I’m Over the Whole Thing

 










If I see one more holiday post about how thankful and grateful everyone is, I’ll have to dump stale Thanksgiving wine into the toilet instead of mixing it with my coffee and pretending it’s a mocha mimosa.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about thankfulness and gratitude on a person-to-person basis. I’m grateful every day for everything and everyone in my life.

But gratitude is the new buzz word or fly catcher or roach trap or whatever insect-related analogy applies, for marketing and sales.

Advertisers overuse of the whole Thanksgiving thank-you salesfest has almost wrung the joy out of it.

As consumers, in commercials we’re depicted as practically exploding with thanks over the latest Big-Brother-in-the-Sky wrist watch, or when we’re shown what we would look like wearing fake eyelashes which actually look like someone pasted raccoon tails over a starving Romanian woman’s eyeballs.

Like we’re the ones who should be grateful to them for selling us stuff they want us to think we can’t live without.

So as a small business owner, it PAINS me to send out this THANK YOU I’M SO GRATEFUL TO ALL OF YOU message to those who are kind enough to say nice things on my Facebook page, to the subscribers on my website, and to those kind folks who bought my art.

It doesn’t pain me enough to actually not say it, but I just wanted you to know that for a minute there, it did pain me.

But then, with me it’s personal. Art is a very personal thing. And that part takes the pain away.

So here’s my personal “Thankful” list for this Thanksgiving weekend.

THANK YOU TO the twenty-something new subscribers who joined this month…because there are days I wonder why I even bother, but then you show up and I’m good again.

To THANK YOU personally, I’m extending my Black Friday Sale for another week because it’s not fair if you just signed up and boom the Black Friday sale is over. You haven’t had time to look around. And I’m all about fair.

THANK YOU to my lovely Facebook friends who make me smile daily, and my original website subscribers. You get the sale too, even though you knew it was happening last week and procrastinated about ordering holiday gifts until the last minute anyway. I forgive you.

THANK YOU to every person who purchased my art since I opened the gallery and launched the website - you obviously watch for sales because every single one of you received a sale price. Congrats!

At the risk of sounding like the Romper Room lady (Google it Canadians and people born after 1955)…here’s a personal call-out and THANK YOU to those of you who bought my stuff, at least the ones I remember off the top of my head.

If I forgot you, I blame age. It’s a real thing. Google it.

…to the lady across the street who bought the print of Soiree du Papillon…and the lady who came to the gallery and bought the original 5-ft tall Soiree oil painting…the Canadian guy who bought the original Swan painting for his lady…and his lady who bought the original Blue Tibetan Poppies for herself…the gentleman in Arizona who bought the Chrysanthemum print from the website…and the singer who bought two original lotus paintings and commissioned 2 more…the lady in Hawaii who bought the Pangolin Queen and the Fountain…and the author lady who bought the Lotus Garden original…the local lady who bought the original butterfly painting…the music lady who bought two original Jewels of Lake Chapala paintings…and the one in Texas who ordered six tote-bags with my art on it from the website for gifts…the sailor man who bought the small original mermaid painting…the lady in Florida who bought the big original mermaid painting…and the lady who ordered a Mermaid puzzle from the website for a birthday present…the Florida guy who bought seven original paintings for his yacht…the guitar guy in Pennsylvania who bought a mug with Lady of the Lotus…the lady who bought the Ballerina painting…and the artist who bought Birds of Lake Chapala.…and the rest of you tourists and website cruisers who bought everything from greeting cards online to originals from the gallery.

Whew! I don’t think I’ll be able to pull that off next year. My brain is tired. The end.

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