A Strange Thing Happened on the Road to Married

My fiancée, Lynae Gladys Straw, is a ceramicist. More than just a ceramicist, she started her own small business around ceramics. She sells her stuff on Etsy and makes a pretty decent living (for a 23 year-old that started her own business).

Me, I’ve come from a series of bad work situations. I went from one job I was unhappy at that paid me little to a job that made me very happy but paid me nothing. Then I had a few jobs where I was relatively happy, and where I was decently paid, but the bosses were either incompetent or incomprehensible, sometimes both, never neither. I stopped wanting to work at places that believed looking up information on how better to do one’s work somehow counted as play. I got kicked around and more than a little disillusioned.

Everyone should know by now that I do a lot of work for the little lady. Specifically, I do almost all her packaging and all her product photos—two things which are rather important for an online business. So I kind of ended up working for her (that’s what I like to tell people at parties, anyway). But it’s a little more complicated. Y’see, for everything but tax purposes, I’ve started to see it as our business. She makes the stuff; I’m the one that gets rid of it.

That’s fine in most ways. I’m happy. There are some ways which don’t seem to work as well, though. I’m still operating within her big shiny creative orbit, no matter how many sunbeams I bounce off into the far reaches of space. What I need, what I’m thinking, what she agrees, is that I oughta have my own thing too.

Real soon I’ll be stocking my own Etsy store. The refined talents of the but-for-a-moment-still Ms. Straw should come in handy there. Keep an eye on the GLOT, too, as I’ve got many plans in store for it. Wish I could reveal more, but I’ve revealed enough. Accelerate it, baby.