Last week, I finally placed an order with a woodcutting company. I was ordering about 30 pieces of different shapes and sizes, but then I put the brakes on. Instead, I ordered two of the largest sizes as a test. I feel like I need to see how they’ll look and feel before making so many more, ya know?

I’m pretty sure I’ll just order the rest of them as soon as the first two arrive. I have a feeling they will do a perfect job. They’re a Pennsylvania-based company (24 Hour Crafts), and their customer service is really great!

Now, would it be cheaper to buy the equipment and do it myself? Nope. It would not. Wood is so expensive these days, and I have no experience cutting shapes into wood. This company is super affordable and uses a laser to cut through half-inch wood, making it the best solution across the board.

When they get here, I still have to sand, seal, and sand some more, resealing five times, as I usually do with wood. These are birch pieces, so I also want the option to leave some of the wood exposed. I especially want the edges nice and smooth. It’s actually a lot of labor—a lot for me, anyway. I haven’t done it in a long time, so I have no idea if I’ll be able to do it truthfully.

In my head, I keep thinking I can physically do things. It seems so simple in my head. I have thoughts about everything getting done in a quick 10 minutes or something, but it never goes that way. It’s like I’ve rapidly aged a decade without noticing. And I’m talking about simple tasks like cleaning or light gardening. Doing any of that puts me down for days. I’m in so much pain afterward that I can’t even move. The body pain even keeps me from getting a good night’s rest.

But ya know, I’ll have to do the best I can. I’m going to give myself at least a couple of months to sand and seal the 30 shapes. Thank goodness most of them are small. I can sit at my workbench while doing most of them, but we’ll see.

I’d also like to get more disciplined and return to drawing. I recently saw a YouTube video about these pencils I’d never heard of called Blackwing. The artist, Brian Biggs, who made the video, was pretty much swearing by them, even though he seemed pretty skeptical before he started using them. Drawing is his main medium, so it sorta brainwashed me into buying a small sample. Now I have four of their most popular pencils. I haven’t really used them yet. I sharpened them all and wrote a few words with each to see if I noticed any differences. I didn’t. And they are much more expensive than “normal” pencils, but I’m excited to try them out.

As I type this, the Kickstarter campaign is at $873, but it’s been at that amount for days now. I have 52 more days to raise $1327 more, somehow. It’s like all those physical things that seem easy, but in reality, they’re not.

The first push went out with my most recent newsletter, then a few reels on my Instagram. I even rejoined Facebook after 7 years without an account. Now my Instagram posts double up on Facebook. I have way fewer followers there than I do on Instagram, so it’s not all that promising, but I’m not sure what else to do.

And though you’re not really supposed to, I also posted the Kickstarter link on a thread in Netvvrk—twice! I picked up a few pledges that way, but I don’t think I can get away with doing it again after today. I got permission from Paddy Johnson (the owner/founder) to do it last week, but I don’t know if that permission included doing it again.

I posted it in “Mindset Mondays,” where members post what they’re working on for the week. It seemed appropriate, not exactly like soliciting. (Or is it?) I put it in a list of five other unrelated things I’m also working on. To me, it felt okay to do. If I have to take it down, so be it.

Other things I’m working on this week include designing the show postcard with the gallery and a new artist’s book. Not an elaborate one, but something simple I can throw together pretty quickly. It will be a bunch of sketches, I think. Woopdeedo!