There’s that old saying about upon mentioning you have a plan for your life that if you listen carefully, you can hear the universe laughing at you. They must have had a real belly laugh when I mentioned my thoughts about my future when I was in my 20s. I’m still living in North Carolina; though not on the side that I started from. And, there’s been some time spent in Tennessee, Virginia, Texas and New York. But, never, in my wildest dreams, did I even think I would be making art on a full-time basis.
This very website, began in one of many unexpected detours in my life, creating and building websites and helping others to market their business through my words on their websites. This site was both hobby and experimentation. How much easier to show a prospective client I knew what I was doing than by creating a website that ranked well for quite a number of things and even twice went viral thanks to a pair of posts that hit the jackpot on the old Digg site? I shared my crafty endeavors and even some advice on selling handmade items of the crafty kind. But, it seemed like my focus was on helping others live their dream while only catching a few glimpses of mine.
Getting known as Michele Tway aka the “bird lady” and that being a very good thing was never on my radar.
It’s been six years. A journey began with a simple sewing pattern from another crafty website. Miles of yarn and wire, hundreds (maybe thousands) of beads, and much frustration later, I’m where I am today. A member of the much respected Southern Highland Craft Guild and celebrating today’s acceptance into my second exhibition in South Carolina.
I have debated what to do with this site and several others that I own. Are they going to represent who Michele Tway is now? or will they somehow diminish the professional artist I have become? Sites, like this one, that are suffering from years of neglect; no longer look as nice as they once did. I could certainly fix them but then I would be taking a lot of time away from what I love doing to fix something I might turn off in the near future.
Ironically, thanks to the ‘one must get links to get a site noticed by the search engines in order for people to find it and hopefully be inclined to link to it and get the site more noticed’ requirements for a successful website; I’m back on this pretty much abandoned site hoping to use it to promote my new endeavors. Ironically, searches for my name bring up this site before any of my others. While not the oldest of my sites or the one that has been most recently updated; Google seems to associate it with me.
So, hopefully, if you do end up on this site; you’ll just take a moment to read this one last post and ignore the rest of what you see before moving on to the site that reflects my current work and to learn more about why I’m getting known as the bird lady. Please visit Michele Tway Mixed Media & Fiber Artist. And, I thank you for your interest in me and my work.