RIP dinosaurs. Can’t believe it’s been 65 million years already. Always in my thoughts.
Category: Found
bookmark_borderWhy is Instagram…
so fucking addicting? I hate it and want to wean myself off of it. It’s not like I have a lot of friends to keep up with nor do I get a bunch of likes on my posts. It’s the scrolling part – addicted to seeing photos and addicted to information, I guess? I don’t know. As a creative person, I’m definitely stimulated by words and images.
I know I can do better things with my time…and yet I don’t.
I only draw or get creative when I know I have a deadline.
Otherwise, I’d much rather be doing absolutely nothing, or scrolling. Ugh.
I’m also aware that it’s Mercury Rx and I really should just chill the fuck out and be easy on myself. Why do I beat myself up for not being creative enough?
Roxy’s birthday is August 2, it is still unreal to me that she is gone. The few months since her passing was the strongest connection I had to her. I miss her so much, social media & the internet isn’t quite the same without her.
Smile now, cry later.
Fuck the world.
bookmark_borderOptical Illusion Snake
Just uploading stuff I’ve collected over the years from my external hard drive.
bookmark_borderMore Thoughts on Selling, Marketing & Social Media
I get a lot of people following/unfollowing me daily on my crystal shop’s Instagram page. The number of followers hasn’t really grown that much. But that’s alright because I still get sales.
At first, I did get hung up about it. Like why do people play the stupid ‘follow to unfollow’ game? It really annoyed the fuck outta me.
Anyways, I realized after a year that it didn’t actually matter…I still made sales.
Moral of the story? Just because you have more Instagram followers doesn’t necessarily mean you get more sales.
I’m writing this because maybe some of you are feeling discouraged or feel like you’re not gaining any traction on selling or putting yourself or your brand out there. It’s crowded, everyone’s doing the same damn thing, people steal content, I have to show my face when I don’t really want to, blah blah blah…
It’s definitely going to feel that way sometimes, especially when you’re just starting out.
But with consistency, patience and most importantly – using your own unique voice & perspective – you WILL sell and you WILL attract the right people. And all your hangups about other people doing the same thing will melt away.
Not as easy as it sounds, but if you intend for things to be a certain way – trust that it can happen.
And as cliché as it already sounds – you really HAVE to believe in yourself. You have to be your own fucking number 1 fan. Your negative self-talk will only hold you back.
You also have to stop looking at what other people are doing. I swear, as soon as I stopped doing this – my creativity came back; my writing and my art sounded like me again.
I’m a life coach now by the way. Kidding!?
I’m writing this to encourage you and myself. I have more confidence now that I’ve had the business up and running for a little over a year. So while I have some nuggets of wisdom to share, I’m also aware that I still have a long way to go.
Either way, I’m not worried about it. I intend to have fun and go at my pace.
I see a lot of people start their shop pages on Instagram but don’t really last longer than a month. Why? Because I think they run out of steam. They tend to post a lot hoping people will notice them and start buying right away, but then they burn out just as quickly as they started.
Consistency and repetition is key. But also, pace yourself so you don’t crash and burn. Self-care is just as important.
One of my mentors was telling me you should post 3 times a day on Instagram. I followed that at first, but got tired. So now I only post once or twice a day, depending on how I feel.
What most people don’t think about is that while even starting a small business can be a lot of fun, it’s also A LOT of work. You are the owner, marketer, manager, accountant and more…all rolled into one. You can easily go through a roller coaster of emotions too – from being happy and excited because you made some sales, to being scared and anxious because you spent a lot of money to make those sales, then happy and excited all over again because you paid down some of your debt. Yay!
That is the reality of a lot of small businesses & entrepreneurs – spending money to make money.
Would I do it all over again? Probably.
The secret is to only sell what you love, what you yourself would buy and use. I guess in some ways this is difficult because you’ll be tempted to keep a lot of the stuff you’re supposed to sell!
The other secret is to branch out and learn other skills so you can stand out from everybody else who sells the same thing as you.
Here’s a personal example: I don’t consider myself to be a seller or come anything close to being a salesperson; I am so anti-hustle. Not into it at all. But on the contrary, I AM selling, consistently.
How am I doing it? I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Either people really love the crystals that they see on my Instagram, or they like me as a person. They could be basing it off the reviews I have on Etsy.
It could be all of the above or none of the above.
Behind this human avatar, I could really be a fucking magical being – creating whatever I want to happen next. That sounds feasible to me.
Whatever it is, the effort is paying off – that doesn’t mean I’m done. I have to continue, because I love that I created this; and I love that people love it too.
And I also know that you can do this for yourself too.?
p.s. hope you enjoy the photo I posted with this post! My mom’s church friends already think I worship the devil anyway.???♀️?
bookmark_borderRacism in Occultism
Double isms in this blog post title. What does that mean??
It means this blog post will be a little deeper than my other ones, depending on how much I can articulate.
First things first, What is Occultism?
bookmark_borderHow To Diversify Your Life
I snagged this infographic from James Altucher’s Twitter. His writings have been resonating with me lately.
Hopefully this will remind me everyday to do something about it, if I really want to break free from my one source of income.
Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate having a job doing what I do best; it’s been a stable and abundant life. It’s actually one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. But something keeps tugging at me, something keeps telling me I am meant for more. And when I am online, I am often drawn to writers & authors who talk about this kind of stuff.
And I can’t explain why.
I typed some of the Infographic for your reading enjoyment. I will come back and type out the rest.
How to Diversify Your Life by James Altucher
The only way to survive, to get off the floor, to build, to have ideas, to create businesses, to have flourishing relationships, is with diversification. And with the greatest invention since the wheel, the internet, it’s easier to do it now than ever before.
01 – Diversify Ideas
People ask me, “When I’m writing my 10 ideas for the day to build my idea muscle, should they all be business ideas, or around one sector?” No! Write ideas about anything you can. Then mate them. Make your brain supple and creative in every area.
02 – Creative Output
Everyone wants to create their “masterpiece”. But you can’t. All you can do is create. Then the world will decide what is a masterpiece. Thomas Edison has 1,093 patents but we remember him today for just one. The point: be prolific.
03 – Diversify The People You Meet
I’m shy. I like to stay home and not answer the phone. But I make myself schedule meetings with 3 or 4 new people each week. I go into the city and schedule them all back-to-back. I always want to be proactive about learning things from new people.
04 – Diversify Your Home
The American Dream dictates you have to own a house. As if your identity is tied up in the wood box you live in. But the world is an enormous and amazing place. Why not live in Airbnb’s and diversify your identity across exotic places around the globe?
05 – Diversify Your Platform
You can’t just blog. You can’t just be on Facebook or Twitter. You can’t just self-publish on Amazon. You have to be everywhere. Don’t wait for the mainstream media to pick you. Go to where the people are and make it happen.
06 – Diversify Your Thoughts
I spent too much of my life worrying about money and women. Meanwhile, there’s 100 billion other fun things to think about each day. Diversification of thoughts is the only way to slow life down, to let the thoughts simmer instead of boil.
07 – Diversify What You Read
Get 4 books: one about your career, one about your top interest or hobby (unrelated to your career), one thriller, and one book about spirituality or history. Read a little from each every day. Just 20 total pages a day equals 36 books a year.
08 – Diversify Your Health
List all of the unhealthy things you do. You don’t need to cut everything at once, but start one at a time. It’s painful to be 90 years old and know if you had done just a few things differently it wouldn’t hurt so much every time you went to the bathroom.
09 – Diversify The Way You Meet People
Adults think once you graduate college you have to go to bars to meet people. Not true. Put yourself in environments where you’re going to meet the kind of people you want to be around. Go to meetings, take classes, join groups, travel.
10 – Start More Than One Business
Start many businesses. Or jobs. Or careers. Start them at the same time. Eventually one will standout and flourish. This will be the one that will make you fabulously wealthy while having fun. But the only way to find it is to try many things.
bookmark_borderInfographic: 10 Reasons to Blog (even if no one reads it)
I love this simple and well-designed infographic. I never get tired of seeing it – it’s just a really good reminder for me to keep at it with this blog, even if no one reads it. It’s good practice to blog or write – it exercises your brain, fleshes out ideas, makes you a better blogger/writer. I know my writing skills aren’t up there, but I’m doing my best.
It would be easier for me to fill up this blog with random images that I liked (like i used to in past versions), but now I’d rather stretch my mind by writing.
For helpful insights into marketing, social media, blogging and more – check out Mark Schaefer at: www.businessgrow.com
bookmark_border11:11 Synchronicity
It seems like every single day whether I am at work or at home I always see 11:11 on my phone, computer or digital clock. It’s been like this for months now. I see other number sequences often too – like 111, 222, 333, 444 & 555. Sometimes 666, 777 & 888. 888 because I work for a company that deals with lots of phone numbers. I end up Googling the meaning of these numbers often because I see them so much.
And it becomes even more in depth if you’re studying the occult meaning of the numbers themselves in conjunction with the Tarot. Talk about going deep into the rabbit hole, I am going to reserve that for another blog post (and when I can actually articulate it).
Patience vs Synchronicity
Patience is good. Synchronicity is better. Patience can be defined as bearing or enduring without complaint. It is the act of “giving time” to that which will come to fruition. It is the hope of things to come.
On the other hand, synchronicity is that which knows no waiting or enduring. It recognizes that all is complete in the moment. It provides all in this very moment. It knows there is a perfect time and place for all, and one who experiences synchronicity knows of the harmony between the person and the completeness of the moment. One in synchronicity is not waiting for the rain to stop so that the garden may be tilled, but instead appreciates the rain in all its splendor, along with the situation that it creates in the moment.
Source: 11:11 Synchronicity – Repetitive Numbers and Their Meaning
When you acknowledge the magic in the Universe then the magic in the Universe acknowledges you
Here is another great blog post explaining the vibration of 1111
bookmark_borderThe Absence of Color
Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy – but mysterious. But above all black says this: ‘I don’t bother you – don’t bother me.
– Yohji Yamamoto
Still one of my favorite quotes. I don’t know anything about fashion nor does it interest me all that much, but I really wanted to know about the person who said these powerful words. I did learn that Yohji Yamamoto is a Japanese fashion designer.
bookmark_borderPersonal Brands and Such
For a long time I thought I screwed myself over by changing my site name from “SHERMGRAFIK” to “SAVE THE SAVAGES”. Deleting everything and putting it back up didn’t help either. If you view it from that perspective, I guess I kinda did; I lost visitors, I lost my spot on Google’s first page for search engine results and I really don’t have much of an internet / social media presence anymore. I basically lost my audience.
That you should stick to your ‘personal brand’ so people will remember you, that you should ‘build up an audience’ and ‘gain more followers’ …that you should do this or do that.
That’s all blah blah blah to me now, only because I’ve finally reached contentment, I have no desire to achieve those things. And I want to remove the phrase “I should” from my vocabulary forever and replace it with “I can”.
Being content is not the same as being complacent.
And after learning how to do this for my employer, I’ve come to realize that people can buy or even cheat their way into popularity and brand awareness – by stealing other people’s content or buying followers and likes, just to name a few.
This sums it up for me, it’s a quote from what Cameron Crowe learned from David Bowie on Mashable:
His takeaway, though, is what sticks out bright in his mind today: “He was always obsessed with music and art and never the business.”
“The thing I just wanted to say — I’ve had the last couple of days to think about it — [is that] David Bowie’s impact is so huge in that he presents himself now as a role model to artists who may need to remember that it’s not about branding, it’s about a restless need to be creative and to continue being creative,” he said.
“David Bowie was the anti-branding artist.”
Don’t get me wrong, branding is great – it gets your name out there. But for artists, it’s not a hard and fast rule. You don’t have to stick to a style of creating because the masses like it, you have to create because it’s what you’re born to do whether you have an audience for it or not.
And that’s my take on it.