My job is playing with beads all day. What's yours?

2 weeks ago I got laid off from my oh-so-corporate job. After 30 years in the corporate world, I was GLAD. I don't want to go back to corporate America. If I am to succeed and have my old age taken care of, I can't rely on the corporate conveyor belt to help me do those things. There is no such thing as job security. We can allow corporate America to break us or we can MAKE ourselves without the dubious "help" of a Fortune 500 company.

So, when I got my walking papers, I walked out to my car, drove home with the sunroof open, Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz blasting out of my speakers, pulled in my driveway, walked in my door and said (to my cats) FREE AT LAST! The universe is being kind to me.

In the space of two weeks I've set up two online bead shops.

ArgentSol on Artfire

and

ArgentSol on Etsy

I've set up this blog.

I've researched and found some remarkable wholesalers and have been bleeding money ever since. I'm doubly lucky in that I had and have help with this endeavor.

I'm triply lucky because I have a fairy god-sister who keeps sending me care packages full of food, beads, lotions, potions, soap, toothpaste, shampoo and everything a girl needs. You see, my goal is to get these businesses up and running and then settle in to start writing again. My fairy god-sister is also my stand-in editor and when I get to the point where I feel some security, I will start writing again. We both believe this (trilogy, at least!) book endeavor will go to publication and be a raging success, but first I must have the income to keep me solvent and keep me at home, away from the grasping talons of corporate American middle-management. SHUDDER.

BTW, my fairy god-sister is a beading maven. She has her own shop set up. Please click below and visit it. Once you've landed there, please purchase something. It will help keep a starving bead seller in soap ant toothpaste!

Athena Creations

She's just opened her store, so she doesn't have a lot listed, but keep coming back because even though she works full time and is a single mom, she is SUPERWOMAN and spends every bit of her spare time working her poor little fingers to death creating art from natural stone beads. I think her designs have a lovely simple elegance to them and are timeless. She uses exceptionally fine beads and components, so when you buy from Athena Creations you are getting high quality artisan-made jewelry that, if properly cared for, will become family heirlooms and one day wind up on Antiques Roadshow as her great-great granddaughter lovingly pulls out a necklace and earrings set and gently lays it on the table.

The Roadshow jewelry expert's eyes will bug out as far as they can without leaving their sockets and rolling beneath the table, her jaw will hang open and she will look at Miss Great-Great Granddaughter and say: "I have seen only one other piece like this on the Roadshow and it was more than 10 years ago. Do you know what this is?" Great-great Granddaughter will shake her head no and softly announce: "My mom gave them to me - they belonged to her grandmother, I think, or something like that. I'm not really sure." The roadshow expert will grin broadly and proclaim: "Young Lady, what you have here is truly a rare find. Many years ago people did a lot of their shopping from computers. Do you know what a computer is?" Great-great granddaughter will look puzzled, but will nod anyway.

The Roadshow expert will expound: "Computers were high technology back then and there was a thing called the internet. It was the predecessor to the way we buy things now. Back then, many people would open up 'internet shops' where they would sell their wares. There were many many artisans who attempted to make a living this way, but your great-great - was it grandmother? - was one of those who was hugely successful. Her designs were of an elegant simplicity and they were hugely popular, so popular, in fact, that she was able to quit her full-time job and spend the latter half of her life doing the thing she loved most." Great-great granddaughter stifles a yawn.

The Roadshow expert looks smug and says: "Do you know what that was?" Great-great granddaughter tilts her head to the side, looks at the jewelry on the table and says: "um...was it making jewelry?"

The Roadshow expert beamed and smiled so big that the glint from her extra-white teeth eclipsed the perfectly adjusted lighting in the convention center as she exclaimed "Yes, it was! What a truly SMART girl you are! That was her passion, and that set of jewelry made by Athena Creations was the crown jewel of all her collections."

The Roadshow expert tentatively pushed her forefinger along the edge of the necklace until she reached the agate pendant suspended from its ethereally beautiful beaded chain and said: "You must take very good care of this. Wear it, but take care of it. It is worth $125,000 at auction. You should probably tell your mother to add it to her insurance policy for $250,000 at the very least. It is one of a kind, my dear, and is irreplaceable. The world of artisan-crafted jewelry has seen no better since her time."

Great-great granddaughter had to be taken out on a stretcher and driven home in an ambulance where her mother then collapsed to the kitchen floor at the prospect of taking out a $250,000 jewelry rider on their homeowner's insurance policy to insure the "that junky old thing" that her daughter insisted was beautiful and probably had some value.

The moral of this story is: We never know what the future holds, so we MUST do what we love and do it with passion. The End.