put your index finger knuckle on your lips as though you are thinking. This helps to keep oneself from jumping in and interrupting and thus, shows sign of respect to the person who is upset.

2) When they’re finished, repeat what they said “So, this is what I heard..”. Then ask them if:
-a) they just wanted to vent,
-b) need help to fix it, or
-c) just wanted someone to sympathize.

It works like a charm. The person feels that they’ve been heard.

If you’re a person who is doing the ranting, make sure you have the end game in mind. Tell the person(s) that when you’re about to explode, that this is what you expect of them. So,

A. Are you venting to blow off steam? Just tell them that you need to vent.

B. Need someone to sympathize with your frustration? Tell them you need to vent and need a bit of sympathy, or

C. Need help fixing the frustration? Tell them you’re upset, you need to vent, and you need to find a solution to fix this once and for all.

Outlining your frustration will help mitigate potential compounding issues. Who needs to layer on the misunderstood hardship like a bowl of soggy nachos when all you need is a fresh mint start to the challenge?

The funny thing is, earlier, when we were put into groups, a young woman ranted about how her colleague is acting her superior and giving her a ton of work to do –her work– in addition to what her boss is assigning. When she was finished ranting, I ran thru the above scenario. She responded that she wanted help to fix it. So the 3 of us who have 30 years experience in the workforce (90 years combined) gave her a number of articulate and actionable habits to begin her career.

As I look forward to future events, I may just enroll in Improv 101. 

Me thinks I’ve got the bug!

How about you? Have you taken an improv class to help you in the workplace? Would love to hear your experiences.

Cheers,
Lisa

My entry for Illustration Friday: Yarn.

In this case, I harken back to my first illustration with my hallmark approach to illustration: CalligraphyCats – Bacchus & the Ball of Yarn

xo, 
Lisa