Wait! i Lied!

Having another blog that's strictly about things i'm making made me miss having a blog where i can wax philosophical. or whatever.
So, i'm not getting rid of this one. They can both exist. Hooray!

Over the last month i've been really focussed on building up my etsy store, and preparing for three holiday craft sales.
This might appear to be sort of uncharacteristic for someone who thinks that capitalism is inherently violent and consumerism is driving everything to destruction.

Sort of.

It's interesting trying to achieve, well, survival, and ideally autonomous survival (as opposed to being someone's employee), without "selling out". It's interesting thinking about things like how to sell my product and how to find my niche market while being fully aware that some (most?) of the things i make are useless material comforts, and that i'm selling them to, (read: comforting) people who are pretty privileged and might need something other than more comforts in their lives.

I could argue that almost everything i make is recycled, (hooray, we will save the environment and planet through tokenistic liberal environmentalism, etc etc!!!!!) but let's not fool ourselves. Recycled useless material products are still useless material products.

(there is an argument to be made for the value of beauty, or art, or whatever, which i do believe in sometimes. this is a whole other issue and i'm not going to tangle it into this one right now)

The truth, in the end, is that we are all already sold out, and that we need to do what we need to do.
This doesn't mean that everything is hopeless and that we should give up on all the ethical standards we try to hold ourselves to. This just means that i'd rather pay my rent by doing something which is not inherently radial than pay my rent by doing something not radical AND oppressive. (be employed).

The bad news is that nothing is perfect. The good news is that there is sooooo much exciting work to be done.