When I was in college, my fashion design professor gave this bit of advice.  Always start a conversation, whether it is in a cover letter, job interview or any networking opportunity, with the following statement:

My life is consumed with fashion.

The truth is that I am consumed with a lot of things – consumed, obsessed, whatever you what to call it – but what happens is I get an idea in my head and get all gung-ho/coo-coo-munga on it.  The fashionista in me got into a lot of financial trouble this way, which happened the moment I found a kindred spirit in Trina Turk whose size 2s fit me to perfection.

With teaching, I would get an idea for an extra-curricular project and run with it to the point of extremes where it would usurp my personal life.  There were many years where I would work 12-hour plus days in order to prep extra lessons that I technically did not need to do.  As of recently, I’ve learned to figure out a better method of time management.  Of course, that took me twenty years of trial and error, but now everything seems so manageable that I have time to pursue something else.

Which leads me to this blog – website and my art career.

I’m still working out details of selling art on-line, but yes, it is starting to happen.  Shopify will wait a bit longer, as I pursue my friend Sheri D’Elia’s (ArtistShera.com) route – redbubble.

www.redbubble.com is a site that sells merchandise with artwork on it.  I spent the better part of last night uploading some watercolor paintings and I’m just so excited by this endeavor.  Even if I don’t sell a thing, I feel enormously successful, because I took the leap, finally, and put myself out there.

The paintings look incredible on those cell phone cover things. Makes me want to go out and get a cell phone.  Yes, that’s right.  I am so last century when it comes to personal technology that I seriously am in danger of becoming an anachronism.  I’m planning to get an I-phone soon, mainly to extend my social media take-over (lol) to include Instagram, where I have read many artists have launched their careers into the stratosphere of financial success.

http://www.vogue.com/872448/buying-and-selling-art-on-instagram/

I’m working on having 2,000 twitter followers by midnight.  I’m at 1,959 right now and that seems an achievement in itself since I started tweeting only about six weeks ago, something like that.  People have been so generous with the re-tweeting and so on.  I feel incredibly lucky/blessed/grateful – whatever you want to call it, that this stuff is all happening now.  I almost feel like I wasn’t ready before, if that makes any sense.

https://twitter.com/karentashkovski

I’m a late bloomer.

What consumes you?