Making

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Going from working with words to working with my hands.

For years, my creativity has always centered around writing. I started writing in my early teens — fiction, back then — and managed to turn my writing skills into a career starting in the early 1990s. I wrote books and articles, mostly about how to use computers. Later, I wrote about flying and, most recently, about boating. And, of course, I’ve had this blog for nearly 20 years.

Building Solutions

But it was around 2014 that I started branching out into other creative endeavors — actually making things with my hands. It started when the building that would become my home was under construction and I had a need to make things for it. I think the first thing I might have made for the inside of my shop was my workbench, a sturdy affair made of 2×4 lengths and plywood. It’s ugly, but it’s sturdy as hell, mostly because it weighs a ton.

Shelves
This is the first set of garage shelves I built. It’s 8 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and two feet deep. I put Penny the Tiny Dog on a shelf for scale. I built this on the garage floor and needed help getting it upright.

Since then, I’ve built various other solutions for needs I’ve had, including a number of other work surfaces, storage shelves for my garage and garden shed, and three chicken coops. (It was the third coop, a 4 x 8 foot building with a metal roof that’s large enough to walk into and has four perches, six nests, and a brooding area, that finally did the trick.)

I did a bunch of the work necessary to build or finish my home, too. I wired the whole place, laid down Pergo laminate flooring and tile, built stub walls and a shower stall, constructed deck rails for my outside deck and inside loft, put down the Trex decking on my 600 square foot deck, and added trim around doors and walls. More recently, I worked on a bathroom project that required me to lay out plumbing drains and vents, install insulation, and put up paneling. Although none of these activities called for much creativity, they still involved making things with my hands.

Along the way, I’ve accumulated a pretty respectable collection of power tools — certainly more than my father, stepfather, or wasband ever had. I have a chop saw and a table saw. I have an impact driver, three drills, and a pair of battery operated screwdrivers. I have a circular saw, a reciprocating saw, and a jig saw. I have an angle grinder and a Dremmel. I have two nail guns and a big compressor with enough hose to reach anywhere in my home or garage from the garage. And hand tools! I have just about everything I need. As my wasband used to say, “Any job is easy when you have the right tool.” Hell, yes!

And I’ve come to realize, after nearly 10 years of doing this kind of work, that I like it.

Making Jewelry

Elsewhere in this blog, I’ve already discussed how I got started making jewelry so I don’t want to rehash that here. Instead, I want to talk about how making jewelry makes me feel and why it has become a part of my life.

I look at jewelry making as a combination of challenges:

  • The engineering challenge is to come up with a design that physically works. For example, a pendant that includes a stone must have the features necessary to hold the stone securely in place. It must have a bail to hang it from a chain or other necklace. It must be balanced so it doesn’t hang awkwardly from its bail.
  • The aesthetic challenge is to come up with a design that looks good. What design elements can I include? Which stone will I work with? How will the overall design complement the stone?

  • Ruby In Zoisite
    This piece on includes two ruby in zoisite stones. It was entirely handmade from sterling silver sheet, bezel strip, and wire. The skills I used to make it include cutting, piercing, filling, stamping, shaping, and soldering the metal. As for tools — well, it took a lot more tools than I could take with me in my travels.

    The skills challenge is to be able to create the piece of jewelry I’ve designed using the silversmithing skills I have or am building. Those skills include cutting, filing, texturing, and soldering metal. My skills improve with every piece of jewelry I make, but they’re limited, in part, by the tools I have available. (I have a full set of jewelry making tools in my home-based studio, but I’m very limited when I travel.)

It’s these three challenges that make jewelry making a rewarding activity for me. There’s always something new to try. There’s aways a skill to build or hone. I will never be an expert, although I will get better and better at what I do just by doing it.

Making Jewelry for Sale

When my seasonal flying work was earning enough income to support me, making and selling jewelry was a “side gig” and it didn’t matter much whether I made more money than I spent on materials and equipment. But with my retirement this year, that has changed. I’m now treating my jewelry business more seriously as source of income. That means making more (and selling more) jewelry.

I’m fortunate in that I have several avenues for selling and they’re all pretty good. Some are better than others. About a month ago, one of my wholesale clients pretty much cleaned out my inventory of pendants, leaving me with slim pickings for my online shop and a lot of work to do before my next art show. That show is coming up in about 10 days, so, as you might imagine, I’m hustling to make more inventory.

The challenge now is to keep my creativity level up and not just make different versions of the same item. I do that, too — it’s quick to be able to make certain designs in “batch mode” — but it also takes a bit of the fun out of making. (See the second bullet point above.)

Lately, I’ve been very busy with garage projects, but for the next 10 days, I’ll try to spend 4 to 8 hours a day in my studio. (Fortunately, it has an air conditioner, which I’ll definitely need with temperatures getting into the 100s for the next few days.) I’ll work primarily on pendants, which I’m so short on, but will also try to get some earrings made. In the evening, while I’m relaxing with my pups upstairs, I’ve been making the beaded necklaces that coordinate with the pendants; I’ve made four in the past three days.

I have two back-to-back shows in Leavenworth, WA, including a five-day show for Labor Day weekend. Then I might do a half-day show in Twisp before taking whatever inventory is left to my wholesale customer in Winthrop and a gallery in Twisp. By then, it’ll be pretty close to the end of my stay at home and the start of my travels.

On the Road

Will I make jewelry while I’m away?

It was easy when I traveled with the cargo trailer I turned into a mobile jewelry studio. I could camp out in the desert all winter and spend as much time as I liked inside it with just about every tool I needed within reach. But I’m not traveling with the cargo trailer anymore. These days, I’m on a boat and space is very limited.

Ruby In Zoisite
Another ruby in zoisite piece, but wire-framed. I can make this kind of pendant anywhere and it still sells well, but I’m bored with it.

The main challenge will be to put together a set of tools and materials that’ll keep me producing without taking up too much space. The wire work I used to focus on is extremely portable, but I’m kind of sick of doing that. Beading is also something I can do anywhere, but even the beads take up a surprising amount of space so I’ll need to limit what I bring along.

I’d like to be able to keep fulfilling online shop orders as I travel, but that means taking all of my inventory with me. That’s not a huge deal since jewelry is relatively small and I have a good storage case to keep it all in. I’d also like to be able to set up new wholesale accounts along the way — but that means having enough inventory to sell. And that means making while I travel.

So the answer is yes, I will make jewelry as I travel. I just don’t know how much. The next 12 months should be quite a challenge.

Why I’m Leaving Etsy — and Maybe You Should, Too?

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For years, I had an online shop on Etsy to sell my jewelry. Not anymore.

I’ve made some changes in my online shop and I thought I’d take a moment to explain why and what I changed. But let me start with an explanation of how I sell my handmade jewelry.

How I Sell My Work

Most of my sales are either directly to buyers at art shows, via consignment sales at two Washington State galleries, or wholesale to a variety of gift shop owners. Each method has its own pros and cons:

  • Art shows take a lot of time and effort. I’ve got to get to the show, set up my booth, and then sit in it for the duration of the show. At the end, I have to pack it all up and get it home. Those are the cons. On the plus side, however, is that I have complete control over my inventory and sell at retail price. So I have the potential to make more money per item sold.
  • Consignment is a different ball game. I drop off inventory that the consignment place may or may not put on display immediately. When I drop it off, I lose control of it and can’t sell it. But I also have to keep track of it. If and when it sells, I get a check for 60% to 65% of the retail price. Ouch. If it doesn’t sell, I get it back, usually in serious need of cleaning before it can go back into my inventory. Those are the cons. On the plus side, it doesn’t take much effort to sell and my work eventually appears in a shop with other gallery quality items. I generally get checks every single month, year-round. Still, I’d rather not do any more consignment selling, especially for high ticket items.
  • Wholesale is pretty much the same as retail with the main benefit being that I get paid up front, don’t have to keep track of what’s sitting out there, and I never see it again. It’s the same as selling to a retail buyer, but at a deep discount. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

I’d like to do a lot more wholesale selling and a lot less art show selling. Part of that is that art show success is so dependent on the venue and the weather. I usually turn a decent profit at each art show I attend, but I did lose money at a Christmas Show in Spokane last year and that hurt.

When I sell wholesale, I know my cost of sales right up front: the amount of the discount I have to offer and the cost of getting the merchandise to the buyer. When I sell at art shows, I have a lot of costs to cover before I can start seeing profits: jury fees, entrance fees, transportation costs, lodging costs, etc. — and that doesn’t even include the cost of my booth tent, tables, table coverings, displays, etc. It’s possible to pay $400 for a booth at an outdoor show 50 miles away and have weather so miserable that no one comes out to the show. Or pay $500 for an indoor show 150 miles away and be stuck in a back room none of the shoppers walk back to. This has happened to me and it sucks.

Selling Online

Of course, selling online is probably the best of all worlds. I keep control of my inventory and sell it at retail price (or maybe a slight discount with a coupon or sale). The online shop calculates and collects the money and sends my share — more on that in a moment — right to my bank account. I package the merchandise — which is easy because I’m selling small items — and ship it out. I don’t have to set up, sit in, or tear down a show booth. I don’t have to sell at deep discounts or wait until an item out of my control is sold. When an item is sold online, it’s gone and I never have to think about it again.

Lots of folks think this is the only way to sell. They think it’s as easy as setting up an online shop and ringing in the sales. But what they don’t understand is that people not only have to want what you sell, but they have to be able to find it.

And that’s where Etsy comes in.

Etsy — Then and Now

Etsy started as a marketplace for handmade goods — items created by crafters and artists. It built a reputation as a place where you could buy unique things while supporting makers. And, for some people who don’t know any better, it probably still has that reputation.

Mastodon Toot
A response to my toot this morning about my switch from Etsy to Square for online selling. I giggle at the word “tat,” which is apparently UK English for “junk.”

But it’s a farce. Etsy is now full of manufactured junk, much of it made overseas and passed off as “handmade” by people trying to cash in on Etsy’s reputation. As a web designer on Mastodon commented to me today, “I was looking at selling on Etsy lately and was dismayed to see it now sells all the same tat as eBay/Amazon, and appears that the only way to actually sell anything is to pay them to boost listings.”

And that brings up another one of Etsy’s ploys. If you search Etsy for an item — say “silver jewelry” — it will bring up search results with Etsy sellers who paid to have their posts boosted before any other sellers. Sometimes, the search results don’t even match the search phrase. In so many cases, the results that come up are cheap crap that you know isn’t handmade.

Etsy Search Results
My search for “Silver Jewelry” brought up this collection of garbage. Are we expected to believe that someone will make you a personalized name necklace for only $16? And how much of this stuff looks like silver to you? The whole second row is paid advertising. Scrolling down (beyond this screenshot) displays more of the same. As a seller, do you think anyone will find what you make in this mess?

White Buffalo Pendant
While this might not be your taste in jewelry, it’s solid sterling silver, hand formed from sheet, strip, and wire with a genuine White Buffalo Turquoise cabochon in it that was hand polished by a lapidary friend just for me. Even the beaded necklace has sterling silver beads, although the white beads are howlite.

So I’m making quality sterling and fine silver jewelry with gemstones using a wide variety of silversmithing tools and techniques and I’m competing on Etsy with this crap?

But wait, there’s more!

Recently, Etsy decided, out of the blue, that it was going to hold back 70% of my payment as a “reserve.” No real explanation of why. It just had to wait an extra week or two to get my money.

Add that to Etsy’s fees:

  • 20¢ for each listing, including automatic re-listing of an item that didn’t sell in 60 days and automatic listing of multiple quantity items when one sells. So, in other words, you’re going to pay 20¢ per item just to be able to show it on Etsy.
  • 6.5% of the order total, including shipping and gift wrapping fees, if charged.
  • 3% + 25¢ for payment processing fees.
  • 15% of the order total for sales made through the use of Etsy’s offsite advertising. Yes, if Etsy puts an ad on Google and someone clicks that ad and it takes them to your shop and they buy something, you pay Etsy an extra 15%. This is an opt-in feature and I’m pretty sure the fee used to be 20%. I opted out when I realized what it was costing me; somehow all of my sales were being hit with this fee.

And this doesn’t even begin to cover the optional monthly fees you can pay for shop customization options or the optional marketing fees you can pay to boost listings and get them at the top of search results.

So, in all, we’re looking at roughly 10% to 25% of the listing price to sell it. And that’s if it sells the first time it lists. You’ll pay an extra 20¢ every time it’s relisted.

Yes, I know this is less than the cost of selling by consignment or wholesale and even less than the cost of selling directly to buyers at art shows given the cost of doing art shows. But I think it’s a bit outrageous when you consider that I’m not getting my money immediately and my work is pooled in with so much other crap.

Sellers Revolt

Etsy sellers are not taking this sitting down. Or at least some of them aren’t. The withholding of money has gotten Etsy sellers up in arms enough that they’re threatening to strike. And that has resulted in Etsy backpedaling to reduce the amount it withholds. I got an email telling me that they were only going to withhold 30% of my sales.

Too little, too late. For the reasons listed above, I’m outta there.

I set up my shop to be “on vacation” with a vacation notice that says my shop is permanently closed and they can find my new shop on Square. Of course I included a link. I also turned off all automatic listing renewals for everything still listed in my shop. One by one they’ll disappear. When they’re all gone, I’ll delete the shop. Unless Etsy deletes it first.

The Square Solution

I use Square for credit card processing. I have been using it since it first appeared as a credit card acceptance option, back when its target market was garage sale runners and babysitters.

Back then, I set it up for my flying business. I was tired of using a credit card acceptance system that charged me a minimum monthly fee, statement fees, and a relatively high credit card processing fee. It was costing me more than $50 a month, even when I didn’t accept any credit cards.

Square was different. It used a smartphone app, charged a reasonable processing fee, and that was it. No monthly fees, no minimum fees. The only catch (back then) was that they wouldn’t pay out more than $1,000 per week. They weren’t expecting folks like me who sold service that often started at $1,000. But I was able to get around that with them by providing documentation that proved I was legit and had other credit card processing service in the past. The upped my weekly limit to $5,000, which was fine. (There isn’t any limit anymore.)

So when I started doing art shows, it made sense to set up a Square account for my jewelry business. While people might whine and complain that the rate is too high — seriously? — or they have some other imagined gripe about it, I have no complaints about Square, at least not yet.

One of the things Square now offers is the ability to sell online. While they didn’t implement this in a user friendly way, I have enough tech knowledge that I was able to figure it out. I started building my online store more than a month ago and now have most of my inventory in it. You can find it at MLJewelryDesigns.square.site.

It’s simple, but that’s okay. I think it looks professional — certainly a lot better than Etsy ever looked. It works.

Best of all, it’s free. No listing fees, no selling fees. All I pay is the cost of credit card processing, which I would if I were selling at an art show. It even has a built in shipping calculator that lets me buy discounted postage to ship items out. Just like Etsy.

Yes, there are upgrades available for a monthly fee. One of them would let me use a custom domain name, which I’m considering. Others offer better marketing options or shop analytics — most of which I don’t need and certainly don’t want to pay for. I’m not fooling myself here: I don’t sell much online and don’t think I ever will. But I want the option. I want to be able to send folks to a place where they can buy what I make 24/7.

And that brings me to marketing.

Promoting My Online Shop

I remember the early days of the worldwide web — you do know that’s what the WWW stands for, right? Back in the day, everyone wanted an online shop. They thought that all you had to do was set up a website and people would just buy, buy, buy whatever you were selling. No one seemed to realize that people had to want what you sell and find your shop before you could maybe sell to them.

And that’s where marketing comes in.

Yes, I have an online shop. Yes, there are features built into Square’s online shops to be found by Google in searches. But I’m not dumb enough to think that I can just sit back and let those two things bring me sales.

If Facebook is your business’s website, you’re doing it wrong.

Serious business owners have real websites for their businesses, not Facebook pages.

You might think it’s enough to just put your business on Facebook and steer folks to your page, but it isn’t. First of all, it’s alienating people like me who wouldn’t open a Facebook page to follow a friend, let alone get more information about a business. Second, as discussed in this blog post by UK web designer Nick (who also authored the Mastodon toot above), you’re at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithms to determine whether what you post on Facebook will even appear for the folks who follow you.

You can do better than that without breaking the bank. Heck, even my WordPress-based sites have the ability to forward all of my posts to the folks who want to see them. No algorithm will block that.

No. I have to send people to my shop. And I do that several ways:

  • Maintain a website. I use the ML Jewelry Designs website as way to share news with visitors, including folks who actually subscribe to get that news. And yes, I get a bump in website hits and even a few online sales after every art show I attend. Also note that I used the word “maintain.” That means adding fresh content regularly. No one wants to visit an out-of-date website more than once.
  • Distribute business cards at art shows. My cards have a photo of one of my pieces of jewelry and a link to the ML Jewelry Designs website. The website is not my shop, but it does have links to my shop and links to specific pieces of jewelry. Those cards are not only available in multiple places in my booth, but I also slip them into the packaging for every single item I sell.
  • Post about new work on social media. The website does this for me. I use WordPress which posts to Mastodon for me. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter (or X, the dead bird site) anymore. I do have an Instagram account and I try (but mostly fail) to post there. Any social media post I make has a link to either my website or the actual listing in my online shop for the jewelry I’m showing off.
  • Link where appropriate. I link to the ML Jewelry Designs website wherever appropriate, including this blog and from the organizations that sponsor the shows I do.

No More Etsy for Me

While I know that several of my artist friends have had some success with Etsy and haven’t seemed too bothered with the reserve or fees, I can’t say the same. If you’re like them and Etsy is working for you, stick with it. But if, like me, you’re tired of your work being hidden away among so much manufactured crap, maybe it’s time to find another solution.

I’m done.

Pronoun Woes

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This old reader/writer knows the difference between singular and plural pronouns.

I just finished an audio book that kind of bugged me. The problem: the use of plural pronouns to apply to a singular person.

It was jarring. Most of the characters had the usual singular pronouns of he/him/his or she/her/hers so the text I heard as I listened was extremely easy to follow when the reader read about those characters. But one main character used the they/them/their pronouns. As a result, anytime the reader referred to that person, it sounded as if he were talking about multiple people. My listening brain came to a complete halt every time.

I’m old school. Although I understand the reason why people don’t want to use a male or female pronoun, I really wish we’d come up with a pronoun that didn’t already exist as a plural.

It’s difficult to understand text that refers to one person with a plural pronoun when the text could easily refer to multiple people. Many times that the reader referred to this character, I had to figure out if it was just that one person or multiple people. It was extremely distracting from the story.

I want to blame the writer, but I know why he did it. He wants to help make gender neutrality more acceptable to the general public. He wants us to get used to it. It’s a noble goal. But it drives some of us nuts. I would definitely have enjoyed the book more — with a lot less distraction — if he stuck to standard pronoun usage for his characters. Hell, he already had two lesbian couples in the book. How much did he need to support gender issues in what was basically a science fiction drama?

And now I know folks are going to step forward here and comment that we’ve been using “they” to refer to singular unspecified gender individuals for years and that it’s in the dictionary or that it’s in some widely used style guide. But it’s only been in common usage for people who don’t want a specific gender identity for a short while now. And I’ve been reading and writing for more than 50 years. It’s not as if I can flip a switch in my brain and it all works out fine for me. “They” refers to more than one person in my brain and most of the brains out there.

Clearly, we need a new set of singular pronouns. Can we fix this please?

Is Social Media Destroying Your Mind?

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Take a moment to question why you’re on social media, what you gain (or lose) from your involvement, and how you can make your life better with or without it.

I’ve been a very active user of social media since around 2006 or 2007. I might have started with MySpace — who can remember back then? — but I definitely jumped on the bandwagon at Twitter and Facebook, spending well over an hour almost every day scrolling through new content, clicking Like and Share and Retweet buttons, and posting content of my own.

Has your focus been stolen?

I cannot say enough good things about Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus. It talks about all kinds of things that are distracting us and preventing us from achieving what we want or need to. If, like me, you’ve begun to realize that you’re less productive at home or work or having trouble maintaining relationships with friends and family members, put down your phone and pick up this book.

I preferred Twitter because the people I interacted with there seemed smarter and more dialed into reality. Not that there weren’t good, smart people on Facebook and idiotic assholes on Twitter. There definitely were.

But the difference between Facebook and Twitter — at least in my world — is that most of the Facebook folks were real-world friends and the Twitter folks were strangers. It’s hard to see posts from friends and relatives that clearly indicate their racist, homophobic, white suprematist, or conspiracy theory views. It’s hard to see them lose their minds to manipulative memes that spur hate and anger. It’s hard to realize that they probably aren’t as smart as I’d hoped they were.

And that’s one of the reasons I dumped Facebook a few years ago — the other being the realization that the algorithm was feeding me crap and preventing my posts from being displayed to friends and followers — and haven’t looked back.

I’m on the verge of fully stepping away from Twitter now. It has become a hate-filled cesspool so full of paid-for misinformation and random advertising that I honestly don’t know how folks can still visit it regularly. Elon Musk has revealed to the world what an absolutely crappy businessman he is, first by overpaying for Twitter and then by instituting policies that, little by little, have been alienating long-time users to the point that they’re leaving in droves.

The writing on the wall for me was Musk’s changing of the verified checkmark, which always indicated that an account had been verified to be what it said it was, to be some sort of revenue generating badge. What I quickly came to learn when I was stripped of my blue check was that anyone who now had a blue check had paid to get it and obviously had some sort of revenue generating agenda that made all of their tweets questionable.

In the 15 years I’d been a Twitter user, it had changed dramatically. I stepped away in November 2022, shifting my focus on Mastodon and the Fediverse for my social networking needs. I’m now in the process of deleting my 147,000 (not a typo) tweets and may even permanently delete my Twitter account.

Avoiding the Mind-Rotting Crap on Social Media

But is Mastodon any better? I can argue that it is, mostly because there’s no algorithm to manipulate and no ads to distract.

But I think the main reason Mastodon has been a breath of fresh air for me is the simple fact that I absolutely refuse to be dragged into any discussions about topics that generate a negative emotional response. Those include (but are not limited to) politics, climate change, gender issues, and race issues. Of course, all of those fall under the broad umbrella of politics in the U.S. because everything in this country of idiots has been politicized.

How do I avoid these topics? By setting up filters that prevent toots with specific key words from appearing in my feed. By not following — or sometimes even muting or blocking — accounts that toot or boost about these topics.

Poll
I put this poll on Mastodon mostly to help people realize how dumb it was to post political stuff. I didn’t expect many votes and didn’t get many. I was just hoping it would get boosted and seen and thought about a lot more. People need to wake the hell up and realize how they’re being played.

And that’s the problem these days. People spend too much time spreading information that supports their opinions on these matters. They don’t care if the information is true or false or some mixture of the two. They don’t care if it generates hate or anger — in fact, I believe they want it to do just that. Make us angry, make us hate the “other side.” Make us want to share the same crap and perpetuate the same anger and hate.

People who share this don’t seem the care — or maybe even realize — that they’re pushing the Us vs. Them mentality that keeps Americans divided and easy to conquer by power-hungry politicians and the corporate lobbyists who feed them in return for subsidies and favors. They’re playing right into the hands of the people who are destroying us for their own benefit.

And I won’t be a part of it.

Social Media is Not My News Source

And no, I’m not living with my head in the sand. I am probably more aware of what’s going on in the world than the idiot who gets all of his or her information from social media.

I listen to two news brief podcasts every morning — First Up on NPR and The Seven from the Washington Post — that give me the headlines and a little more; I follow up when I want to by visiting reputable news sites. I follow news, not opinion — I don’t need someone to think for me. I can think for myself. I suspect that most Americans can’t anymore. Our education system no longer teaches us how.

Is Social Media Destroying Your Mind?

But do we really need social networking? Do we really need to communicate with strangers online?

I can argue either way, but I will say this: face to face relationships with other people are far better for us than communicating with often anonymized strangers in the ether. Knowing this has pushed me into being more socially active after Covid and my crazy travel schedule pushed me into an ever more hermit-like existence.

I live alone and work mostly at home, so I don’t get the kind of interaction during the day that most folks have. I lean on social media for content by others to stimulate my mind and get me thinking about things I normally wouldn’t think about. I build relationships with some of these people. They are, for the most part, my only option when I’m home. And they’re a plausible option for anyone in a similar situation.

The danger is when we let these people think for us or sway our opinions or get into our heads to the point where they’re manipulating our emotions.

If you spend a lot of time on social media, why not take a few moments to think about its affect on you? Put aside your phone and other distractions, take out a sheet of paper and a pen, and honestly answer the following questions:

  • Why am I on social media? What does it do to benefit me?
  • Do I use social media as an escape from what’s going on around me?
  • Does my social media activity make me happy? What about it makes me happy?
  • Does my social media activity make me angry? What about it makes me angry?
  • Do I learn anything on social media? Am I certain that what I learned is true?
  • Why do people I follow share what they do? What are their intentions?
  • Why do I share what I do on social media? What are my intentions?
  • Am I building relationships with the people I meet on social media?
  • Am I seeing what I want to see on social media?
  • How much time do I spend, on average, every day on social media? Is it time well spent or would some or all of that time be better spent doing something else?
  • Am I neglecting responsibilities because social media is taking up too much of my time?
  • What can I do to make social media more fulfilling or useful?
  • What can I do to make social media take up less of my time?

I did say to answer those honestly, right? This isn’t something anyone else will ever see. Be honest with yourself. There are no right or wrong answers. Hopefully, the answers you come up with will help you understand how your use of social media affects you and how you can make it better.

Time Wasted

I wish that I could somehow get back all the time I spent doomscrolling on Twitter and Facebook — especially Facebook, since for about two years it really sucked me in hard. There was a time when every idle moment was spent with my phone in my hand trying to see what was going on in an online world that was prioritized by computers for the sheer purpose of keeping us coming back for more.

But I can’t.

These days, I see myself leaning on Mastodon the same way. I enjoy my experience there more because of the way I’ve fine-tuned it and because of the people I’ve met. But I’ve come to realize that it, like Twitter and Facebook, are sucking away my time, making me less productive. So I’m going to dial back a bit, limiting access to specific times of the morning and evening. Time is limited and I simply can’t afford to waste it on things that don’t matter.

Can you?

My History with a 1995 Sea Ray SeaRayder F-16

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In my possession for 12 years before last week’s sale, it played a part in the theater of my crazy divorce.

Jet Boat For Sale
Here’s my little jet boat parked in front of Bob’s house on the corner. He also sold my Yamaha motorcycle for me. Now if only I can get him to take my truck camper…

Last week, I sold my little jet boat.

Or my friend Bob did. He lives on a main road and had a caller within 30 minutes of putting the For Sale sign on the boat where it was parked on the corner at his house. The next day, after a launch and engine run, he had cash in hand and the new owner was driving away.

About the Boat

The boat was 28 years old when I sold it. That is not a typo.

First Look
My friend Pete and the boat’s previous owner open the engine lid for a look inside. It was immaculate.

I bought it in late summer 2011 from the original owner, a couple who lived at Crescent Bar in Quincy, WA. I’m pretty sure my future wasband told me not to buy it — he didn’t like me buying anything anymore, even though I always bought with money I’d earned and not our joint funds.

It was a fun little boat. At the age of 16 years old — when I bought it — it was in amazing condition, having been stored indoors for most of its life. The one season the original owners had left it in the water on a mooring ball at Crescent Bar, the upholstery had taken a beating and they’d replaced it. It looked great. It started right up. It was easy to tow, easy to launch by myself, easy to drive, and easy to get back on the trailer by myself.

Because it was a jet boat, it seemed to steer from somewhere about 1/3 down the boat — instead of from the back. It was a weird sensation, especially at high speed. Virtually no body roll. It would just seemingly slide into a turn.

It had a 120 horsepower jet boat engine which, considering the boat’s diminutive size — it was only about 17 feet long — seems like a lot. But it didn’t have enough power to pull a skier — I was told that by the owner when I bought it. That was fine with me. All I wanted was a way to get out on the water and have some fun. The price of admission — just $1,500 — made it a no-brainer to buy.

Winter 2011/2012

Helicopter and Motorcycle
I had one of my two motorcycles shipped up to Washington because I was spending every summer there and wanted something to get around on other than my wasband’s truck. Here it is with my old helicopter parked at my friend Pete’s winery/orchard. Both of these are gone now; more life subchapters closed.

I couldn’t bring it home with me to where I was still living in Arizona because I had to drag home the fifth wheel I spent my summer working months in. Instead, I made arrangements to have it and my old Yamaha Seca II motorcycle, which I’d had shipped to Washington earlier that year, stored indoors for the winter.

I went home and had a miserable winter with my future wasband, trying to keep our marriage together by living with him during the week in his Phoenix condo and coming home with him on weekends. If anything, living in the cave-like condo he’d bought (for reasons I still don’t understand) made matters worse.

In the spring of 2012, I went back to Washington for my fifth consecutive season of cherry drying. I was growing my business there and had hired another pilot to help me during the busiest part of the season. I was also working on a Mac OS book revision — I was still writing computer books back then — and picking up flying work by taking people to wineries with the helicopter. It was summer 2012 and my flying business was really looking up.

When I wasn’t writing or flying and there wasn’t rain in the forecast, I was able to take my little jet boat out on the river from Crescent Bar and ride my motorcycle. My summer job was looking more and more like a paid summer vacation every year.

Parked Boat
Here’s the boat parked at the Colokum Ridge Golf Course campground, where I started each summer. You can see my old Montana fifth wheel and my wasband’s white Chevy truck in the background.

The Divorce Bullshit Begins

The idiot I was was dumb enough to marry called on my birthday to tell me he wanted a divorce. (Can you believe that shit?) A lot of weird stuff followed and if you look hard enough in this blog under early posts tagged divorce you should find plenty of that.

Meanwhile, I was stuck in Washington for work and I wasn’t sulking around. I was doing what I always did when I was there: hanging out with friends, flying for work and pleasure, writing, and doing fun things like day trips with the boat or my motorcycle or my wasband’s truck, which is what’d used to take that big fifth wheel up to Washington again.

When he didn’t actually file for divorce and swore that there was no other woman, a friend of mine told me that he wasn’t serious about the divorce and was probably just blowing steam. I emailed him to tell him I’d be home in September with the boat so we could use it on Lake Pleasant. But then I found out about the old woman he was already shacking up with and my plans changed.

At the end of cherry season, I stored the boat and the fifth wheel and went home. More weirdness followed. Then the nitty gritty of divorce bullshit. He dragged that out for months, certain for some reason that I was in a hurry to get back to Washington and would give him anything he wanted to finish things up quickly.

For a man who’d lived with me for 29 years, he certainly didn’t know me very well. I had no reason to go back to Washington before cherry season and I only had one home. So other than taking a few trips to visit friends and family members, I just stayed home and packed. I’d already decided that when the divorce dust settled, I’d buy 10 acres of land in Malaga that some friends were selling and build a new home on it.

The boat never crossed my mind, although, in hindsight, it would have been a lot of fun on Lake Pleasant and the Salt River lakes while I waited for him to get a clue.

The Boat as a Divorce Pawn

The boat was included in my list of personal property. Because I had purchased it while we were married, it was technically part of our community property, despite the fact that only my name was on the title. I don’t remember if I listed it for its purchase price of $1500 or something a little lower, perhaps $1200. I was honest about the value — which is more than I can say for the way he tried to undervalue his Mercedes by neglecting to mention its AMG upgrade. Although we tried mediation to split the personal property and other things before our court date in May 2013, the old woman he’d replaced me with — who was apparently managing the divorce for him — told him not to agree to anything. So that’s how the boat wound up in court.

Skinny Me
I lost 45 pounds while I was away in Washington during the summer of 2012. I’m surprissed my future wasband didn’t have a heart attack when he first saw me on my return. I looked and felt like the new woman I was about to become.

And this is where the farce began. I think it was our second day in court. Before things got started, his lawyer told my lawyer that my future wasband wanted the boat and was willing to pay half its value. He offered me $1000 for my share.

Now this was, in no way I knew of, half the boat’s value. The boat, in my mind, wasn’t worth a penny more than I’d paid nearly two years before: $1500. For some reason, he was claiming it was worth $2000.

But I knew what was really going on. They — my future wasband and his “advisor” (or mommy; call her what you will) — thought the boat was worth a lot more. Remember, he’d never actually seen more than photos. They figured that if they lowballed me and I refused, they’d somehow be able to prove it was worth more than I said. (For what purpose at this very late stage in the game, who knows?)

But I knew what the boat was worth: $1500 max. So he was offering me $250 more than half the value.

I’m not a complete idiot. I took the offer.

While all this was going on, my future wasband was squirming in his seat. It was pretty clear to me — after all, I’d lived with him for 29 years, too, and I’d been actually paying attention — that he didn’t want the damn boat. This was a ploy his mommy and lawyer had agreed to play in court as the judge was settling into his seat for the day and I don’t think he was happy about it. When I mentioned that the boat was in Washington and I would not be storing it for him, he started to see the reality of the situation: having to not only pay for a boat he didn’t want, but drive 1200 miles to Quincy, WA to retrieve it and another 1200 miles to bring it home. I relished the thought of him doing that for an 18-year-old boat he’d overpaid for.

So he told his lawyer he didn’t want it and it went back into the property pool.

Oddly enough, when the judge made his decision, he let me keep everything I’d bought over the years, even if I’d bought it since we were married. That included the fifth wheel, a hangar in Page, AZ (which was actually an exchange for like property purchased before we married), and the boat.

So I got to keep the boat and didn’t have to pay him a dime for it.

The Boat in My New Life

Janet Fishing
My friend Janet spent a week with me in late summer 2013. We took the boat out and she did some fishing. A typical trip would be to drive at full throttle up to the nearest dam, kill the engine, and drift back downriver, listening to music, snacking, and talking with whoever had come along for the ride.

When I moved up to Washington “full-time” to reboot my life closer to work, the boat became part of that life. My garage was big enough to store it and although I didn’t use it as much as I wanted to, it was great to be able to just hook it up to my Jeep and drag it down to the Columbia River on a hot summer day with friends. I even dragged it to Arizona behind my truck camper years later, long after that fifth wheel had been sold so I could go boating on the Colorado River, Lake Havasu, and Lake Pleasant.

Boat Dogs
Although I didn’t use the boat as much as I liked when I took it back to Arizona, it was good for a few outings on the Colorado River, Lake Pleasant, and Lake Havasu. Here’s my old dog Penny with Janet’s dog Dually on the bow when we headed out to the Colorado River late one afternoon.

But time marches on. I wanted to do more serious boating. Cruising in something I can live aboard while covering long distances. Like maybe the 6,000 mile Great Loop. After a series of unexpected positive events, I wound up buying the 2019 Ranger Tug R29 CB I named Do It Now. I’ve spent a total of 179 days on board since September 5, 2022 and I’ll be going back for more at the end of this September.

I didn’t need that little jet boat any more. I knew that, despite the fact that I really liked it and how easy it was to just go out on the river for a day of fun. It was taking up space in the garage, space I’d hoped to store other stuff in. Like maybe a trailer for that bigger boat.

Selling the Boat

So after a lot of soul searching, I put it up for sale last week.

I suspected, at this point, that it was worth more than I’d paid. Everything these days is worth more. (My truck camper is worth at least $7K more than I’d paid for it 6 years ago.) So I originally priced it at $2200, hoping to settle on $2,000.

Last Day
Here’s the boat on the last day I owned it. I’d taken it down to the river for one last ride with the neighbors who were interested in buying it. I almost changed my mind — as I almost had on my last motorcycle ride — but stayed firm.

The neighbors who wanted to buy it — well, she did and he didn’t and he won — said it was worth more. So when I dropped it off at Bob’s house where it would get a lot more exposure, I suggested $2500. He thought that was high, but it was worth a try.

It sold in less than 24 hours for the full asking price of $2500. I paid Bob a commission and pocketed $2250.

Did I lie about the boat’s value back in 2013? No. I think inflation and the fact that the 28 year old boat was in mint condition — due to being garaged for its entire life — worked in my favor.

And thus ends another subchapter of my life: my small boating days.