Things to learn from

I'm sorry for the last few posts being unedited, hopefully they haven’t done any long term damage to your brains. I am so busy lately that I get to the blog post so late at the end of the night that there is a time crunch.
However it’s not that which I’m learning from in the last week so much. but something so astoundingly simple that I cringe to realize that I was completely oblivious to it before now.
I’m used to thinking of myself and my creative work as private and essentially keeping to myself. I completely failed to realize I have contacts. And bloody good ones too. All in the form of business cards which are haphazardly stuffed in my pockets along with my loose change or used as bookmarks.
If you’ve been reading for some time you may know that every year I attend a multi genre convention called Connecticon, and a local crafts fair, and that I work at a university. Well one of the things that happens at these places is the inevitable social contact with people who share my interests and fairly often business cards.
So here I am in a creative explosion enjoying creating things for no compensation, while working a job for almost no compensation (and worried about it), wishing I could make money doing the creative stuff. All the while I’m sitting on or holding my place in a book with contacts. Darn good ones. Yet never the two did meet until a passing comment from somebody the other day started bridging the gap for me.
I’ve been looking through these cards, which while handled somewhat irreverently are always kept, and realizing that I’m standing in a hallways full of doors marked opportunity that are all slightly ajar. And I think to finish this analogy you’ll have to imagine I’m a centipede. Because there are a lot of doors that I should be sticking my feet into.
I’m in the process of at least trying some of them now. It’s really an embarrassment of riches, that I have been ignoring and a lot of good people should do my best to stay in contact with. Even if nothing comes of most of these things I can at the very least have some people who share my interests and with whom I can exchange ideas.
Since this realization struck me I’m chasing many of these leads and realizing that there were other opportunities I failed to notice before too. It’s like that moment when suddenly the water drains from your ear when you hadn’t even noticed it, but things are suddenly much better sounding.
It makes me feel stupid, where was all that creativity and brainstorming ability while all these things floated around before me, all but waving their arms for my attention.
Well feeling foolish will get me nowhere and I’ve got some busy days ahead of me if I want to seize some of these opportunities. He who hesitates is lost.
Onward and upward,
Take care of yourselves.
Roving Jack