February 1, 2008
Due to the very limited number of magazines we could find in the Cancun airpiort, Megan and I put our last pesos together to buy an overpriced copy of Lucky magazine. Neither of us was too terribly excited by this purchase, but as it turns out there was an article entitled “The Best Websites You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of” that inspired me to want to do some more online shopping.
So what did I do when I got home? Settled myself in front of the computer and began checking out the sites I thought sounded most interesting. Within an hour of returning to my apartment I was already online window shopping. While I did find a couple new, nifty sites, like Reform School and Curiosity Shoppe, I really didn’t need to immediately look at them, but it was like a little project I assigned myself so that I could feel useful spending hours online. Less than two weeks into my Etsy hiatus I began noticing how addicted I am to simply being connected. I had spent an entire week with very little access to a computer and it kind of bothered me more than it really should have. This is why one month this year I will attempt to give up the internet. It will be interesting…
January 20, 2008
On January 1st I almost made the mistake of logging in, but fortunately I only made it as far as my own store (which I had already closed) before I remembered. Thats just how routine my Etsy mornings had become. Unfortunately, I was also kind of bad and I did a bunch of Etsy shopping the last two days of December, so I had some email messages from the sellers about my purchases and it made me want to sign on too. But I resisted and simply emailed them back instead.
I also desperately needed a weekly planner at this point and this is when I experienced my first true withdrawal symptoms. I do attempt to buy things on Etsy whenever there’s a good selection to choose from and I knew I had some planners in mind but now, due to my chronic procrastination, I couldn’t buy them. The idea of buying handmade has become increasingly important to me in the past year, so now I was forced to find another source for my planner.
Thus I began spending time browsing other stores and galleries for a weekly planner. So now that I couldn’t shop on Etsy, I was simply finding substitutions to fill the same blocks of time I used to spend on there. And I realized this very early into my quest, so I did spend maybe a little less time than I would’ve on Etsy but not much less. For me a weekly planner is something I would normally invest more time than most folks would in looking for the perfect one because I’m horribly indecisive, but also because I have to stare at this thing for 52 weeks. It needs to be something that will make me happy for an entire year. Finally I ended up choosing this Little Otsu beauty from Buy Olympia
January 20, 2008
First of all if you’ve never heard of Etsy or visited the site, you really should do that now. It is an amazing resource for handmade items from all over the world and its getting better everyday.
Now why I chose to give it up. I have been selling my wares on Etsy since January of 2006. The attention I paid to Etsy in general and my store specifically has ebbed and flowed since then, but in the summer of 2007 I really began to spend an increasing amount of my spare time on Etsy. It started as soon as I got up - I would grab some breakfast and login to Etsy. Every morning. I would do this under the guise that I was checking to see if I sold anything, but I receive email notifications for sold items so that was a poor excuse. Really I was just slowly, but surely becoming addicted. I would shop, or browse the forums, or worst of all - create treasury lists.
In the fall of 2006 Etsy launched a new feature called the Treasury. Basically it is a large rotating collection of lists of items that users create to highlight things they like. Etsy provides many different, interesting ways for users to shop, but the Treasury is unique in that it allows any registered Etsy user to kind of “show off” the fun items they’ve found. And then usually Etsy admin chooses different lists to feature on the front page. So now I had incentive to spend additional hours pulling items I had bookmarked into Treasury lists.
And then, even before the Handmade Pledge, I decided that I would attempt to do a primarily Etsy Christmas. I do rely heavily on Etsy for a lot of my purchases now, but this goal, again, just provided yet another excuse for me to devote time to Etsy. I was rather successful (I’d say about 70% of gifts were from Etsy), but I was definitely getting burnt out on Etsy by the end of December.
And so I chose to give up my treasured handmade shopping center for the month of January. I am kicking myself for not regularly blogging about this experience, however I will try to highlight the process thus far and begin blogging every day now.
