My 2021 federal & state tax returns are filed. After 3 days of staring at spreadsheets I was mentally done as well. I spent the rest of the day in bed watching movies. Tomorrow I might go for a hike before prepping for a last minute vending & live painting event on Wednesday. It’s at a weed store on 4/20 so it should be interesting!

I’m still preparing my taxes. All my income & expenses are in order and I’ve started plugging numbers into TurboTax. Tomorrow is the deadline and, I think, I have until midnight to file. Hopefully it won’t take me that long.

I spent most of the day reviewing self employment expenses & income. I want to make sure my records are bulletproof before I plug any data into TurboTax. I wish I had done this part sooner.

Today I started pulling documents for tax prep and reading my notes from last year. Tomorrow I’m going to review all my business expenses and income and maybe start plugging away at Turbo Tax.

I did some artsy-businessy things today. I paid my Sales and Use Tax to the state of California, it was all the sales tax I collected selling merch in 2021, and I did some rough sketches for a mural proposal I’m working on.

The second shipment of shirts arrived today! I took them, and the shipment that arrived yesterday, and dropped them off at Downtown Screen Printers. I'm still waiting on 5 more shirts to arrive but they're gonna start printing, the ones I already dropped off, tomorrow. I'm pretty stoked because now I'm back on track and should have my shirts for Friday's event and be able to ship out the custom & pre-orders next week.

I spent hours today looking for alternatives to the shirts I wasn't able to buy, either because they were out of stock or had to be bought by the case. Then I emailed  those alternatives to everyone whose custom orders were affected. Now I'm waiting on their replies. Today was also my install appointment for two new tires. The old tires, one had a big crack in the sidewall, both had tread that was pretty low. While I waited on my tires I started researching my first assignment from work, using CRM (customer relationship management) software. At night I went to Meeting of the Minds, where artists get together then partner up to paint a canvas. I wasn't going to paint, just hang out, but then a local artist Chuck invited me to work on the canvas he'd been painting by himself. Busy day!

All custom & pre-order 1.0 shirt invoices have gone out so it's time to buy the shirts. While I was going through my orders and adding the blanks to my cart I noticed couple styles & colors of shirts can only be ordered by the case. So instead of being able to order three individual shirts I would need to buy 72 of each (216 total pieces). That's a no-go. Then there are a few shirts that are out of stock in certain colors & sizes. Those I'm not surprised by but they're a setback nonetheless. Tomorrow I'm going to search for alternatives, in-stock, and reach out to those who's orders are affected. 

Today I called last call on Instagram for the 1.0 pre-orders and custom shirts. I received a few pre-order sales and custom-order soon after. More than had come in in all the days since I started this campaign. I was pleasantly surprised! I'm still in the process of confirming most of the custom orders via email. Once they're confirmed I'll send invoices and place the orders. So far everything is going good and still on track to have the finished shirts ready by the first week of August.

Today I created some mockups for a couple custom requests. A teal v-neck and black crop top. I had to do a little research on the shirts since they're not the usual blanks I print on. I also created new accounts with a couple different t-shirt vendors with bigger selections. I'm waiting on them process my applications before I can see resale prices and quantities in-stock. Hopefully that gets done within the next couple days so I can place my orders and have them shipped then delivered to the printers.

That means the the window for pre-orders is closing soon. Sometime this week. I'll give it a few more pushes on Instagram before ordering the blanks. Tonight I started thinking about including fun little prizes for people who pre-ordered shirts. I got a few ideas that I'll be working on over the next few days.

I had my first work meeting this afternoon to go over some basic stuff to get me onboard plus details on the projects I'll be spearheading over the next 5 months. I'm really excited about this and can't wait to really sink my teeth into it. I also packaged and delivered a t-shirt order that came in yesterday from a buddy of mine. I drew him a cool little thank you card which I'll post later.

I spent hours today uploading my mockups to my online store, writing the copy, and creating a form for people looking for a different styles and colors of shirts than the ones I currently use. I also talked to my screen printer buddy about my pre-order strategy, costs, and timeline for when I'll deliver the blanks and receive the printed shirts. So far, so good!

Today I photographed 6 different colored t-shirts then made mockups of my 1.0 (logo) tee in Photoshop. I digitally erased the neck tags in the photos too. The plan is to offer the color tees as presales, and not carry a full stock of them. Maybe just one color. I've reached out to my screen printers and I'm waiting on a quote before offering pricing and making the presale orders live on my online store.

I still need to count my t-shirts after yesterday's event but I think it's time to reprint some more. I'm almost all out of Small, Medium & Larges in most styles and certainly I missed out on a few sales for not having the sizes in stock. I even sold the SAN JOSE shirt on display because it was the last Small I had in that style. The next event I'm vending at is the first Friday in August. I hope I can be restocked by them.

I dropped off the first couple prints at the post office today! One's off to Sunnyvale and the other to Salinas. I also delivered one print myself, here in town. I needed some "Do Not Bend" stickers so I made a quick design and printed them on some Avery labels I had laying around. I really like the way they came out!

You might have seen it on your way in. If not, go check it out. (just click on the images below) I also created a contact form  for anyone interested in bulk pricing, custom color combinations and mural opportunities. 

I finally got around to taking pictures of my Frankie Mcfly USA prints. The pics are for my online store, I just haven't added them to the site yet. I also created a printable form to log every print that goes in or out. I use something very similar for my t-shirt inventory. There are currently 5 different flavors of the Frankie Mcfly USA map as seen in the animated gif below.

Last night I ordered the supplies to package & ship 11 x 14 prints. First up is glassine paper. This goes over the face of the print so it doesn't get scratched. I went with paper, instead of plastic sleeves, to protect the artwork. It arrives in a couple days. Next are the rigid cardboard mailers for sending prints via mail. I bought prints from a friend and this is what he used. They look like they can take a beating. Unfortunately they don't arrive for at least another week. The last items are the white paper envelopes for local pickups and deliveries. They arrive tomorrow. They're flimsy compared to the brown mailers and the prints would get damaged if I mailed them in these envelopes without extra reinforcement. Which I might have to do till the mailers arrive. Next up is to order the the first run of prints and list them for sale on my online store.

I made a sale yesterday! A heather gray shirt with the pink SAN JOSE print on the front. I packaged it today. I usually do a hand drawn Thank You card but this is for a friend and repeat customer so I did something a bit different as a surprise. I can't show you what I did till she receives her order and sees it first. 

In other news I found that my bike's rear tire is rubbing against the frame when I ride. I was wondering what the strange sound was and I didn't know where it was coming from till today. I'll be taking it to Good Karma Bikes soon so they can fix it. 

I also made some new buttons. The colors still need a little tweaking on a couple but they're looking pretty cool

I picked up the USA map proofs this afternoon. I really like the 11x14, (smallest size) but the colors on the 16x20 and 24x36 are dull by comparison. The two big ones were printed using a wide format printer and cost a lot more too. I'm going to keep looking for a better solution for the large prints but start selling the 11x14 right away. I just need to look into shipping materials and postage costs.

Monday was tax day. It got extended from April 14th because of covid. I still waited till the last day to file. This was my third year reporting self-employed income and even though the preparation has gotten easier after streamlining my record keeping process, it still sucks a load of ass. I took lots of notes and screenshots as I filled out the Turbotax forms to make it easier for next year but I might start paying someone else to do my taxes.

It sounds like an organization of trained & certified cats you can hire to do your taxes. In actuality it's an abbreviation for Tax Categories and I spent most of Sunday making sure I properly categorized every transaction I made in 2020. Monday is tax day and I'm glad I'm almost done. 

I saw my doctor today for a checkup and to go over my lab results. (that bruise on my arm in the picture below is where they drew blood a couple days ago) Aside from being overweight and slightly high blood pressure my doctor said my test results look really good. Better numbers than most people coming back for doctor visits after the covid shutdown. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought they were going to be bad, especially since I'm currently about 10 lbs over what I usually weigh this time of year. There's still plenty work I need to do health wise but I left my doctor's office feeling good. I wanted to treat myself so I visited my local comic shop, Legends, inside Eastridge Mall, and picked up a bunch of $1 comics. All of them are new but they're reprints of old books. After returning home I got ready and went on a hike at Alum Rock Park. I did all of the Penitencia Creek Trail, almost 6 miles, then came home and did some more work on my taxes. I have this weekend to finish as tax day is this coming Monday.

434.1This afternoon I went and bought a heavy-duty speaker stand for my single QSC K10 speaker and a couple 1/4" to XLR cables. I'd been using my work's DJ equipment all these years and now that I'm buying stuff for myself I'm reminded of how expensive everything is. Later, after practicing some mixing, I started tinkering with my bikes rear brakes and I think I fixed them. They weren't tight enough before. Now I gotta figure out why my front brakes squeak when I slow down or come to a stop. Tonight I finally went back to working on my taxes. I added up all the miles I'd driven in for business purposes in 2020 and it was 434.1.