This was all my bright idea, I know

I'm beginning to wonder where my knight in shining armour went. I mean just because the going got tough, didn't mean he had to vanish into distant dream land. Right? Oh wait.....

I remember...this was my bright idea.

Now, if I remember right, this started back in 2006, after I got off the truck and came home. After driving 7 days a week, right through the holidays, for the past 4 years, taking an average of 3 days a year off at home, I suddenly found myself sitting like a stump and trying to remember what life was all about.

Let's see....I'll start with the right foot and see what happens next. :) No kidding, it was almost that bad.

Being so used to sleeping round constant noise; either my own truck idling, a reefer unit running, a truck stop full of idling trucks and reefers, slamming doors and street walkers banging on the truck half the night, I found it hard to sleep. It was too QUIET!!!! OK so the TV all night helped. There's an old joke about the truck driver coming home and having his wife sit on the side of the bed to keep it idling so the driver can get some sleep.

It took me 2 weeks, to start getting a grip on daily life again. The first thing I did was look around me to see what I could do to help around the house. The place got torn up, turned around and re-organized, shifted, shelved, what ever. Then there was all my ceramics business equipment, molds and tools, stored under the deck.

It all got reboxed, repaired, reorganized, thrown away, what ever! Ok so now I was tired. :)

There was this neat deck, out the back door (mountain living and a house built on a hill) and it was a great sunny spot to sit and write. I went down to Walmart and got one of those self standing umbrellas. I loved my umbrella and spent the majority of the day, sitting under it. Aah nice.

My grown daughter said, "You've always wanted to write. This is your chance". hmmmm It was a funny thing, but while I was tearing up my grandson's bedroom, feeling sorry that half my office stuff was stored in the corner in boxes, I happened across some old flopply discs.

One of them was labeled 'Mold Book' and I got curious. I couldn't remember what I had done almost 10 years prior. There it was, a whole book on 4 floppies, an instruction book about making ceramic molds. I remembered some photos I had taken for the book. hmmmm

On my trucking travels, I had picked up a Travel Scan and started using it to scan all those old pics. Now everything was rolling along, without my really thinking about it. I completed the book I had started so long ago. Now what?hmmmm

I headed out to the printer place and had them print out some copies, then I made little booklets...no wait....I had them do it. Well, I made a few and decided it was easier for them to do it.

I uploaded a pic of the cover onto ebay and listed it under an auction. Low and behold it sold. hmmmmmmm So I did it again.

I got a message, through ebay, from a young lady asking 'will this book help me to know what to do with a bunch of ceramic molds, my grandmother left me?' The answer was, "No but give me a sec". The next day, I uploaded a pic of the cover of the new instruction booklet, with illustrations. Dang, it sold!hmmmm

Well, now I had a problem. Teaching folks how to make molds, and talking about how to grow their business, meant they would need to know how to make their own master blocks, so that they could mass produce molds, so they could continue forever with turning out their own mass produced ceramics. So the next day, I uploaded a pic of the new instruction booklet, with illustrations and it sold on ebay.

So! Huh! Blink, blink. With instruction booklets, selling on ebay, I wondered what other mess I could get myself into. :)

Being a Christian and loving to write, I began writing articles for a Christian writer's website.

Pretty soon, I was building my own website. Why pay ebay? I wrote about the books and began selling through the website. Printing and mailing off the booklets, started getting to be quite a hassle and the decision was made, one day, to go all efile. That worked out great, because not only did it relieve me of a lot of work, it was cheaper on both ends.

Somewhere along the line, I started remembering the reasons I stopped working the ceramics and mold making and got mad, all over again. For sure, I didn't have the energy, any more, to keep up with the rat race but I sure could go to bat for other crafter's, who still needed to overcome the problems of marketing. Hey! Why waste the knowledge?

Let's see, now. I'll add an rss of my pics from the highway. You can see some of the things I saw along the way. Whether I ever go back on the road, remains to be seen. I've already had to go back for this past year. Yeah :) I was working the internet while on the road. My laptop goes with me everywhere and I've been constantly working toward building an online name, since 2006 (off and on). My last post on this blog, pretty much explains why. I've had you in mind for a long time, now.

I'll keep writing and posting and building. As long as I don't have to get up and spend all my time doing somebody else's work. :)