I've found recently that I have a hard time with intro's so let me just skip that part and get straight to the point: MrskrNZkry will be changing. The things I'm changing may not be very evident at the surface level. It's likely that I could have made all the changes I wanted without an announcement and nobody would have noticed. But I wanted to talk about the problems I've run into both because it keeps me accountable to myself and because I think it's a problem that many small creators face. That is the problem of business versus pleasure, or productivity versus creativity. [If you just want to know what changes will be happening you can scroll to the list at the end of this post.]
This isn't the first time I've hit this wall. My original attempt to create and grow a social media following was through my @MarissaSmokes Instagram and YouTube pages. YouTube hadn't cracked down on cannabis content creators yet and "WeedTube" was really taking off at the time. I had hopes that if I started creating the content then the views and sponsors would come. I didn't fully recognize the amount of work that went into making high-quality, consistent posts. I kept things up for a while and things felt promising at first until I hit the wall. I was disappointed in the quality of the content I was producing and social platforms were starting to demonetize cannabis channels. These weren't insurmountable issues but they felt like it at the time, so I abandoned ship. I kept the MarissaSmokes pages around for my own personal usage but I stopped thinking of them as a potential business.
I took a bit of time off trying to be a "professional" content creator before I briefly came up with the idea for Oregon Stoners - pages that again lived only on YouTube and Instagram. The idea for Oregon Stoners was to create something that was both more professional and more collaborative. I was hoping to showcase Oregonians in the cannabis community while fighting against the idea that so-called "stoners" are lazy, unproductive, or lacking professionalism. This page lasted even less time than MarissaSmokes. The idea was decent but I wasn't in a place with my own mental health to be starting a large, collaborative project. I never officially decided to stop posting on those pages, but I rarely posted on them, forgot the log-in information and never felt strongly enough about the pages to try to retrieve them.
The biggest issues with both pages was that when I created them it was with a desperate, all-or-nothing mindset that was a direct product of my situation at the time. I was in the deepest throes of my anxiety & depression and I had no regular source of income. I felt that working for myself could and would solve all of my problems with an immediacy that, in retrospect, was never possible. I also had no direction or plan on how I wanted to develop either page with time. Unfortunately, I would bring these same problems with me when I started MrskrNZkry, though I didn't realize it at the time.
It was at this point that I took a break from attempting to create businesses and started focusing on how I could improve my mental health to get to a point where I could work a "regular" job. I started looking for how to enjoy my free time again. I had always loved art but when my mind wasn't clear neither were my creations and I hadn't produced anything I was proud of in years. But my counselor convinced me to give it another go now that I was seeking treatment and I once I started, I took off. Most of the paintings currently listed on my Etsy were created in those first few months. I also started branching out into other realms of art that I hadn't explored before. It began to feel quite productive but I had nobody outside my immediate family to share the productivity with.
That's when I began thinking again of the idea of a small business. Several of my friends had small art businesses and it seemed like it would be fun. This time I knew that if I wanted to do this, I wanted to do it right. I wanted more social presence, I wanted a website, and I wanted to come across as a professional. Last summer I took a few months away from work to re-balance my mental health, which was again fluctuating, and I figured while I had the free time I may as well do something with it.
That's where my troubles started. First, I was devaluing the time I was using to improve my mental and physical health. I felt like if I wasn't working and earning money then I wasn't being productive. Second, I still had the all-or-nothing mentality that had gone along with my earlier attempts. I wanted all the pages running at once, I wanted to showcase every art form. And again, I convinced myself that if I created the listings then the items would sell. Whatever loose goals I had when I started MrskrNZkry, they weren't based in the reality of what was achievable.
There have been a couple points of (more notable) inactivity since the creation of MrskrNZkry and each time I thought it might be the quitting point. But to be honest the sheer amount of time and energy that I put into the original creation of these pages made me hesitant to delete them completely. I wanted to give myself time to re-evaluate my goals and desires with this page to see if I could reform it into something that brought me a sense of joy instead of confused anxiety.
Here is what I've come up with:
I am no longer going to think of MrskrNZkry as a business venture. Instead, this will be my passion project.
What I post will be for my own entertainment and hopefully will bring a smile to someone's face. I want to create things that bring joy, even if it's only to a handful of people.
I am going to continue creating and posting art to my Instagram, FaceBook, and website but I will no longer be listing physical items for sale on my Etsy. If somebody is interested in purchasing a piece of my art they can inquire directly.
I will be keeping my Etsy but I will be removing the listed art items. The only items I will be selling on Etsy going forward will be vintage or antique clothing and decor.
I will be keeping my RedBubble print shop open. This page requires less upkeep and there are several items that I'd like to purchase there for myself. I will not, however, be running seasonal or limited-run prints any longer. The effort is too much and I've yet to see any return.
My Instagram page will remain active and I will continue to post my art there. It's highly likely that I will be doing more giveaways there with the art I create since I definitely can't keep it all.
Lastly, I will be starting the MrskrNZkry YouTube page soon. After a year of holding the page I finally feel free to do something with it. I always worried that whatever videos I posted there wouldn't be professional enough, but now that this page is for entertainment I don't mind posting something of mid-level quality if it makes me happier and if someone might find joy in it.
Like I said before, these changes probably won't be super noticeable to people who aren't myself. What I'm hoping will be the most noticeable difference is that I will create and post more. Well, I think you probably get the point. If you've read this far I'd like to thank you for sticking around and supporting what I'm doing. Huh, guess I've gotten rusty at endings too!