At about this time in 2006, I was doing much what I’m doing now. Although this website is relatively new (if you can call it new after about five years), the concept isn’t.

Way back when I graduated from uni in 2002, I set up what was pretty much a very anemic newsletter for my fellow graduates. Just a little something to keep in touch, plus fulfill the need for finding work in theatre locally. The newsletter grew into an ezine, and the ezine into a website. And at the four year mark, just as I was trying to make it go ‘professional’ (that is, professional without charging any money for it), BANG. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Follow up:

Those who were there at the time would recall my reasons - I’d run out of steam, partly due to the fact that I had been working at Arts Hub (a full time arts journalism job) and doing the publication once a week and doing shows; partly due to a rather unpleasant dealing with a woman running a ‘competitive’ site who thought she could slander me for apparently not being as grateful as I should be for being mentioned on her site (on a completely unrelated matter too)… well, that one’s a longer story than I can make sense in a short paragraph, but nevertheless, her treatment of me certainly put into focus the fact that after four years, weekly publications every week for those four years, and practically no assistance from anyone, I had had enough. The thing was, I knew the publication was something good and useful. I had more than 500 subscribers, collated info from practically everywhere, had friends and complete strangers remark they got work from the ads, struck up relationships with other organisations to get info, and could have made a profit if I had been charging a subscription fee. (This is all before audition sites were commonplace)

As I try to finish this year’s goal (separate the Learn page from the rest of PIM), I wonder if there’s a four-year itch. A desire to do something else. Or simply a lack of desire to keep going with what I’ve been doing.

There’s a billion articles I could write; I’ve barely touched the surface of what could be added to the Learn page. And even though I am finding it harder to be inspired to write, there’s a wealth of stuff that I discover that I never thought of. (This morning I received the ok to use some photos of Nori Sawa’s training sessions in bunraku. They are fascinating, and not something you’d see on the net, or in books, and are a wonderful insight to Japanese puppetry. I may be bored with writing about replicas, but I will never be bored writing about puppetry with details like that)

Of course, as with all things on my mind lately, the four-year itch is also to do with profits. Splitting the Learn page off onto SOP means that PIM gets less noticed; and as this is an entirely online business, google and site hits are very important. I worry that the split will not only lose me sales, but that SOP will take over my life and I’ll never do shadow puppetry again. How do I keep the balance going?

I’m not lacking for ideas. I have several booklets I’ve been working on. I’ve got some ideas to help me sell more patterns and tutorials on SOP. I’ve got an idea for a local puppetry group/meeting that could be quite popular. I could write or create a puppet show. I could make puppet movies and sell them. … I’m even tempted to do web design for a profit and go independently into that.

Of course, most of these ideas don’t help raise the profile of my shadow puppets. And most of them mean lots of work for me, for very little profits in the end. But I’m not particularly excited about continuing on the way I am/have been. Like four years ago, I know that the Learn stuff is popular, useful, interesting… I know it could be more than what it is now. But is the four-year itch something I can avoid, or is it time to let go and move on to something else? I honestly wonder, has this just run its course and should I be doing something else?