It's October!

Well then. The "Adobe Bullshit/Update All the Websites/Rinse and Repeat and then Rage Blog About It!" appears to have run its course. In fact the pendulum seems to have swung to the other side and I have gone back to ignoring my website completely.

Hot and cold baby. Hot and cold.

I blame my failed t-shirt empire. Thanks a lot TeePublic.

I was happily learning the "beyond the basics" of Illustrator and Photoshop by watching a bunch of tutorials - ask the neighbors how loudly I screamed when I discovered the "Remove Background" button in the Quick Actions of Photoshop! This ain't your grandfather's CS4! Somewhere in the midst of all of that I made a logo for Ink & Bone Alchemy and thought "Hey, this would be a cool t-shirt!"

And since some of my current favorite tees are from TeePublic, I took that little lightbulb and ran with it. I created a shop, uploaded the graphic and ordered a tshirt and a sticker. Sweet. Then I took the new abbreviated shop name, inknbone, and grabbed the domain name and made a new email address to use (my name is sooo many letters, ugh so much typing). Then I changed the tag line on the logo with the plans to sell them in my new TeePublic shop. I had big plans, I was going to "make the t-shirts you want to wear in the world"! I logged back into TeePublic. And so that I wouldn't have to start a new listing from scratch, I copied the original t-shirt listing and switched out the graphic and updated the entry title and some of the tags and hit save. Then TeePublic coughed up a lung and played dead. Okay, I'll deal with it in the morning. Well, come the morning and I had an email in my inbox informing me that my TeePublic account has been deleted for a "violation of Terms and Conditions". What the actual fuck?!

On the bright side, they did process my order and now I have a nice one of a kind t-shirt and sticker. And I have found another provider to make stuff that I can sell myself on that new-fangled website I built, when and if the mood ever strikes again. Who knows, that was a month ago. I'm kinda in this weird bardo state - the sewing machine is out, but I haven't felt like making new bags even though all the pieces are cut and ready. I pulled the ink and brayers out to do some printmaking, but that didn't really go anywhere. I need to cut a couple mats for some prints I bought, but ugh, I would need to move the sewing stuff to do that. So yeah...

I did decide to do another Inktober run - a drawing a day for a month - this time using prompts from Retro Supply Co. I probably should get on today's drawing. I wasn't planning on writing a blog post today (I'm not even sure what prompted me to go to my site) and I'm really not sure why I suddenly started in on this whole t-shirt saga, I mean, I shot a gun yesterday and I didn't write about that?!

Obviously

oh my god what is wrong with me?? It hasn’t even been a full month since I built that new website on Adobe Portfolio and I’ve already scrapped it! There was nothing wrong with it, I just had all my stuff spread over too many separate sites. So I just spent the last 3 days reconfiguring my WordPress Elfini blog site to do it all - portfolio, blog and online store. I even relocated the whole installation from a sub-domain to the root directory. Holy hell why do I do these things to myself?!

And then this morning when I thought all was well except a few more design tweaks, I found that I couldn't upload images to WordPress! Oh that is not okay! So, I hit the google. And I tried all the things. Nothing worked. And I tried some more things. And then I totally broke the site.

::very external screaming::

So, knowing my poor blood pressure was going to hit unhealthier levels than normal (I'll tell you about my blood pressure woes later), I reminded myself that I have backups. Lots and lots of backups (this ain't my first website rodeo). So, I hopped back into the FTP client and deleted the whole shebang and then re-uploaded yesterday's subdomain folder that I had downloaded before I moved it and ta-da! Everything is working and I can upload images and at some point I might even start breathing again. fuck. Don't tell my doctor about any of this. Or any English teachers who would be appalled at my infatuation with run on sentences. I save all my punctuation for .php files.

Now, I just need to figure out how to hide the sidebar on the shop pages and make the portfolio page full width - it really shouldn't be this difficult! And after I give up on that because I spent most of yesterday trying to crack that nut, I need to create a bunch of product pages because Big Cartel doesn't have an export products function because of course they don't. So.... yeah. Big fun happening over here.

But my birthday is Friday and we are going to Santa Cruz so cake and cooler weather. I'll take it.

If I'm not angry am I even alive?

So, the Adobe Bullshit TM really is all its cracked up to be - how annoying! Everything I have been struggling to do for years with outdated programs, apps, and work arounds is now so stupidly simple to accomplish. If I wasn't so giddy I might be really pissed off. Surrender and be happy? That doesn't sound right at all.

But here we are 3 weeks later, and a new website has been built in Adobe Portfolio*, Squarespace cancelled, and I spend my days working happily in Photoshop and Illustrator learning all the ins and outs and shortcuts that get shit done. Stupid programs that work.

So, I have nothing to bitch about. Why am I even here?! I'm just listening to some Bauhaus and waiting for Erin to let me rat up her hair.

*the biggest stumbling block in creating the new website was the eternal problem of how to organize the galleries. UGH! Still not happy with it.