It’s not unusual for me to have ideas bubbling away and then dismiss them out of hand even before a plan or action can take place to make them concrete. But occasionally I do more than talk. For instance, I established my Medium account for my short stories and essays. But I’ve had this idea for a bit longer, and today I carried it through. The result is now I have a very real and live Red Bubble page, which is right now offering a variety of items for sale. There are notebooks and cups and apparel on this website featuring my artwork, designs and photography.  It’s both weird and exhilarating to see. And here they are. I quite like how this A-line dress turned out.  And this clock, below.

I designed the clock-face pattern using my photography

I don’t have any expectations about how this will all pan out. I have ideas, and of those ideas that come of fruition, sometimes the fruit isn’t very palatable to many others. But then again, some people still eat fruit, don’t they?  Or work out what my analogies mean?

Ideas can be like fireworks, beautiful but insubstantial before fading to nothing.

The other week I attended a women in Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) breakfast to discuss barriers to involvement. One discussion point was around women’s expectation regarding performance. To qualify to even try something like German Longsword, many women feel like we have to know everything and be perfect first. It’s a bit like how it’s common for women to not even apply for jobs unless they can respond to all the selection criteria, unlike many men who will apply if they can properly respond to sixty per cent of them. But just like I didn’t drown when I learned to swim, I’m diving right in to this. I’m  not perfect. The things I make are not perfect, but I made a conscious effort to put aside hesitancy, and to assume the confidence of a mediocre man, to do this.

And I did.