A million things to be thankful for

Taken from our old studio in Xiamen in 2017

Life has been on an uptrend for us. I find that our passion projects are developing nicely and should start bringing more and more income. Most people would be stressing about our regular streams of income which have been hit pretty hard by the weak economy. Most people would be enacting emergency plans...

But we see opportunity.

My partners hats are getting more and more popular in Tokyo. When we started selling them at the monthly flea market nearby, we sold about 2-3 hats for $15-20 a piece, making about $50 total. The first few months were like that.

Then as her skill started improving and she got a little more bold with her artistic decisions and using better material, people started to buy her more expensive hats. The last two flea markets we made over $350 in 4 hours.

Of course there is a lot of time and energy that goes into this but, we have other things we want to do and other ideas for how to create a system where we can turn this into her full-time income, and eventually mine as well.

I'm so happy that she's finally starting to find her artistic style and that other people understand it and want to support it. One friend bought 4 hats last year!

I counted the total amount of hats and in 2024 and it was 108. That's not bad considering we only joined one flea market a month!

I'm thankful that this is turning into meaningful work for me too, as she isn't really great with the business and planning and accounting side of things, and doesn't love talking to people. I love people and I love making plans, and so we work really well together.

We've applied to sell our hats at a concert being held at a camp site next month. It's one of my favorite Japanese bands:

It seems like we have been accepted although we are discussing the details now. I'm completely elated. I've wanted to see them for 5 years but in the city the concerts are always sold out or we miss them due to our schedule. It's amazing to actually join their event!

We will most likely not make any money. The train and hotel for one night will cost almost $200, so we will have to sell AT LEAST 6 or 7 hats to break even, and this is a new environment so we aren't sure how it will go.

My goal this time is not just to make money though. I want to make friends out there and find more excuses to go there since it's a beautiful place. I want to eventually hold my own events in the countryside and connect people from different scenes and make interesting things happen, so this is great for me as well as her.

So instead of staying for one night, I will book the hotel for 3 nights and we will explore and see if we can get to know more people there. It'll be a vacation that we may be able to make up the costs for, and a way to work towards our goal of opening a physical shop by the end of the year.

"This isn't the best time to start a business"

Yeah, we know, but we see the walls closing in on most 9-5 grinds and even a bunch of freelance grinds. As our other work becomes less and less sustainable, it only makes our passions more attractive, especially when there is no reason we couldn't monetize them and we have so many passions to work with.

I have a friend in Shanghai who makes documentaries and he just asked me to put my music in a film about Xiamen where we met. It will basically introduce the part of my life that I don't talk much about. In those years we jammed on the mountains and on the beach and met tons of travelers and lived on as little money as we could so we could enjoy our days and live in the moment. I feel so honored to be a part of something like this, and I can't wait to share his documentary with everyone when it's out.

Meanwhile I've ordered a Bluesky reverb pedal for guitar and an adapter so I can channel my voice through my guitar pedals and start making the music I've been thinking about making for years.

I've been playing acoustic for 15 years because I was wandering and never staying still and have had terrible experiences with electronic equipment, but I've always dreamed of making electronic, ambient, experimental, psychedelic music and now I'm finally jumping into it.

The goal is to get back to playing music by Spring and get into a habit of organizing one event every month where we can mix my hat and her yarn and other friends artwork and music. Currently trying to move all my songs to electric guitar with delay and reverb and distortion. Hope my next show is electric in more meanings than one.

The plan for the summer is to join events in 3 prefectures around Tokyo, grow the presence of both our projects in and around Tokyo and on Hive (her yarn account is @tentententen and I'm helping her grow it and accept HBD as payment and international shipping). Also by then I hope to have the Japanese translation of my books completed.

I have more friends visiting from overseas too, so I'm super excited not only to see them but to share their work with my friends here (many are DJ's, painters, tattoo artists or recording artists) and showing them my life here. Some friends are even moving to Japan soon from other parts of Asia.

I couldn't be more excited about it!

It feels like life is finally starting to come together. There is still this big hump we've got to get over, but I feel like it's training us for what's to come when we will start doing more exciting things than we ever would have imagined.

What are you working on recently? What are you excited about?

I'll leave you with some of @tentententen's hats:

You can follow her on IG at @ spotspotspotspotshop

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