Riffing on a theme... creativity and dysfunction.

[Mystress]

   The Goddess is a Goddess of abundance and doing Goddess work should be rewarding on all levels for everyone involved. 

    Those are the kind of partnerships I like to set up with people.  As a writer and an artist I am very prolific.  I am the goose who lays golden eggs every day, but what use is gold to a goose?  I'd give them away for a nice duck pond, a warm henhouse, some lunch and a chance to enjoy the beauty that is wrought of them. 

   If partners can package the stuff and make a profit, sending it out to the world so people who might find it useful get the opportunity to benefit,  then I am happy to let them get on with it, and getting a commission for something I created that I do not have time or ability to finish, package and sell myself is like free money.   

   Eh? A successful artist creates a lot of employment for other people just by doing what they love, what they are best at.  Without those other people (agents, managers, promoters, manufacturers) to both support, and themselves benefit from supporting the artist,  an artist is a starving artist. 

   ADD people are creative anyway, it is sometimes called artist genius disorder... Edison is considered the poster child.  Add to that, I spent most of my life learning to get out of the way and be a transparent vessel of the muse, Goddess' own massive creative Shakti fires.  I get so many ideas, a lot of them really good ideas.  The kind of million dollar ideas that some people wish for their whole lives, but I get more of them than any one person could possibly pursue or manifest.

    I invent stuff, all the time. Ideas just come to me, often fully formed. 

   Today I invented a device for search and rescue of lost wilderness travellers.  It is a little emergency signalling kit for hikers to carry, containing a folded mylar balloon, a little cartridge of helium and a spool with a few hundred feet of fish line. 

  It would take an engineer to refine it, simplify usage with something like the little pull valves they use for inflatable lifeboats.   So long as it is not a blizzard or hurricane, it would work like floating a signal mirror high above the trees, visible for miles in the daytime, reflecting searchlights at night... add a little blinking LED light and it works even better, though the balloon has to be a little larger for the weight.  Unlike flares or smoke signals, it does not depend on the lost hiker remaining conscious, it does not depend on cell phone reception or batteries, it does not depend on searchers ability to see under trees or rocks from a helicopter, and once it is up, it would stay up for days if not weeks.  Mylar balloons don't leak like latex.

    Make a mylar balloon shaped like a radar reflector on a boat, and there you have the nautical usage. Integrate it into survival suits and lifeboats. 

   There is a golden egg for somebody.  Anybody. Take it, do something with it, earn a million and save some lives.  Send me a thank you check, how much and how often is up to you.  I am not going to do anything with it anyway, somebody may as well...   

I could not tell you where the idea came from, Goddess did it... only that I was paging through a Mountain Equipment Co-op catalogue in the bathroom early this morning, not quite awake, and this idea popped into my head fully formed, right out of the blue eight hours later. 

  The Shamans of the Amazon have a hundred recipes for datura poison for hunting darts. That is, every tribe has a different recipe for what is some pretty advanced organic chemistry.  They say the spirits told them how to do it. 

  I invented a technique a few years back, for making flexible comfortable masks that look as if they are made of molded metal.  You can see them on some of my old fetish photos.

http://www.domin8rex.com/serpent/images/classic/imag_serpent.html

  I made a bunch of masks, gave some to friends, traded some for toys at fetish conventions, and moved onto the next interesting idea.  I still have a bag of them around somewhere.

   I loaned the secret to an artist net friend who had a mask business, making beautiful fancy masks for Mardi gras and such.   I made a web page with photos to teach her... I guess that would be my first how-to ebook, if it is still around.  She used the secret in her mask making, and would send me a little $50. royalty check now and then.  Not much, but it was more than I was ever going to earn with it, I'd moved on. 

   Those kind of casual licencing arrangements really work for me.
   
    ----------------------------

   With regard to not selling CDs myself...

  I am hopeless with mail order, in fact I have one FST CD that is a year late for shipping and one or two others that are about a month behind.

  I edited the FST CD page with the old fashioned "allow 4-6 weeks for shipping" because of my ADD brain!  I also owe people soap... I am beating myself up a little, because I made a batch of soap for percyval last spring, and did not get around to sending it out before his exit.

  You know I am more than a year overdue sending you jars and stuff I promised.  I have it all... new tubes of polysporin, baking soda and old fashioned mason jars but getting to the next step of packing and shipping... the more steps to a task, the more places to get distracted along the way.  I fear it may not happen until next time I am on my way there, hyperfocused on a different project, sending stuff for another Swedish FST workshop. 

   I used to beat myself up about this stuff, a lot... I realized I was ADD in the mid 80's from a Cosmo quiz!  Started doing research, adapting my life and forgiving myself for what I could not do.   I got professional confirmation in 2002 but I grew up undiagnosed, being called lazy and a lot of other names by my parents, teachers, peers.

    I am not lazy, I am a workaholic when it comes to my calling,  but some things that are peripheral to that,  are not my strengths get procrastinated forever.  I just fall down and past failures paralyse me. 

  I try to have a system, every so often I take a meticulous afternoon to burn and label the CDs, package them in cases with the inserts and into bubble envelopes with a couple of business cards and an FST logo fridge magnet, put them all in a box under my desk.  Then when an order comes in, they are ready and within reach.  I just need to write the address and seal the envelope... sometimes with a little bar of my soap added.  Getting them to the post office might take another week or two, but they are on my desk waiting... picking up hot chocolate stains.

  Until one day I run out of envelopes or CDs or labels - there is a break in the system-  and it might be three months or six before I get everything together again and prepackage some more.     

    I created the FST CD is a convenience to members with bandwidth issues but getting the CDs out the door, is not convenient for me at all.  I know it should be simple, lots of people do mail order, people with the IQ of a doorknob manage it to run a store on ebay but for me, shipping stuff on schedule is a struggle.  I end up looking like a cheat and feeling like a thief and a loser and that sucks so ... 

   That is one reason I don't sell on ebay, and have not created any other mail order products... why the hundreds of lovely sabbat soaps I spent so much time and investment making are beginning to slowly deteriorate in my basement.  Handmade soap doesn't last forever.
  http://www.fire-serpent.org/soap/sabbatsoaps.html

   It breaks my heart to see them fading away but when will I find time to shrink wrap and package them all, let alone set up to sell them?  I created them, in partnership, trying to help a friend become self employed... before I realized he was not cut out for that. He found a regular job and I was left with a lot of soap and a visa bill.

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  I am already so challenged, trying to keep it together doing all that I do.... sometimes what might be the simplest interruption really throws me, the house of cards all comes falling down.

   I fired a housekeeper/professional organizer, for cleaning up my desk. I had told her never ever to touch it except removing dirty dishes and she "forgot" (passive aggression of the anal retentive) and went after it anyway, one day when I was working outside.  Usually I would stay at my desk while she was there,  guarding it from the obsessive neatness I hired her to express in the rest of the house. 

   My desk is chaos and clutter but I usually know where everything is because my memory is visual.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Things I need to remember are in sight and at my fingertips.  Even if a note or a bill is buried so I can only see a corner, I still know it is there with peripheral awareness and a sense-memory, my fingers remember.   

  Suddenly all of my "external memory" cues were gone and it felt like part of my brain had been removed, it really threw me into chaos.  Deadlines I'd been waiting months for (moving the K-list at midnight on June 30) got missed because the reminder note was moved... It took me a couple of weeks to even begin to get back on track and some projects never did get picked up again.   I felt like I'd been sabotaged. 

   Well, thanks for listening...

[Gustaf]

(I have responded about the CD on the other thread. )

Wow, I can so understand why it would help with someone who kept things organized!   I have a funny balance with Kimberly. I am good at creating systems and ideas, but not keeping them going (my mild artist ADHD no doubt)  Kimberly is excellent at keeping things stable once they are figured out and -keep- things organized.

What has helped me most is dharana (concentration) meditation that increases focus. Kundalini seems to make this easier for me.  I am not a shaman however, and if I don't consciously keep the focus I'd probably forget my pants on the bus, lol.  Just doing my best trying to relate.

As far as I'm concerned I definitely don't want you to beat yourself up over being slow to send stuff.  Gifts are always very much appreciated and honored when they come, but I'm not going to demand or expect them (Then they cease to be gifts in my experience)

Also occurred to me that I haven't checked the k-teacher boards in quite some time. I'd be happy to help out there more, with questions and such.

Namaste
Gustaf