Love & Glitter

I ' m not a business.

If you're not interested in listening to me vent, may I suggest this lovely site? Back in January, I became obsessed with creating the best little art tribe out there. That's not a bad obsession to have! But, being kind of OCD about things, this obsession led to my spending 10 - 14 hours a day on creating content, commenting on shared content, managing social media, and scheming up ways to keep the studio a sanctuary while 'growing organically'. I invited people into what felt, to me, like my living room and I gave them space. Some of them wanted to promote their own products and services, so I made them a deal: run a group in which you show case your stuff, and you can link to your offsite stuff to your heart's content in that group. I thought it was a brilliant idea. Until it became too much work for my partner and I to handle, and we noticed that our membership was complaining of too many options, too much to do, and not enough time to do it. Our leaderboards showed a drop off in all the groups. To ensure that those who wanted to post prompts and challenges were getting noticed, and to make sure that people weren't confronted with eleventy million groups when they signed in, my partner and I decided to assimilate those groups into one group and boy howdy. Shit hit the fan. I'm still not sure how it happened, exactly. Every shitty-ass vlog, blog and message about it is all vague and rambly ~ you know the type. I attacked person A, but when they describe the attack it sounds like I made some changes they didn't like, they left in a huff (what I call 'unhappy flounce') and then started mass messaging their Facebook friends about what a sociopath I am. Then person B gets pissy because apparently, my reminders and requests that she not spam the group are 'bullying' and  I only promote people who benefit me. *Eyeroll* So person A sidles up to person B and they wage an attempt at 'informing the public' about the 'menace' that is Effy Wild: Career ruiner and nay-sayer and taker away of our toys! And when they couldn't get a rise out of me (because I don't send traffic to trolls, yeah? But I don't mind taking troll generated traffic! Welcome! Make yourself at home!), they went after my partner who is the sweetest person I know. She can't even say 'fuck', this girl. She wouldn't say 'shit' if it hit the fan and exploded all over her face. She stuck up for some of these people when my spidey senses were going all 'red flag red flag'. She is a softer, gentler den mama than I am, and to see these people try to take her down? Well, it disgusts me, frankly. It's beneath adolescent girls, let alone grown women. This is what I have been wanting to say but have not said because my old blog felt way too related to Wild Precious: If you are two-faced, I do not like you. If you lie to me, I do not like you. I admit I used to sit around wondering what was wrong with *me* when people didn't like me or lied to me. I admit that I then moved on to wondering what was wrong with *them*, what wound was there that caused *them* to behave the way they did. I admit this helps me let go, but it doesn't make me want to 'try harder' to 'tolerate' them. After this experience, though? Not one fuck will be given in the microcosm that is my life. Not even one. Ban, block, binned, and good riddance. I have a sort of shiny, happy love for all of humanity *from a distance*, but I do not have to hang out with all of humanity, and If you engage in or cheer on smear campaigns, I will not hang out with you. If you gossip, I will not trust you. It might make me prickly, but I'm prickly because if you do any of those things around me, I guaranfuckingtee that eventually, I'm going to be on the receiving end, and I am anything but stupid. Was a time (last month) that I noticed these things and let them slide. I am a reformed 'letting-it-slider'. I am going to start trusting my gut *and acting on it*. If my tummy so much as *feels funny* when I see your photograph on Facebook, I am going to unfriend you. If you are seen in the wild world picking on, bullying, gossiping about or otherwise behaving in a way that makes me wonder if you're actually the age you say you are, I am going to distance myself from you. If I have to tolerate you because I have some contractual agreement with you, I will tolerate you, but if I don't, I won't. In the end, I lost no friends, and banned ten people who talk out of both sides of their mouth from the studio. Business women everywhere are probably staring at me like I have three heads. They are probably thinking things like "You won't build a business that way, nuh uh, you are going to get a reputation for being a hard ass, uh huh, you have to smile and swallow the shit people dish you if you want to get anywhere..." Well, I'm not running a business. *I am not a business.* I am a woman with a life full of complexity and hardship and triumph and joy who has decided she wants to hold space for people who share her values, her standards of decency, her abject hatred of spam, and her love for mixed media art. It all boils down to this for me: If you don't like me, or the way I do things, go make your own thing that works the way you want it to work. Why are you wasting your time (and mine) on trying to bully, shame or guilt me into doing things your way? Don't you have better things to do? Like vlogging about what a menace I am and tripling my blog hits? Gah. Effy (Thanks for the extra blog hits, by the way!) All flamey comments will be deleted, but feel free to troll my inbox.

Envy & Audacity

Most women I know were raised to be nice. They were raised to be quiet, neat, unassuming, sweet, kind, nurturing, and *nice*. They were raised to smile when they were angry. They were raised to soothe, smooth over, negotiate, and compromise. They weren't raised to be ambitious or to promote themselves. They weren't raised to raise their voices in song or anger or *at all*. As a result of this mass conditioning of the feminine being in our world, whenever a woman appears on the scene who is audacious, ambitious, self-confident and self-promoting, she gets a lot of attention. Some of that attention is positive, to be sure, but a lot of it? Negative. You know this to be true, yes? You have probably experienced this yourself. You put yourself out there, and find yourself labeled a ball buster, hard, cold, calculating, ambitious (said with a sneer), emasculating, bitchy, too loud, obnoxious, or any of the other lovely labels our society plasters all over women who simply live out loud. I think the root of this labeling is envy. I think when you see a smear campaign begun against a woman of power, the people behind it are envious because they aren't living in their power. They are behaving themselves. They are being quiet, nice, unassuming, sweet...or at least, that's what they tell themselves while they humilate themselves and their gender by smearing a woman they 'don't like' for all the world to see. There is only one cure that I know of for envy, and that's getting what it is you think you want. If you find yourself feeling really hostile toward a woman because she's putting herself out there, daring to dream in colour, behaving audaciously and hopefully and laughing, singing, dancing, living LOUDLY, perhaps it's because you want that for yourself. Instead of wasting your energy being envious, let that envy inform you, and drive you in the direction of your own desire to be audacious. I dare you. Who are you NOT to? xo Effy (repost from January 2011 because I seem to be getting a lot of unexpected extra traffic today. :))

Glitter Flinging 101 ~ Or How I Promote Others and Why.

I love to promote people on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks, but I have a definite criterion for this kind of 'volunteer work'. I developed the criterion after I had a few negative experiences with promoting people *for the wrong reasons*. This was entirely my fault, and I accept full and total accountability for the resulting negative experiences, but it's resulted in an ethic around promoting others that stands me in excellent stead. I once undertook to promote someone I didn't actually feel very good about because I thought it would be a good marketing move. I thought if I promoted them, they'd promote me, and we'd all live happily ever after. Instead, what happened was my name became associated (in a teensy way, but still!) with someone whose ethics and values don't jive with mine. I became painfully aware of this when the person I'd promoted (and then quietly *stopped* promoting) became the subject of scrutiny over copyright and poor ethics. I cringed when this happened, even though I'd long since stopped promoting her. Another time, I promoted the hell out of someone who had a reputation for being really negative on line. Now, I adored this person, but it wasn't long before her negativity turned on me. Negative people tend to switch targets as often as they change their underwear. Loving someone who constantly complains (in public) about other people is a very tricky proposition. Promoting one is a recipe for disaster! I learned a couple of hard lesson. I learned never EVER to promote someone I didn't particularly like, but I also learned NEVER to promote someone because I hope they'll promote me. EVER. Not even if I adore them, personally. If that hope of mutual promotion is there, I'm operating out of my ego and my promotion isn't sincere. I also learned never EVER to promote someone who doesn't have good working relationships with other artists (huge mistake) or people who complain a lot. If you do anything for a complainer, it isn't going to be long before they complain about *you*. I've noticed a bit of this on line lately. "Why should I promote them if they aren't going to promote me?" Look, you're not an advertising firm. You're a person. If you're promoting someone and you resent it, stop. Because keeping score is petty. Because if you are known for showcasing people and products that actually MEAN something to you, you will develop a reputation as a person of good character whose opinion is valuable. That might not sell spaces in your workshop or paintings from your Etsy, but it is awfully satisfying all the same. Yes? Yes! I like flinging glitter over other people's awesome stuff. It is something that comes naturally to me. There have been times when people have felt snubbed or ignored because I don't fling glitter all over their stuff, and I always feel a little guilty about that, but my other criterion for flinging glitter? I have to want it for myself. If you're selling something, and I'm not interested? I'm not promoting it. You know why? Who's going to listen to a recommendation from someone who ain't buying? Not me! So. Every affiliate link, every post about someone else's workshop or product, every single speck of glitter I fling is over something I have paid for and used myself. How does this help me? I don't come off as a marketing machine. People know I'm selective, so if I do recommend something, they know it's gotta be good. This gives me 'klout' of the kind that may not result in sales for my own stuff (I seem to be better at promoting other people's stuff than I am at promoting my own), but it does garner the kind of readership/tribe I really want: people who give a shit that I have good taste. People whose tastes are similar to my own. Voila. A word of advice? If you find yourself complaining about promoting people and not getting anything in return, you're probably promoting the wrong people for the *wrong reasons*. xo Effy