To speak an idea is to commit to it, and that is frightening.

I draw; I’m not so much with the business planning. If there is a flowchart involved, I’ll probably draw monster faces on all the shapes.

While I may never be able to call myself a entrepreneur,* this much I know: I must find a way to make art consistently, and receive payment for it (also consistently).**  Since Friday, I’ve spent a lot of time rifling around in the IttyBiz archives, and I do mean A LOT.

As  a result, a business-related idea has been forming in my head, and some parts of it weren’t even painful!

I would love to tell you what the idea is, but then I’d have to kill you I’m scared. See, I had another business idea, once. It was a big one, and I named it Invincible Cake. (The sad, 47-tweet Twitter page in that link is all that remains of it now.)***

I gave the Invincible Cake idea a good amount of thinking, had some meetings with people who had done something similar, then went to my friends and social network for support. They gave me more support than I ever expected. As I started looking for a physical space to lease, I found a partner, a local hacker group, who hoped to share the space, when we found one.

Then everything went to hell. My personal finances took a massive hit, and any money I had hoped to put toward a lease space immediately went to trying to keep my family afloat. I had to shut the Invincible Cake project down. Writing the post saying as much was terrible. Although I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to make it happen, the part that crushed me was the perception (however true or untrue) that I’d ruined my good will by making promises I couldn’t keep, to people I cared about. So many people, most of them friends, had supported me publicly, and I felt like I was shitting all over it.

I cried for a whole day.

I don’t want to repeat that. So, for the moment, I will leave things at “I’ve got an idea. It’s gonna be cool. I hope. Look, here’s a nifty drawing!”

*First, it doesn’t quite…fit, somehow. Second, it’s too damn hard to pronounce.

**Artists seem to have trouble with “receiving money for their art.” No, seriously, it’s a thing. I don’t have this problem. With very few exceptions, everything I make is for sale.

***The Invincible Cake idea was an artist co-working space, made cheaper than regular studio space by sharing resources, and not walling off individual rooms for each artist.

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