T-Shirts!

The Big Picture for Our Side Step into T-shirts

The trail video project has always been a good idea. We’re so ready to do that. There’s the matter of paying for everything though. We’re not ready for the successful funding campaign that has to come first. Frankly, now with Russ’ job loss, we’re worried about paying for the basics of life.

There Wasn’t a T-shirt Option Before

We’re intentionally making the video project low impact, so when originally considering supporter rewards for the video project, we considered a t-shirt, but decided to go digital for all the rewards. There were several reasons. First, because “no reward” support levels are often close to the same price point as “t-shirt reward level” support options. That can cause a supporter to think “Well, it’s free, I might as well go ahead and get the shirt.” When a person chooses a shirt that way, they aren’t necessarily interested in wearing it. It may go straight to a thrift store, or worse, it might even get round filed before it ever gets worn.

As a frequent thrift store shopper, I see Kickstarter rewards from time to time. Don’t get me wrong. Just because a reward made it to the thrift store shelf doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a worthy item from a good project. But, if a lot of any given item makes it into the mega dumpster out behind the thrift store, that, of course, would be a different story. For a T-Shirt, that would be the worst form of Fast Fashion. Fast Fashion has big environmental and human costs, so we didn’t want to offer clothing that might not be used.

On top of all that, there’s the real dollar cost of production to the project. For every t-shirt reward the project gives away, the price of the project goes up and it needs more supporters to meet the project budget, which produces even more t-shirts that may never be worn. The negatives compound.

What Changed?

Life Changed. When Russ lost his job, he broke the news with the joke that he’d have plenty of time to work on the video project. In truth, the newfound freedom could be a potential stroke of serendipity that would make everything work out for the best, and things may still work out that way, they just haven’t yet.

The job loss blindsided Russ, and we needed to reassess personal threats and potentials to see how much actual freedom we had for the project in stress mode. We went in a few directions all at once without knowing what to prioritize. It doesn’t help that I’m so overdue to be earning something myself. Ongoing family obligations, the pandemic and the project have tacked years on to what would have otherwise been a short break from paid work for me. I don’t have any regrets about choosing family, or pursuing the project, but the financial downside to those choices has been life changing.

As much as I need focus, direction, progress and movement right now, Russ has needed time. It’s just a really good thing that we love each other because we’re not in the same place and it feels like love is all we have right now. We keep recommitting to the project, but the challenge is how to get there from here without having epic failure rock our world even more.

What’s Different About a T-Shirt Now?

The T-Shirt we’re thinking of now IS the point. It’s the product.

When our life changed drastically, we came to the idea of doing a t-shirt as it’s own project, one that people would buy because they wanted to wear it. That makes all the difference. A loved T-shirt that gets worn is worth producing, especially when we’re going to resource it as responsibly as we can.

We’re willing to offer T-shirts as a stand alone project because people wear them. People wear them a lot, and the ones they buy because they want the shirt won’t have the short life cycle that is the trademark of fast fashion. So we’ll do our best to create and offer a t-shirt that people will want to wear and use, responsibly sourced shirts that last well and can be recycled or up cycled.

I can’t wait till we have them ready to show you! They’re going to be great!

If You Couldn’t Fail

What would you do if you couldn’t fail? It’s a big question, with all kinds of implications. You may see it in a self help, inspirational or life coaching context, a job interview or a Ted Talk. And, you would probably answer it differently for all those contexts.

Laura Shultz and her unexpected response to saving her grandson’s life was mentioned in the first piece I ever read on this subject. The experience made her rethink and change her life. Rethinking what’s possible can change everything. Changing everything is big enough to consider often, so I chose a font, a color and a size and went to the local vinyl shop to have them cut the words for me. For at least 4 or 5 years I’ve had that question on my bathroom mirror reminding me to think bigger and stop putting things off for my future self. I see it (whether I think about it or not) several times a day.

The Big Things

My top answer, if anything really was possible, would be the altruistic beauty queen answer tweaked by my understanding of the world, and I’d mean every world of it it. I’d say things like achieve world peace and social justice. It is the social justice, of course, that results in world peace. I’d want governance, business and manufacturing to have real truthful transparency so all interested parties could become an informed and knowledgeable invisible hand.

I’d want to achieve true economic and environmental balance and have equal access to the best healthcare and phenomenal education for all because knowledge is powerful. Physical and mental healthcare would be so good that crime and bankruptcies would be greatly reduced, virtually non existent. We would build thoughtful infrastructure planned for multi-use with wide range benefits for long term low impact sustainability everywhere. My ideas go on with more things than most people agree are good, but don’t know how to accomplish.

These are my top tier dreams. I know how lofty and nearly impossible they are. I can’t bring myself to say that they are actually impossible though because, while I don’t believe a lot of things are likely, I have to leave room for these things to be possible for our future selves, for our grandchildren and theirs. It would take 7.9 billion leaps of faith, but it could happen.

A Medium Thing

I have dreams that are still big, but more realistic too. A year or more ago a vacant school for sale reminded me how much I’d like to bring my co-op idea into being. The site didn’t have enough land to do everything I wanted to, but it had some pretty awesome potential. I sat in the parking lot and imagined a green roof and what could be done with other spaces. The location solved one of many reasons I put the idea aside. It was a reasonable commute. For family reasons it would be difficult to move to a better location right now, but I got so psyched when I saw it on the way to ride my bike from a trailhead I hadn’t been going to, and was ready to set my sights high. I spent the afternoon doing enough Googling to find out the school would be razed. There were already drawings of a chic high rent glass and steel building that would replace the school.

The sighting got me looking at the possible though. I had originally envisioned something built from the ground up, a new building in a rural area near an exit on a high traffic interstate. After I found out the building I looked at was already dead I looked for other abandoned schools or other buildings inside a commute. There were, in fact, some even better sights, with bigger prices to match. I’ve even reimagined it more recently in a trailside version with overnight capacity for cyclists. Maybe after the cycling video I’ll be more of a known entity. Maybe it could be a dream come true instead of a pipe dream. Maybe the message on my mirror is setting up house in my sub-conscious having the intended effect.

The Now Thing

Part of the point in answering the question of what you would do if you couldn’t fail is figuring out how to put your time and effort where your heart is right now instead of editing yourself for some lower level of purpose, success, or happiness while putting off joy and purpose until you feel ready.

While I’m learning not to put off my most important dreams, I also do have to work within the life I currently have. That’s where the cycling project comes in. It isn’t saving all the parts of the whole world in my next to impossible dream right now, but It is consistent with my highest ideals and within my current stretching reach.

I feel encouraged by people like Marjory Stoneman Douglass, a suffragette, who was plenty accomplished before she started Friends of the Everglades at age 79, and continued to work to preserve the River of Grass for another 29 years, stopping only when she died at 108.

I don’t know what I’ll do next, probably not something nearly so as impressive or as impactful as some of the great people I admire, but I’ll just keep making Baby Steps in the right direction.

Have a glorious day, and we’ll see you on the trail.

Monetizing a Hobby

Last week my partner in everything, Russ, was talking about a tweet he had seen on monetizing hobbies. He said that it was sad so many people felt compelled to monetize their hobbies. I said “I don’t know. Some people can’t have their hobbies unless they monetize them. Dad never could have had all of those boats unless he had been willing to build and trade them, and I never would have felt the freedom to do all that smocking if I hadn’t been able to make it pay for itself.” He said “Exactly.”

For a little back story, Dad built his first wooden boat at around 10 years old in his father’s backyard shop. He probably built more bass fishing boats than anything else, but he also built race boats (hydros), sport fishing boats and put at least one cabin cruiser in a pre-built metal hull. He built engines too. In fact, that was what he did best. When I was young, there was always a way to get on the water, and whatever it was would run perfectly tuned while you were there, and fast. I truly miss that part of my life, not for the speed, but for the access to the water.

For me, it was fine and/or creative needle arts, particularly English hand smocking, a type of hand sewing most often seen in baby clothes. It’s time intensive and something most people can only afford if they do it themselves, buy second hand, use them for generations, or, sadly, if the original hand sewing workers didn’t get paid a living wage. I funded my love of English hand smocking by teaching classes and selling supplies. I also designed smocking patterns, had my work published in my favorite magazine and attended conventions. My soft spot for the art began, in the hope chests and family portraits of the generations before me. It was a privilege to have the time and resources to do it, and I made sure none of the cost took away from the family budget.

One day, I’d like to have the time and resources to research and write a book on textile arts of all sorts, fashion, decor and fine art and the relationship these time consuming arts have with income inequality. It is a multifaceted issue that weaves itself through all of the arts and the economy. Beautiful arts take time and practice. But, people have to earn a living. Many arts are dying, the numbers and kinds grow with time. It’s sad to see these things go and beautiful to see that creativity and the human need for expression still survive.

I didn’t see the Tweet Russ referenced, but we were probably looking at the same rub. The age old advice is to never turn your hobby into a business because you will lose the escape and gain another obligation. But, many (like me) don’t get one without the other. Is it a privilege or a burden? Yeah, that’s the rub.

And, More on Hard Wood

So, the particulars of the flooring salvage on a technical level were this: You rip off any remaining carpet that has been laid on the floors and then you take off the molding, doors and other things that get in the way. You loose a bunch where you start. You have to rip into the tongue and groove somewhere and that’s where you loose a couple, or more likely several rows. Russ got pretty good at minimal loss. He used a big yellow four-foot heavy-duty wrecking bar. He actually used four of them because the first three bent. Manufacturers have made a fine science of using the minimum resources required in production. With this tool, Stanley missed the mark. It was made for our purpose and he used it properly, but they were consistently not up to the job.

When pulling the wood up, it helps to slide the bar in near the nail if it’s not too tight, and to move down with a gentle sliding motion. The trick is not to pull too high, hard or fast. The mighty oak breaks, and then it’s not such a great salvage product. Russ turned out to be great at it and improved with practice. I pulled nails and moved wood.

In a project like this there are always the unexpected problems. We expected to get the house that we were putting the floors in sooner than we did and when that didn’t happen we stored salvage wood from the first demo house on palates at the lot where our old house had been and wood from the second demo house in a garage at the apartment.

Planning is always a cost saver, regardless of whether you are talking monetary costs or any other kind. With demo houses that were on the block and a reno house that had an unpredictable, even questionable closing date, planning was nigh impossible. I had my hands on each board a minimum of 7 times, so anytime we had to move them again from one place to another, I was thinking and talking about efficiency. I’m pretty sure Russ didn’t want to hear that nearly as often as I brought it up. My natural state is pretty Polyanna, but when I’m stressed my strong analytical side can stick like a thorn.

I mentioned the job being bigger than both of us in the last post, and then left it hanging for six weeks before posting this. The truth is, that for most of the second demo house I was certain that the end result would not be worth the hardship we experienced. Russ got sick working in the house, I don’t know if it was heat, stress, or viral. My uncle was nearing the end of his life, and one thing I had usually been able to do in the past was to spend enough time being around for people I care about at important times. No matter where I was I felt like I should be somewhere else.

The choice to do the floors the way we did wasn’t really unusual for us, so it wasn’t just that we were trying to economize after loosing so much in the fire. We are always frugal, always trying to make something beautiful out of nothing and always trying to make environmentally friendly choices. Respecting the resource and salvaging the mass and energy it represents felt good on a fundamental level, but I wouldn’t be fully forthcoming if I didn’t admit cursing that we made those choices more than once during this project.

Many of the things we bought for the future house at a bargain were not reachable because we had amassed quite a store with precious little space to hold it. Things were stacked on top of things, not always by the same person and not labeled, as they would have been if we had the crystal ball that would have let us know that nothing would happen quickly. We had to buy some things again in a rush and at full price. There was a huge bag of paintbrushes that we found at a thrift store and I believe they were stolen out of our garage one day when we failed to notice that the safety tripped and the door didn’t close. It seems such an odd choice of things to take that I wonder if we lost other things that we haven’t missed yet. The lack of organization brought me to my knees on more than one day. Our plan was to organize early and stay organized, but with the delays in getting the house in the first place, then the delays with cleaning and treating the mess left by the owner, we never were able to get out in front of things.

As soon as we got the sealing and prep done, we installed the flooring on the first floor just as we had acquired it, one piece at a time. We’ll do some “how to” articles to, hopefully, save any readers from our mistakes. Russ rented the sander and we didn’t use it. It was not made for someone his height and we were afraid of failing to get it right while at the same time actually damaging his back. We ended up hiring someone to sand and finish the floors. We were glad that we did. We needed the breather and they turned out beautifully. They even ended up being completed on the same time frame.

I like these floors much better than I would like carpet. I can keep them cleaner. I like to look at them better. I appreciate them. As I accumulate new antiques, they will look like they belong on hard wood floors. A fine antique sitting on wall-to-wall carpet really bothers my eye as being out of place. We couldn’t have made a hardwood choice without the salvage component. It’s just too expensive, and we wouldn’t have been preserving a resource. We wouldn’t have gotten the long 12, 16 and 19 foot boards with new materials either. Those long boards are a nice feature that we really enjoy.

I, we, like everything about having the floors. But then there is the telling question. “Would you do it again?” I don’t know. I highly recommend it for others for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, but also, if for no other reason than as a right of passage, or maybe just to truly understand how hard some people work. You know, walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins.

Our experience was mostly good. We were really getting into the first demo house, but the second one was just plain “grin and bear it” work. Doing it gave us enough wood to probably do our upstairs and I’m not at all sure we could have finished the full first floor if we hadn’t done it, but that second house weighed heavily on us. I’m going to love having these floors and I’m going to be glad we did it. The pleasure of living with the floors that we wanted will last and the memories of the unpleasant parts will fade, but to do it again, I’d probably want a much more controllable situation with less uncertainty and less deadline pressure. I’d want an organized base of operation and I it’s likely that I’d be more comfortable downsizing so the project would be smaller. But then I wanted those things for this project too, so for now, I’m just going to take a deep breath and move on to the next project.