Shove it, Zodiac.

Emerging from Troubled Days, by Christian Breitkreutz

Good gracious. Just shrugging my shoulders and saying “some weeks are worse than others” isn’t really cutting it for me at the moment. Why don’t we go with “some weeks blow a lot more than others?” I’m a Libra, so if you buy into the whole astrology thing, I should feel right at home with balance. Like dipping my toes into a nice, warm bath, right? Well, for the time being, balance is not my friend. Nay, dare I say it, balance is my enemy. I want the scales tipped in my favor, not level. Damn you, astrology (you can’t see it, but right now, I’m waving my fists at the sky)!

How did I get so bitter about my birth sign? Well, allow me to recap just the latest example of this unfortunate balance I speak of.  In an economy as crappy as the current one, I managed to pull the strongest month of online sales for Blackbird Tees out of who knows where. It was a glorious benchmark moment for me, especially after hemorrhaging money at the close of 2008 on renovations and startup expenses for my new boutique.

Overwhelmed, by Orange Pulp

No sooner than I could say cha-ching did I bite into a naughty little piece of chocolate and break one of my fillings. I always suspected chocolate would be the cause of my eventual downfall. So, after swirling my tongue around for a few seconds, I produced a tiny piece of metal, no bigger than a sesame seed, on the tip of my finger, and saw my modest monthly profit blow away like dust in the wind. And so, this sums up the glamorous life of small business ownership for me. Every time a streak of luck arrives on my doorstep, his lame cousin, misfortune, sets up camp on the front lawn. At this point, I find them equally suspect.

Luckily, with a little time and effort, I can find my distraught feelings echoed in strange and wonderful things around me, like the two wonderful prints you see featured here. Discoveries like this help me to remember that everyone experiences the maddening shift between gain and loss. The blow just feels more powerful when you’re already struggling to get on your feet.  So, I don’t know about the rest of you, but this Libra is trading in her scales for two pints of beer.

To find out more about the prints featured, or to visit the shops of the respective artists, just click on the images.

Filed under Blackbird Diary, Heavens to Etsy |