Why does the business side of business suck?

I'm an artist because I enjoy creating. I'm trying to sell my work because just creating doesn't pay the bills. Selling sucks.

It's a big dilemma for me. I enjoy making art, but I don't enjoy photographing it. I don't enjoy listing the pieces for sale. I don't enjoy Tweeting, or Facebooking about my work (Oddly, I do enjoy blogging about it, though...strange huh?). As for presentation, I'm more than willing to make a work of art, but if it's flat, and I need to mat it first, I tend to stall, and stall, and stall, a lot. I've worked in a couple of different places in advertising, but when it comes to advertising my own stuff, I kind of suck at it.

It gets worse. I don't like keeping up with my receipts, I don't like doing cost analysis on my art, heck, I don't even like trying to figure out how much time I've put into a piece, because I forget to look at the clock when I'm starting something.

As for spreadsheets to keep up with all this stuff, I'm completely lost. I take one look at a spreadsheet program, and my eyes tend to gloss over. It's boring. The money side of the business, in general, just keeps me baffled. I suppose that I'm a traditional artist in that respect, or at least, I live up to the stereotype.

Oh, I'm also disorganized. Did I mention that? It doesn't help with anything. Last night, I spent over an hour looking for a bottle of glue that had fallen from where I put it (which is NOT where it belonged, in the first place). Add disorganization to all my other business problems, and it seems hopeless. But I don't think it is hopeless.

I'm not writing this to fish for advice, or to offer some magic solution at the end of the post which will fix all of these problems. It's not a plug for some system or business class, it's just the obstacles that I face in running my business. I'm sure that I'm not alone, and I think that there's bound to be other people out there who feel the way I do, too. It would be nice if I read in other people's blogs that they have the same problems I do, so...maybe me writing this out will help someone else. Also, now that it's all typed up on the screen, I can't keep ignoring it.

That's it for today's post. Time to start cleaning (again), work on putting things where they belong, and get cracking on business stuff.

Also, I've got a brain candle that needs photographed so that I can list it! Hehe. Thought you were going to get away without reading something creepy, didn't you? Ha!