Design and Self and Such

One of the things I like most about my job is the fact that I have the freedom, when time permits, to make my own promotional materials in-house. I love it that I have PhotoShop and Adobe PageMaker at my fingertips. I quite like graphic design, although I have the hardest time matching fonts and writing captions (still!).

Lately I've been working on a neat 20-page booklet that I had the idea for a couple of weeks ago... and I think it's looking quite nice. The only problem is that the photocopier/printer/beastly machine that prints ledger sized paper (17"x11") isn't working and no one is really sure if it ever will get fixed or work again. Ack. I had hoped to get a bunch of these sent off this Friday.

Megan has a great post up over at beetlegrass about 17 things she's learned in her seventeen years as a freelance illustrator.

This month for me marks a year as being an Etsy seller, with my shop opening and it's first sale taking place last August. It's been great to have a little online business and a forray into the world of entrepreneurship and small-scale self-employment. I've sold quite a bit in the shop, as well as a good number of custom orders, and eight squirrel bags have found loving homes. :)

I've loved the creative outlet that Etsy selling has provided me with... it gives me something creative to do. Something creative that makes money. And I've improved my sewing and design and pattern drafting skills. It's nice to have a hobby that is supported by the business I have been able to create out of it. I'm paid to be crafty (as long as what I make sells). I can buy beads and fabric and other fun things because I know they for the most part can be turned back into profit.

And I even paid for a whole trip to Manitoba and back with my profits, how great is that? :) One of the things I like least about my current job is the fact that I barely make enough to get by, so having this little business of my own on the side has helped me to be able to do a few things that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to afford.

Even here, at age 28, and a degree (or 2 or 3) later, I still find I haven't escaped the question "so what do you want to do?" You know, with your life, or as a job, or whatever. I'd like to say I've stopped asking myself that question, because I am trying to enjoy the here-and-now and this moment that I've been placed in or find myself wrapped up in. There is that Dawson's Creek song that says "I don't want to wait for our lives to be over, I want to know right now what will it be?" Yes, sometimes I feel that way.

But. The unexpected. What would life be if we knew what was to come and what we'd accomplish (and fail at), and where we would go and who we would share time with and the things and people we would devote time to and love?

This, I suppose, is a continuing dialog of my post last week. I like the reminder this passage gives us: "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' (Acts 17:24-28)

Especially the part where it says "and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us."