One day you’re a cool(ish) 20-something and the next you’re decorating your front porch for Halloween. And look- I can justify it HOWEVER I want- that a “witch’s house” style isn’t the same as hay bales and cutesy scarecrows and pumpkins- but it’s still a decorated front porch. Proving, yet a f*cking ‘gain- you become everything you judge, eventually. (I’ve gotta start judging millionaires harder, methinks.)

Anyway: said porch.

I also have some flameless pillar candles to scatter about to light it up at night.

So- that’s the outside. The inside is about to get all Dia de los Muertos-ed OUT because it is also that time of year! (Halloween and Dia de los Muertos decorations are a “never the twain shall meet” kinda thing. Very “outside cat, inside cat.”)

So should you happen to live under a rock around me every October and not already get peppered with the subject and want to learn more- here is the link to my book about Celebrating Dia de los Muertos! Book Here (I get some cents if you click that link, fyi.)

In other “My grandparents would be proud of my varied revenue streams” topics… I’m still reselling!

When I started I’d pick up and flip just about anything I could make 3 times in profit off of… but I’ve learned some things since then.

One: I hate packing shit with a VEHEMENCE, so it better be a minimum of $40 in profit to make me find a box, wrap it, measure and weigh, print a shipping label, and drop it off.

Two: Good lord plates suck to ship.

Three: Ebay takes like 11% to 16% right off the top of whatever you sell as their fee so you had better take that into account when pricing things.

Four: it better be something you enjoy learning about because researching 1970s tupperware bowls is boring.

Five: Picture taking, editing, and posting takes time.

Six: Measuring things is weirdly annoying.

Seven: Save those receipts and mileage because if you sell more than $1,000 or so on Ebay they WILL report you to the IRS and you WILL have to claim it on your taxes. I hate doing expense reports for work and yet here we are with an EVEN more complex one I’m going to have to do.

But like… I still DO it- I’m just much more discriminating then when I started.

I’ve also honed in on kind of a niche, but I won’t turn up my nose at anything that can make me money (Jim Shore nativity set in my closet can attest to that). My niche is (kind of) “things from other cultures or random crap from the past.” This is useful since most resellers seem to have niches of “electronics, jewelry, toys, etc.” Not a lot of competition for antique Peurise Kanjee shields from Indonesia, turns out- which means there are more for me!

So San Antonio has nicknamed itself “Military City, USA” and they try pretty hard to get that to catch on due to all of the military bases located there. (We all know how nicknames you give yourself work out. Just ask my cousin, Buffalo.) The now retired officers had traveled the world, collected cool stuff, and then died without their kids knowing much about some of it… and so I can find some cool stuff pretty regularly down there at estate sales pretty inexpensively!

It’s a living.

Speaking of- in ACTUAL jobs- I was in Canada for a week recently at my home office and got to enjoy geese flying overhead. So this is actual Fall, huh? You know how many times I’ve seen that in Texas? ONCE and it was a total moment for me when it happened. (Standing outside in the garden center I worked at and looked up to a clear and cloudless blue sky- I remember it vividly). Anyway- it was a productive trip and I saved the company over a 1/2 million dollars a year with one discovery. And it’s nice to show the office folks how goddamn hard the remote sales staff works every day too… I find that even more valuable, but then it wasn’t my half million.

But, I gots ta go- it’s time to get snapdragons in so I’m off to the garden center- later gators!