Shaken, Not Stirring

Just one thing - take care when mixing friendship and business. It's OK to become friendly with a business associate, but always keep business between friends as strictly professional and sterile as possible. I learned this the mildly difficult way. I took a business deal with a friend for granted, assuming more than was mine to assume. As a result of this transgression, and its consequences, I have decided that all future business dealings will end up on paper - whether transacted with a stranger, a moderate acquaintance, or a dear friend. There is no allowance for error or assumption in these cases, and a truckload of frustration and heartache can be avoided. You would have thought I'd have learned my lesson after the whole lawsuit thingy, which you don't know about. Just know that it was the same lesson then, learned but unheeded.

What Is Love, Anyway?

Seth Godin writes a great marketing blog called, appropriately enough, Seth's Blog. Despite its declared subject matter, it is still more than tangentially relevant to my everyday life. The struggle to happily wed art and commerce is addressed in today's post, titled Maybe you can't make money doing what you love. I'm always hungry to commiserate with other artists, and I 'm glad to know I'm not the only one who loses the muse whenever money is involved. I don't know if it's the pressure of being exposed as a fraud that makes me clamp up, or the (pre-)realization that clients frequently want something with which they're already familiar. I've got to stop all this pre-realizing. Subverting, or more to the point, getting past my own expectations is what art+commerce is all about for me. I struggle on...