Social Networking

Large White Clock

Well, if one thing being stuck on my butt has given me its been the opportunity to explore social networking sites and connect them to myself as well as my business - Rock Candy Decor.

Rock Candy Decor is my home decor business that I derived from my jewelry line Rock Candy Creations.  Rock Candy Creations had a wonderful 10 year run from 1999 - 2009 but then 'homemade' jewelry became very mainstream.  With the ability to purchase jewelry making supplies becoming more accessible and more inexpensive a lot of people were now turning to making their own jewelry and starting their own businesses.

I went from being one of 3 jewelry vendors at a show, to being one of 30+ at some shows.  The market had become over saturated and people were getting sick and tired of seeing 'another jewelry booth'.

Recycled Wine bottle vase

I ended up reinventing myself.  Still using my techniques that I had developed when making jewelry, I now started to apply them creations for your home and office space.  The result were some really fun, funky and functional pieces such as clocks, post-it note holders, recycled wine bottle vases, and pen holders.  Rock Candy Decor was born in November 2010.

I still find it a hard market to go into, a lot of my items are of a higher price point which makes it harder to get those 'impulse buys' that I was so successful with when I had my jewelry line.  People also have an easier time purchasing something for themselves (as in a jewelry piece of reasonable price point) than they do to purchase something for their home that is of a higher price point.  So my sales have not been as high in shows and I find them to be not worth the time and effort anymore.

I decided to try something different so I put my items on ETSY last year:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/RockCandyDecor - .  Its been going well, but I haven't really been getting my wares out there...until today.

Today was the day that:

I updated my facebook site for Rock Candy Creations - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rock-Candy-Creations/176711792373682
I created a twitter account for Rock Candy Decor - https://twitter.com/#!/RockCandyDecor
I created a personal account for twitter - https://twitter.com/#!/h_sender - which will go hand n hand with this blog.

And I tried to get a pinterest account, but apparently that takes a while.

Post-it note holder

So all n all a productive day even though it didn't involve the physical movement and labour that I enjoy.  I will keep you posted on my new found social networking!  I don't usually put myself 'out there' so to speak so this is something new to me and I'm curious to see what happens and if I meet any cool new people as a result.

Since I've been home...

My training was an amazing yet trying experience. I learnt so much about myself and felt like I had made some real progress in many of the 'issues' that I had been dealing with.  Not only did I leave with the confidence to teach the whole moksha sequence, I learned to like myself again.

Now I know that sounds kind of cliche', how does one learn to like or love themselves right?  Well, I realized that there were a lot of things that I was holding onto that were causing me pain.  Things like keeping exes as friends on facebook or blaming myself for things that I could not really control.  And these things were holding me back from enjoying the current moment cause I didn't think I deserved to be happy.

So I deleted and removed anyone and anything that I considered 'poisonous' to me, things that made me feel sad when I looked or thought about them.  It was kind of scary at first, I felt like I was being a bad person or a quitter for letting them go...but then once I did it was like a huge weight was lifted and I was free.  I continued to go through my training on what was almost like a high of happiness and empowerment... And I was hoping it would last.

Its been a month now since I have been home from training and this month has been anything but easy for me.  I have had a lot of physical ailments hit me since coming home, the first one was plantar fasciatus which kicked in during my last week of training and got worse when I got home.

I then found out that I had a staph infection in my left foot and lucky for me I got it treated before it spread into anything too serious.

I then developed a cold which I have had for the last 3 weeks, the darn thing won't go away!

And then the icing on the cake, I was cleaning the deep frier when all of a sudden the vessel carrying the grease suddenly burst pouring hot oil all over my feet. I tried to get out of the kitchen as fast as I could but I definitely got some burns.  2nd degree burns.  All over the toes of my left foot and hitting a couple toes and the arch of my right.  This pain was worse than the time I broke my leg or the time I blew my ACL.  Its been 4 days now and the pain is still significant in my left foot.

So hopefully when I am all healed up, I will be able to do all the things I've been wanting and dreaming of doing while I've been sidelined with all these illnesses and injuries.  In the meantime, all I can do is suck it up and carry on.