This jewelry thing needs to get going more quickly. I spent about an hour at work one day writing Petunkalunka with a Japanese calligraphy pen. Then I bought a DIY stamp kit and spent about six hours listening to Janelle Monae’s complete discography a couple times through while I carved the stamp. Then I spent another hour stamping a stack of blank business cards that I had purchased from Muji more than six months ago. That’s a lot of time to spend on branding, and a lot of time wasted if it doesn’t pay off.

Now that I’m trying to start selling more of my jewelry I realize that I need to be more active online. I’ll need to read more blogs and comment on them. I’ll need to use more exclamation points so that I don’t read like a sarcastic robot. I’ll have to use emoticons. Sigh. If I’m going to waste time on the Internet I want it to be for fun, like watching hours and hours of American dance shows or YouTube videos of babies laughing.

Successful Etsy sellers especially seem to be active online. They make Treasuries, write in the forums and join teams, update blogs, run Facebook pages and tweet like birds in springtime. If I want to compete at all, I need to start doing the some of the same. I’ve joined three Etsy Teams. I’ve made two Treasuries and contacted each seller to tell them that I featured his or her item. I spent at least an hour on Flickr commenting on other peoples’ pictures. I added smiley faces. I used exclamation points. It hasn’t resulted in anyone else reading this blog, but I supposed it’s all in the process.

Truthfully, the ultimate internet defeat is in the reactivation of my Twitter account. I had joined to follow my cousin, and brother, both successful musicians, and my older sister (who’s just funny). I had actively avoided tweeting anything but a request for BarronCP to turn Beyonce’s “Check Up On It” into a piano masterpiece. However, when talking to my brother about my aspirations for this blog and my jewelry, he basically told me that Twitter is the only way I’ll ever really get the word out. I will have to tweet.

Currently my Twitter profile reads “I shan’t tweet, but I shall follow. Thus saith the Load. If you actually want to read tweets that I write, follow @ganbattetimes” The former editor for the Ganbatte Times, a Kyoto JET newsletter, had started the account, but the subsequent editor and I left it alone. More recently, as the [self-appointed] webmaster for the Ganbatte Times I started updating the Twitter account. It gave me practice for writing concisely, and the account has gained followers and I’ve been able to connect with some more organizations in the Kyoto community. However, no one has ever retweeted one of my witty tweets or responded to them, so I don’t feel like a complete success in that regard. I’m afraid that it will be just like college, when Facebook finally came to our campus (in the early days of college exculsivity) and I spent all my free time checking to see if someone had posted on my wall. If I activate my Twitter account and don’t immediately have 40 followers, I’ll wallow in sadness. Like a buffalo in the prairie dirt, but with less lying down and relaxing.

Someday I’ll start tweeting for fun. I’ll figure out how.

I think I have two followers; who’s going to just see my tweets and think, “I gotta buy that lady’s necklaces”? Any reluctant Twitter users out there who want to weigh in?

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