That is, until Wednesday, when Greg told me I need to take today off. “But Friday is a babysitter day! We pay her so we can work. It’s burning money to pay her when I don’t work!”

That Greg, though. He’s wise. “You’re not getting any work done anyway. Duh. You need a break. Take it. You deserve it.”

So today my feet are warm and dry because I finally bought myself winter boots that fit. I had time to try on every boot in the store, and it was relaxing and I felt good.

I had my eyebrows threaded, because primping feels good.

I spent well over an hour in my favourite store, and I left with four items I absolutely love (even though I didn’t actually want to spend lots of money, but I love them enough I know it’s worth it). And one of those items is skinny jeans that don’t make my ass look bigger than it actually is (which is big), and so I’m downright excited.

I walked the dog.

I’m drinking tea.

And I feel good. I feel clear-headed. I feel indulged and energetic.

I needed this.

And I bet you need this too. So I’ll play the role of Greg now, and give you permission to take a day off. Even if it costs you money. Because you’re no good to yourself or to your business if you’re rundown and sluggish.

So tell me, what are you going to do with your day?

Being Nudged to Practice What I Preach is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

She recently spoke at TEDxVictoria about why calling our offline life “real life” diminishes the legitimacy of our online experiences, contributions and relationships. I wish I’d been there to hear her speak, but the beauty of TED and YouTube is that we can all see her talk right here:

I used to apologize for my online life, much in the same way I’d shrug my shoulders and look away while I mumbled that for work I ran a crochet website. I stopped doing that a long time ago, and here’s why:

Through my online life – the relationships I’ve formed, the writing I’ve done, the ideas I’ve fleshed out, the things I’ve learned, the inspiration I’ve found – I developed my creative identity.

That’s no small feat, people. Before I got in touch with my creative side, I was a wreck. I was confused, depressed, directionless, self-conscious and generally lost. Not until I felt comfortable sharing my ideas in public, not until I met other people who felt (or had at some time felt) as confused as I did, not until I knew I had the freedom to try and fail and try and fail again, was I able to get in touch with what I need and want.

I found my people online, and that enabled me to find my people offline.

My whole life improved because of this. My offline relationships changed as I gained comfort and confidence. My ability to speak about my ideas in person benefited from my having fleshed those ideas out online. Running an online business informed my approach to doing business offline.

It’s all the same.

And as Alexandra says so well in her talk, not only does it undermine our personal experience to apologize for our online lives, it undermines the collective good that can can come from embracing online life as real life.

(My favourite of her ten points is #5. Which is yours?)

Offline Life + Online Life = Life is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Watching this is worth more than eight minutes of your time.

[via @jianghomeshi]

Will piracy ever die? is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Wall scaling at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, ca. 1918, from The U.S. National Archives on Flickr

Not being on Facebook gives me a new perspective on companies using Facebook for marketing. (And no, my perspective is not that I miss the marketing.)

The thing is that marketing doesn’t reach people who are not on Facebook. Now, most social-media users are on Facebook, so if I were a marketer I wouldn’t care about not reaching the few people in my target market who don’t use it.

But as a marketer, I might start finding that a slowly increasing number of the people I reach out to directly (bloggers, influencers, etc.), are not on Facebook. After all, isn’t it the early adopters who are the first ones to jump ship? And aren’t early adopters often the same people a marketer wants on their side to influence their following?

First hand, I’m noticing more and more that I have to reply to people reaching out to me by saying, “I’m sorry, I can’t see the photos you linked to because I’m not on Facebook.” Or “I’d love to learn more about your event, but I’m not on Facebook.” I’m not sure the marketers I say this to have any idea what to do with my response.

Now, I’m certainly no trailblazer in leaving Facebook. I heard many a cheer from people when I finally pulled the plug. I anticipate Facebook will start to bleed a certain kind of user (nay, is already bleeding this kind of user), and that this will continue over time, regardless of whether their overall membership continues to grow or begins to decline.

So. I’ll ask the rhetorical question (it’s rhetorical because I’m assuming you know I already know the answer): What does a Facebook-based (or -focused) marketing campaign do when peripheral influencers are on the other side of the wall?

(This is a revision of an email I initially sent to Sister Diane.)

The Great Wall of Facebook is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Of course, Flattring content is a good and easy way to pay a blogger today. But the event is also a great opportunity to finally buy something our favourite bloggers are selling outright – the clever t-shirt, the inspiring ebook, the awesome pattern, the jewelry, toy or photograph.

Your eyeballs being on my website means a lot to me. I value your opinions and perspectives so very much. I appreciate your support of my work, and I love it when you tell me that something I’ve written has touched you, inspired you, or royally pissed you off.

I want to spend more time blogging about creativity, books, crafts, life and other stuff, and writing Kimagination Station Internet Funtimes, and the only way I can do that is by generating some income from it. Otherwise, I have to spend the vast majority of my time doing paid work, mostly focusing on other people’s great ideas. I love that work, but I’d love even more to to have more time to focus on my own ideas, and sharing them with you.

How You Can Support Me

Flattr the stuff I write here. I have Flattr buttons on all my posts and in the sidebar (if you’re feeling especially enthusiastic, you can subscribe to automatically Flattr my blog each month for three, six or twelve months – after you click the button to Flattr my blog, the text will change to “subscribe” – just click that for more options).

Buy the Virtual Planetoid Hat pattern. So far, there’s no indication my hat-pattern experiment will be a success. That’s cool. It’s what an experiment is all about. But if you like that pattern, today’s a good day to buy it. Or if you’re so-so on the pattern but you’d like to see what other kinds of stuff I might design in the future, you can make that happen with a few bucks today. And since it’s still November, you can get a buck off your purchase by using the code FFlove11.

Buy one (or more) of my books. There are six of them! Available pretty much anywhere that sells crafts books, including your local yarn store.

Subscribe to receive Kimagination Station Internet Funtimes. Subscribing is free, but having a gazillion subscribers sure would be grand encouragement.

Thank you, dear readers. I hope today is a great one for all of you.

It’s Pay-a-Blogger Day! is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

You are missing one of your important jobs on the list in your blog blurb. Mommy! Ya gotta ad [sic] that because it’s the most important job you will EVER have!

I was on my ass with the flu at the time, which is why it’s taken me days to write about this rather than hours. Ordinarily, receiving an email like this would set me off like a lit cigarette tossed into desert shrubbery during an epic drought.

This “motherhood is the most important work in all the world” thing is, not to diminish the importance of being a good parent, annoying as hell.

And.

I just deleted 500 words of diatribe because I think this post could use your input.

Working parents of the world, unite! Consider me to have just tossed a lit cigarette into the dried-out shrubbery of your working parenthood.

The comments section is all yours.

Don’t hold back.

ETA: In the comments, Darren Barefoot linked to this TED talk by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. (I’ll add this thought to her very good points: We need to make it so that when children come into the picture, both parents make decisions about how to balance their career and parenting. One way to shift things so that more women make it to the top of their career is to work toward establishing the assumption that either parent can compromise.)

Don’t call me MOMMY at work. is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

My Name Is Fail, by Flickr user ~db~ (CC by-nc-nd licensed)

In Rothfuss’s universe, the most powerful of all the magics is in naming. When someone is able to understand a thing so fully as to grok its utter essence, he can manipulate that thing by naming it. The first book of the series is called The Name of the Wind, so I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to use naming the wind as an example. When one can name the wind, one can call a storm, or one can calm one.

Naming a thing is powerful, dramatic stuff.

In my session at Hello Etsy Portland last month, I asked the participants in the room to take a couple minutes to think about their fears, and to write them down. And then I asked them to share. It may not be as dramatic as controlling the weather, but there is an undeniable power in naming – out loud, with others.

But just as it’s no small feat to grok the utter essence of the wind, naming your fears requires a degree of honesty and courage beyond simply writing a list of things that make you uncomfortable. All of us can say wind, but only a few can name it, and then only some of the time.

Naming our fears in a way that allows us to control them requires understanding them all the way down to their subtlest essence. We’re all afraid, to some degree or another, of failing – and each of us has a different definition of failing. To properly name your fear, you need to spend some quality time with that fear. Is it a money fear? A pride fear? A competition fear? A success fear? A judgment-of-others fear? Are you really afraid at all? Maybe you’re just feeling pressured to follow your business idea but your heart isn’t really in it. Maybe you feel like there’s too much to do and so you’re doomed to fail. You can only properly name something that really exists, and only when you fully get it.

When Rothfuss’s character names the wind, he’s only able to keep hold of that name for a limited time. So he must use the time wisely, and so must we when we name our fears. We don’t want to start living in those fears. We need to grok them – to feel them up and down, let them wash over us, smell them, taste them, commune with them – and then we need to step away from them so we can dismantle them, jump over them, burrow under them or simply pucker up our lips and blow them away.

The Power of Naming is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

If… you fully embrace the notion that your clients hire you for your intention and vision as much as they do for the end product, you will understand that doing things how you do them, without compromise, is the highest respect you can give.

I admitted during my session at Hello Etsy in Portland last month that I often find myself uncomfortable when not-my-people ask what I do – when I want my answer to be about Mighty Ugly. (When I want my answer to be about the other work I do, I say I edit crafts books and that usually puts and end to that bit of small talk.)

When I talk about Mighty Ugly, I shuffle my feet and mumble something about doing workshops with a creativity exercise, shuffle shuffle mumble mumble.

It’s ridiculous and I know it.

I run workshops that help people confront their creative demons, experiment with new approaches to creative expression, and build confidence in what they do. All sorts of people, whether they identify as creatives or not. Much of what I do is try to make people feel comfortable and safe while they do the scary, uncomfortable work themselves. That’s not an apology. I do it well, and I want to build my business so I can do it more.

I need these reminders to stop mumbling about what I do. I’m not doing anyone favours by shying away from having to explain myself in more than one sentence.

Do you mumble or shuffle your feet when you tell people about your work? Say it with me now: STOP DOING THAT.

From Mumbles to Declarations is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

With a couple of important yet not universally applicable exceptions¹, you cannot control what others do with your work.

The minute it escapes your possession, your work will be interpreted, judged, manipulated and sometimes downright defiled by people you don’t even know. One day I’ll tell you the story of how Greg reacted when his parents hung one of his stunning mosaics over the toilet².

This is the nature of creative work. Hell, this is the nature of some dude on Twitter overhearing your vacuous conversation on the bus.

And I’ll argue till I’m blue in the face that this isn’t a bad part of creative work. Even if it stings. Even if it offends.

Which is why I think this post by Katrina over at the Salt City Spice blog is bunk. In it she argues that it’s bad behaviour to publicly bookmark (on Pinterest) a product with the intent to make something like it yourself, specifically if it’s a handmade item. That somehow it’s failing to support crafty businesspeople.

But that’s not how it works. The onus is on crafty businesspeople to make products that people will buy.

If your products are constructed very simply and you photograph them well and you market to a crafty audience, you’re going to find that some potential customers will make something similar for themselves instead of buying from you. If you want fewer people to do themselves and more to buy from you, you’re going to have to create some sort of perceived value that convinces them to buy your goods instead of making some on their own. This is totally possible. It happens all the time. Look at how many people turn a profit selling zipper pouches.

Even if your products are complex, people may take inspiration from them for their own projects. So what?

The scope of Katrina’s post is limited to recreational use – she’s not even talking about the far more complicated topic of where the lines get drawn when the parties in question are all selling things³.

There is an insidious undercurrent of rule-following in the crafts world. Did you know there are people out there who think they could get arrested for altering a crochet pattern for their own use? They think making a short-sleeve sweater with long sleeves instead is violating the designer’s copyright.

Their fear of breaking these rules (that don’t exist) hinders their enjoyment of their craft. And then there’s the effect it has on their creative expression, in general.

That’s an extreme example, but as evidenced by Katrina’s post there’s a far more widespread assumption that we need to watch out for people’s feelings when we make creative decisions. And though of course I’m not advocating rampant assholery, I do think our creative business community would benefit from a somewhat tougher attitude. Not an attitude of everyone for himself, but an attitude that as businesspeople, we sometimes need to be headstrong rather than soft-hearted.

Creative work is personal. And so it can really hurt when people behave in ways we wish they wouldn’t when it comes to our work. But the sooner we accept that we can’t control these things, the sooner we accept that the free exchange of ideas is the basis of a healthy society, the sooner we’ll be able to return our focus to creating a sustainable business for ourselves.

A business, I hope, that participates in the exchange of ideas and knowledge in our creative community.

Prying Control from Your Cold, Cramped Hands is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Anyway. I just stumbled onto this poster on Pinterest, and I must vehemently disagree.

Don’t hide from your fear. Don’t deny it. Don’t feel ashamed of it. Everyone who creates things – and especially those of us who want to make a living being creative – feels afraid. The kicker is not to be paralyzed by that fear. The kicker is not to give up before you get started. The kicker is to accept that failure is a part of creativity.

So.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

But do it anyway.

Someone in my session at the conference said, “You can be afraid and not do it, or you can be afraid and do it.” I wanted to lift her up on my shoulders and parade her around the place.

And when you fail – for fail you must at some point or another, or maybe even every day – take stock, rev your fear back up, and get back to creating.

Be afraid. Do it anyway. is a post from Kim Werker's blog.