Such promise in a broken rock… I see paints everywhere now. Makes it hard to walk down the driveway. As if that wasn’t already hard enough before I learned about making earth pigments! The path in my office/studio AND the website has gotten hard to navigate too, so it’s time to do some work clearing the clutter.
Broken Rock Aside
There are changes a’coming to the Wild Ozark website and Etsy shop. Right now the Etsy shop is completely down while I refocus and renovate.
Any of you who have followed me in my blogs over the … decades? I don’t know how long I’ve been doing this. More than a decade, at least. But if you’ve been with me even a few years you’ve seen the changes that happen.
With each name change, the focus changed too. In the earliest days of ‘Ancient Earth Wisdom’, the focus was on herbalism. Then we bought the property in Arkansas and I changed it to ‘Ozark Musings’, and later again to ‘Madison Woods’ and the focus was more on my writing. Even since I started Wild Ozark in 2014, it has evolved. I think part of that is because I’ve been trying to find my niche in the world. Part of it is because my interests are just so varied that my focus is scattered all over the place.
New passions grab me and I run with them for a while, you know? But want to settle in to one of my arts long-term so I can truly master it.
The Nature Art is Here to Stay
I’ve never felt so in love with a creative expression as I am with making my own colors and art materials. So this endeavor is *probably* going to be with me for the rest of my life. That includes the native clay and the colors and the things I make from them.
My writing is going to stay. But it has its own website and so isn’t part of the clearing of clutter on the website, nor in the office/studio. Except once I get the office/studio finished, it’ll be a lot easier to sit down and write!
The Fairy Swing Mushrooms will stay.
Once Rob returns from this contract, his woodworking is going to launch to a new level, so the woodcrafts will stay.
What’s Changing?
Not much. I’m just doing some housecleaning – in reality and figuratively. And I’m taking out some of the too many irons in the fire. I’m going to retire the Forest Folk and Fairy Gardens and all the little accessories I’d been making. I’m not going to return the the farmers markets. Doing the market was just too time consuming and I could never get the art I really wanted to do done because I was too busy doing the things that sold best.
I will try to get into some of the juried art shows with the Fairy Swing Mushrooms and my watercolors once I get enough of them done. Ideally I’d like to have a circuit of shows or festivals to attend quarterly. At least some of those that are festivals would also let us have a booth for the syrup, too.
And speaking of the syrup. Burnt Kettle is a separate thing altogether and nothing at the moment is going to change with that. For the purpose of my focus narrowing, though, it’s just a separate thing and not part of my mental housecleaning.
Clearing the Clutter
At this very moment I’m in the process of clearing the clutter from my workspace in the house. I started that before I left for my trip to Doha, but hadn’t made a very big dent in the huge job that it is.
Once I came home I renewed the effort. All of my office is now stacked in boxes all over the kitchen and I’m trying to decide where to put it all and how to make it all fit back into the office.
It won’t all fit.
I am simply going to have to let go of some things. For example, I have tons and tons of empty boxes and containers for shipping my arts to mail-order customers.
Some of those can go and I can keep on hand just what I need. I don’t need three contractor garbage bags full.
This website is like a virtual representation of my studio/office. It also needs to be cleaned and decluttered every once in a while. Because it is important to my business, it also needs to perform well in that aspect.
Narrowing My Focus
So, the things I am going to continue doing will be the writing, the earth pigments and paints, the paintings/drawings, and the Fairy Swing Mushrooms. I had been using polymer clay for the mushroom caps, but I want to use the native clay for that going forward.
Letting go of the web design (not taking new clients), the farmer’s market, the Forest Folk, Fairy Gardens. Of course, I’m not throwing the supplies away for these things, I’m just clearing the clutter and putting them in labeled boxes. I might need to make a Forest Folk for some reason; who knows?
For the changes coming to the website, I’m going to weed out some of the categories of posts that don’t reflect the above listed things.
What About the Ginseng?
So the ginseng is a complete outlier to the rest of the things I’m doing and want to continue doing. I’m not sure yet what to do about it. I haven’t written any posts specifically about it in a long time, but it’s the main driver of traffic to this website. That’s because over the years, I did write a tremendous amount about it.
I may leave all the content related to ginseng alone, but that defeats the purpose of trying to focus and isn’t really helping with clearing the clutter. Every year I do still post a page for diggers and dealers to discuss prices and find each other. I may move all of that content to a separate website. Since I don’t update it often anymore, once I get it set up and moved, it wouldn’t be too much work.
The problem of what to do about the ginseng is the biggest potential change coming to Wild Ozark. I need to decide if I still want to bother with the growing and selling of seedlings. I think I do. But it’s an entirely different venture than the art and it needs its own place on the web.
What I’ve noticed is that most of the readers who are here for the ginseng information are not here for the blog. They come from the search engines directly to the content related to the ginseng and they rarely go elsewhere to the other topics. Most of the ones who are here to read the blog posts are not here for the ginseng related topics.
So for the most part, it’s two different audiences.
The Blog Itself Won’t Change Much
I write about nature, post pictures of things that interested me, and write about the artistic things I’m doing. Going forward, the focus will probably lean more toward the artistic things I’m doing, and I’ll post pictures of things I find interesting, like nature. So not much change. Just clearing the clutter.
Anyway… thank you to all of you who follow me around in this virtual space no matter what I’m writing about. And thank you to the ones who only like to read when it’s a topic of interest to you. And thank you to those of you who think you’re not going to like this new Wild Ozark much and decide to just hop off now, lol. It’s all good!