Weekly Review #52: What should be an annual review post, but is merely a weekly review because I’ve been working my butt off all weekend and I seriously need to get off the computer and sleep

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

Holy moly! It’s been a full year since I started posting these weekly reviews.

Although I’ve made great progress in some areas over the past year, planning ahead is apparently not one of them, since I’m pulling a blog post out of the air past midnight yet again… Sigh…

That said, I have made progress, if I stop and think about it.

Naturally, I’m way too tired to do a good job cataloging all of my progress from the past year, but let’s take a look what I’ve done in this past week, shall we?

Over 100 subscribers!

A year ago, my imaginary audience was entirely imaginary. One year later, I’m not ruling an empire quite yet, but I did just bump over into triple digits. In fact, in the past week I grew my subscriber base by over 16%!

(100+ Club members, watch your inbox for a link to a hi-res PDF of Tapestry of Life, the piece pictured here.)

A Shopping Cart!

Oy vey, this one has been soooo long in coming. Oodles of research, and countless times with my finger hovering over the “buy now” button for various e-commerce solutions. Finally, just yesterday, I bit the bullet.

In fact, I ended up installing the free version of Cart66 (affiliate link) – yep, you read that right: free – and I must say it’s rather nifty.

Artists, take note! With a free plug in you can turn your WordPress site into a store! Without having to make a new PayPal button for every single freakin’ item in your inventory.

I plan to write a review when it’s not quarter to 1:00am, explaining why I chose Cart66 over the other contenders, and what it’s like to use. (In short: pretty damn easy.)

Wanna see it in action? Check out my new art page!

A new look!

If you have a blog or website, you know it’s always a work in progress. There’s always something new you want to do, a different look and feel or navigational structure you just know would make it exponentially better.

Rather than massive overhauls, though, changes to a blog are kind of like changes to one’s self: you do what you can, a little at a time, and are mostly aware of what you wish you could change but don’t have the resources for. You might get an occasional major remodel, of course, but mostly it’s just a tweak here, a tweak there.

Sometimes those tweaks can make a big difference though. Like those Martha Stewart-ish “give your living room a face lift with fabric remnants” tips. A simple font change and a coupla new graphics and voilá! It’s almost like refacing the kitchen cabinets.

Or maybe it’s like coming home from the hairdresser with a brand new ‘do and nobody notices… (That’s your cue to tell me what you think of the new ‘do on the blog. Ahem.)

And that, dear reader, is simply going to have to suffice for today. ‘Night!