Things are happenin’!

Nutshell version of the post to follow: I Now Have A Newsletter And You Can Subscribe To It!

—————————

Now for the long version:

There are some very smart, business savvy people who get their ducks in a row BEFORE they move forward with an idea. Sometimes I delude myself into thinking I’m one of those types of people, then something comes along to remind me that I’m not so much.

When I opened my little store at CatScrap I had it in mind that I’d just put a few items up, and then take the rest as it comes.  Turns out “it” was on an express train.  I had someone contact me and say “Hey, do you have a Creative Team?” and I was all “No, who would want to be on a creative team for me?”  Then a few days later I had 11 of ‘em and I built a little forum on my website to cage ‘em in.  I call them “The Flock” because I’m kitschy like that.

Christine

Dagmar

Bryn

Rez

Renee

Julie B

Anja

Becky

Bianka

Steffi

Julie D
(my best friend since ’92)
(who never seems to scrap anymore)
(but she’s still on my CT)

Then last night I received an inquiry about whether or not I have a newsletter, or plan on having a newsletter, or am in the process of making a newsletter. And it’s an idea I really did toss around but CatScrap sends out a newsletter each Friday, and I’m set up to peddle my goodies at My Scrapbook Art – and I’ve also posted them here on the ol’ blog.

I’m forever worried about being TOO much, does that make sense?  I come from a long line of people who … can be a little too much. As a result, both my sister and I have become the sort of people who are like “OMG, are they looking at me? Hide me! Is that person looking over here?”

Then my little peer pressurer (I’m looking at you, LeeAndra!) said: “it’s not like you’re holding that imaginary hand (literally!) gun to our heads and forcing us to sign up…” and that made a lot of sense when she put it that way. I do the majority (read: 99%) of my shopping directly from newsletters because it’s a big big world out there and I can’t possibly see it all.

So I spent a lot of time, literally into the wee hours of the night last night installing software on my site that threatened to drive me to an early grave. Then I plugged away on it AGAIN tonight after work. At one point I was talking to Christine’s husband, “The Todd”, about my problems (he installed it with a lot of headaches on her site, and he’s a programmer) and I said “The test emails I’m sending out to myself are containing increasing amounts of vulgarity” and he responded “Maybe it has a profanity filter?”  Because every time I sent a test mail, I’d get a “send failed” error.

Wasn’t the vulgarity though.  I sent myself nice messages and it still denied me. But do you ever do that? Whenever technology gets the better of me, for some reason I’m convinced I can bully it into submission. Like if I steal the Internet’s lunch money it’ll suddenly give up the goods.

I finally gave up, removed a bunch of coding changes I’d made (in preparation for the uninstalling of the beast) and sent myself ONE FINAL TEST MESSAGE because nothing says “Happy Monday!” like a cardiac event  – and it all of a sudden worked! So from this day forward, my newsletter will be brought to you by the 2% of my sanity that remains.

And you can subscribe to it here: It’s a One Little Bird Newsletter, Yo!

Don’t make me hold a gun to your head because then that would just blow LeeAndra’s theory all to hell. But I will hold products over your head and say that this week I will send out super secret hidden links to my New Releases before they go live at the CatScrap store.  I’m not at all above retail blackmail.

And if the software ever stops working some day down the road, I’ll just email you all personally. I think it would take less time.