The glass is half full

So, yesterday was the big day.

Yes, the big day of my friend's charity fundraiser.

And I showed up with my game face on. (See above.)

Surprisingly, it went fairly well, in spite of the doom and gloom I was anticipating.

Unfortunately, I didn't sell many items. The event was ill attended due to the fact that it was just a rainy crappy day. (The event had always been scheduled to be indoors, but the torrential downpour that went on for the majority of the day was unpleasant to get out in.)

However, despite the fact that I didn't rake in the cash, I came away with two things that are way more important than money:  knowledge and confidence.

Since it was such a slow day for all of the vendors at the event, we all started chatting with one another. When the other vendors found out that this was my first event of any sort, they were amazingly nice. They all pretty much spent the whole day teaching me lessons about how to improve your sales at similar events. They also gave me some great contact information for networking purposes. I even have a lead on another, bigger event in my area that I'm going to try to get involved with.

I also came away with a huge confidence boost at the end of the day. Where I was afraid that my stuff would get some sort of horrible, disdainful reaction from the patrons and other vendors at the event, I was pleasantly amazed at the amount of positive feedback I received from everyone. Not one person who came to my table said anything negative about my jewelry. In fact, they all said things like "wow," "beautiful," "amazing," "so talented," "lovely," and "gorgeous." I even had several people take my information in order to contact me for custom work. That made me feel great.

People like my stuff.

People like my stuff!

It's so thrilling as a creative person to have just one other person admire what you've created and validate your spending your time and energy making/doing whatever it is that you do, but when a lot of people like your objects d'art, it's exciting. I swore to myself that I wouldn't make another piece of jewelry for a really long time after this event because I was feeling burned out, but no more. Now I want to create more and better.

Validation by the world of what it is that I do. It's strangely beautiful.