Celebrated Summer

Holy crap, it's September!

I thought this blog was going to be chock full of photos of flea market finds and road trip stories from this summer. After all, we had it figured out this year -- the kids had places to be, I had solo work-time built into my days, and business was good. So it was gonna be time to head out and pick!

Well, I did do some grubbing, and hit a few amazing sales -- not nearly as many as I'd planned. Large swaths of my solo time became kid-time, or sleep-in-after-band-practice-ran-late time. Not only has the band I'm in started writing and recording, and playing some shows again, after a long layoff, but I impulsively jumped back into writing and performing standup comedy, something I hadn't done since 2003.

Even more than all that, I think, was a real wake-up call about the amount of unlisted, unsorted crap we already own. I have literally thousands of books and LPs that are in no order whatsoever, all of which need listed. I have CDs, video games, cassettes, clothing... barely-sorted piles of stuff, enough to keep me listing for years. Literally. Years.

I did buy some stuff. At one sale in northeast Ohio, I went back twice and filled the trunk of my wife's car with media stuff, lots of out of print goodies and rarities. (This was also the sale where I bumped up against the limits of my 9-year-old's tolerance for picking -- after 90 minutes in a sweltering former department store, digging through disheveled piles of stuff and dodging throngs of shoppers, he lost it quickly when I tried to add some yard sales to the itinerary. Mental note: he may act 40 most of the time, but he's still nine.)

And I bought a lot online, too, picking up collections of computer stuff to part out, grabbing bulk lots, even buying some piles of records and things from friends of mine who were downsizing or short on cash. There was still a good influx of stuff, and while I'm still not where I'd like to be on my goal of 150 new listings a week, we're getting closer all the time. (This past Saturday, for example, I 'clocked out' from all other responsibilities and got 105 unique items up in one day - lots of them have already moved).

So why I haven't I been writing? Well, for one, there just hasn't been the time. Little things that seem like minor bumps in the road -- my printer dying this week, for example -- seem to become stumbling blocks that get us behind on shipping, then behind on listing, and then frantically trying to catch up basic housework and litter box maintenance.

And then there's the one big truth of this business that sends a lot of otherwise eager Ebayers running for the door after the first few weeks. Right now, concentrating on listing boxes of VHS tapes and old books and the like, I may find some valuable, "holy grail" titles. But none of it is glamorous, or weird, or unique. I don't get the satisfaction of photographing and making a blog entry out of, say, an Ohio Sauerkraut Festival ball cap, like I do when I'm out every weekend finding more odd things. The stuff I've been listing this summer, by and large -- the stuff paying the bills -- has been solid, unsexy inventory. I've kept the kids fed in large part with $4.99 books and nearly-forgotten "new old stock" CDs from long-defunct punk rock bands.

It's the grind of listing dozens of such solid, but unremarkable items that can bore people right out of business. I usually get in a zone with it, where I've got coffee, good music, the windows open, and if I start getting bleary-eyed about it, I stop myself and remind myself that THIS -- this busy work I'm doing in my house, in pajama pants, with Kreator blasting on the stereo -- is my job. This is "going to work" for me. That nearly always gets me over any slump.

Sales are creeping upward and staying there, the warehouse gradually looks more and more organized (the big CD shelves shown in the last update are almost full; I'm hoping to have another identical set built on the opposite wall this month). If I can keep this train rolling, keep up the music and comedy, get a little more writing time shoehorned in to my schedule, and maybe -- just maybe -- get the hell out of the house every couple Saturdays to plunder the countryside -- things will stay awesome. No complaints at all, at the moment.