You never know how you will use a skill

I have an MBA in organizational behavior from George Washington University in Washington, DC. I earned this degree when I lived back east, working for a company that offered very good tuition benefits. As far as the university is concerned, I never “realized my potential” with the degree. I never went on to become a CEO of a major company. I have done nothing that would be worth printing in the alumni magazine. But as far as I’m concerned, it was one of the best investments I made. In the same way that I use knowledge from my undergraduate degree in psychology every day, I use material from my MBA all the time. For example, why you want to do an annual cost benefit analysis, even if you aren’t a CEO.

Costs

I have incurred a few financial costs this past year while pursuing my passion project. The most notable is the cost to run this website and blog. I also ordered a box of old t-shirts from ThredUp to use on my nail loom. The nail loom itself didn’t have any material costs because I had everything I needed to make it in the garage. The only other material costs I had was for the locker hook (a whopping $10.00) and the webbing to make the locker hook rugs. I ordered my tags, too. The total for all these items is under $500 – which doesn’t seem too bad to me.

Of course there are other types of costs to consider – even though many businesses only focus on the financial costs. The biggest non-financial cost that merits analysis is my time. I would only put “aggravation time” on the cost side of the balance sheet. The time spent figuring out how to do my website and the time the website host was not working properly have been significant costs. And there has been some cost to my sleep. Usually that is because I’m trying to sort through how to do something with the plastic or why a technique isn’t working.

Benefits

Traditionally, financial benefits would be considered. My baskets are selling but I’m not collecting any of the cash. Any money goes to my son’s band, or to some of the other bands who I have given items to. I know he has sold many baskets because he asks me for new inventory, but I don’t know if he has kept a record of the income. But since most of the items sell for $5 – $30 my guess is we would break even.

The biggest tangible benefit has been the amount of plastic I have kept out of landfills (at least for right now). But unfortunately I don’t have a good method for tracking this figure. Sometimes I try to keep a tally of the number of bags used in a project, but since bag size varies that number doesn’t really mean much. Weight would be a good measure, but I don’t have a convenient way to weigh my work. But since I started on this journey in August of 2020 I have made over 90 items, of various sizes and weights. And I believe that to be a benefit to the world. I am making things with use and of beauty out of trash – and I think that has benefit. Here are some of my current favorites:

The number of people who have learned about the problem via my work is another benefit. This is even harder to measure because even if someone doesn’t buy or receive a basket or rug, they can become aware of the issue just be seeing my work. I have no idea, nor anyway of tracking, how many people have seen my work or found my blog. But I have had several people tell me that they either think about plastic differently or have changed their purchasing habits based conversations with me or reading my blog. And I do believe in the “ripple effect” that those people will tell other people, who will tell even more other people and so on. That is clearly a benefit!

Personal Benefits

The biggest benefit, and yet perhaps the hardest to quantify, is that I love what I’m doing! Three years ago if someone had told me this is how I would be filling my days, I wouldn’t have believed them or understood how that could be. I am learning so much about plastic, art, activism, others who are involved in this cause – the list goes on. And over the last year I feel good about what I have been able to share via this blog. The blog has helped me improve some tech skills and also continue to use my writing skills. With every project I complete I get ideas about a new, slightly different project I want to start. When I’m losing sleep it is generally because I have so many creative questions I can’t “shut down” my brain. This is a nice problem to have.

In fact, I’d say the biggest problem I have is that I don’t have enough time to devote to my art and blog. I think posting once a month is all I will be able to do in the foreseeable future. Not because I don’t have anything to share but because I don’t have the time to share it! Especially since I got involved with art advocacy in my local school district again, I find that my “to do today” list is never fully crossed out. (To learn more about my art advocacy work, please go to the “SB 5878 and NSD” tab on the home page of this website.)

Upcoming year projections

(The business world equivalent of New Year’s Resolutions!) I plan to continue working on this blog – but it might look slightly different. I think I will focus on shorter, and therefore quicker to write, installments. Those may take the form of more frequent updates to my Link Resources page. Or I may reconfigure my Link Resources page into separate pages to make the info easier to find. I also plan to start a major locker hook project (2′ x 15′) that will be part of an eventual house remodeling project. Teaching how to repurpose plastic appeals to me and I hope to venture into that avenue in 2023. That may take the form of creating tutorial videos or doing live classes. I’m not sure yet.

Perhaps making projections is a fool’s venture. Any projections I made a year ago (when I started my blog) bear little resemblance to what I’ve done in the last 12 months. But I feel confident I am going to enjoy the journey, no matter where it leads me.