Cat Pins
So a few months ago I decided to do something with all the clay I had sitting around I made some brooches. I showed them off around the Interweb and there was a unanimous cry of "LOVE THEM" and "I WANT ONE" so I made more and listed them on the ol' Etsy. After a few weeks and no sales, I changed my approach to selling them and not only forced all my boyprens into a photo shoot, but lowered the prices. Still no sales. Now, I'm a big girl, my butt isn't hurt and I do have bigger cats to fry, but God damn it if that aint some shit. And that's all I have to say about that.
Moving to Boulder
After my move-to-Portland flop, I decided the next best thing for me to do was to go back to school right away. I still wanted a change of scenery, however, and in December I applied to UC Boulder with the intention of starting classes in January. I was accepted with only three weeks to find a place to live, enroll in classes, purchase books and do every other inane thing you have to do when you get into school. When I realized the enormity of the task in front of me, I relented and decided I should stay in Colorado Springs with my parents and finish my degree at UCCS. It was for the best, though. Had I moved to Boulder I probably would have married some stoner astronaut and started being really apologetic for being white even though I'm only half white and wearing hiking boots out to dinner. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE IN BOULDER DO.
Moving to Portland
I got Super Dumped some years back and decided the best and most logical course of action was to move to Portland, OR alone, uneducated, incapable of performing any job above that of retail checkout clerk, and with a mere $2,000 to my name. My parents were horrified, particularly my father, so we took an impromptu trip to the hipster Mecca to scope out PSU and places to live. Naturally it was fabulous and I was completely enchanted by all the boys with beards and the girls with boots and all I could think was how I was going to make it there and swim in the Pacific and be a God damn hipster FOREVER, but even at the innocent age of 22ish I had to appeal to logic. My One True Goal at the time was to finish my English degree and moving to Oregon meant putting that off another year while I established residency. I decided to stay in Colorado, where I had a big fat stipend waiting for me, and finish up school there.
Becoming a Flight Attendant
After my mom died in October of 2007 I dropped out of school. There's not really a good explanation for this other than the fact that I was too busy mourning, getting drunk and dating 100 boys at the same time to think about Shakespeare. It was a very weird, remarkably stupid time in my life and instead of looking at my dropping out of school as a necessary step in getting myself back into a state of good/functional mental health, I decided it was permanent. I would English major no more forever. I considered becoming a hair stylist, a veterinary technician, an au pair and finally decided to be a flight attendant. My parents bought me a passport for Christmas, and in the following months the airlines started going bankrupt.Yeah, I let that dream fizzle out pretty quickly.
Becoming a Contortionist
In my late teen years I got it into my head that I wanted to be a contortionist. I can't even really explain this. I know I started communicating via the Internet with a girl who had been doing it for years and was intrigued, and then it just became this stupid obsession for a few months. I never got very good at it and can still do a lot of my best poses today with only a quick yoga session to get myself limber. I would do poses at parties on kitchen floors and have bruises on my back the next day. I think I stopped practicing because I started this thing where my only exercise was drinking beer and eating sandwiches, but it was pretty cool while it lasted. I was really popular at parties.
Madonna Drake
I talk about this a lot, but that's only because it really was one of my Greatest Flops of All Time and my heart breaks every time I recall it, even to this day. When I was in the sixth grade I was really big on role playing. Wait, it gets better. Someone in a chat room invited me to join an e-mail game based on some X-men fan fiction. I didn't know anything about X-men and I couldn't access the fan fic because my dad had parental controls on my AOL account, so I decided I'd just make it up. I chose the character Madonna Drake, fictional daughter of Bobby Drake and Emma Frost (how boring!), because she had a cool name, and then I made her into a super moody shape shifter who had a pet lizard. They kicked me out after about a week. I was devastated, primarily because I felt that I was really close to getting my first (online) boyfriend in the game, but also because it was embarrassing. The following year I did a presentation in a speech class about being kicked out of the RPG and how I was a much better RPG player and had learned a lot and they were all missing out. If only they could see me now!
The Painted Rock Business
One summer day in Florida, my elementary school friends and I had a brilliant idea to gather rocks, paint them with a Crayola watercolor kit, and sell them on the side of the road. Only in Florida, folks. We collected a small inventory and set up shop. In the end, not only did we fail to sell a single rock, but my mom shut us down and made everyone go home when Lydia (a bad, white haired girl from the Outer Circle who was in my class but really scary) called my brother a "penis wrinkle." To this day I still have a lot of respect for small business owners, and Lydia.