D11 – The two sound of crickets

Tuesday, September 15th, 2026. Studio Uncle Fish, Irmo, South Carolina.

There’s something rather comforting about waking up and knowing that I’m not going to change my vanilla degenerate life.

No stress about drinking water and then going for a healthy walk. Smiling, brushing my teeth, and then having an apple. No inner monologue about how I need to control my inner monologue. No clean underwear or shoes. Just wooking it from the start.

Flip-flops, Starbucks, and cigarettes. Like god intended.

It’s gonna be a good day.

Studio Assessment

In a progressive future, there will be a link to a tour of the glass shop.

Turns out I’m not the only one who woke up on the strange side of their leaking inflatable camping mattress. My shop mate Derrick was also registering off this morning. We take a drive to the coffee shop with the dogs. I get a vanilla latte, which I definitely haven’t earned. Also, it was my second trip to a coffee store today. Stupidly irresponsible. Obviously enjoyable. And Derrick doesn’t sleep on a deflating tent pad. He has a house. With a bed. He’s a functional member of society with furniture and stuff.

Mids from the kiln. Last of vomit under white. Working through the not great rainbow cane. If my life was dependent on selling this work retail to an avid jewelry maker, I would be in trouble. Looking at these beads in the context of their bins after the split, they look okay to good.

I feel guilty about the concept of Zanfirico Hanks. I suspect these observations and the emotions that follow will be quite common at kiln split moving forward with my life.

The Zanfirico Hanks concept is based on the understanding that my career as a beadmaker is a total failure. It’s dead, and it’s never coming back.

The idea of being a craftsman that continuously fronts a verity of creatively progressive product for use by those making necklaces is cooked, long cooled, and drawing flies in the garbage can.

It was my adult life, but making glass beads for functional use in jewelry production as a full-time vocation is today a total fiction. It’s dead. I killed it, or someone or something else killed it, it doesn’t matter. It died. It’s dead.

Zanfirico Hanks makes beads for display. Art de craft. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it embarrassing because I find it embarrassing, absolutely. But this is the plan. It’s not a bad plan. It might actually work. It’s just not beadmaking.

The beadmaker thing, bro, it’s so sad. Days of trying to be blue-collar emblematic of something like the Bead and Button Show? Gone. I loved that life. So much. I honestly loved it with everything I was. But it’s dead. The Bead and Button trade show went out of business in 2019. I cried in the parking lot between cars. My life was such a mess.

Long live Zanfirico Hanks as the closest thing to beadmaker my future will ever take me.

I want to live. I mean, I’m smoking a cigarette at the moment, which is passive suicide, but still, I want to live. I want to be a lampworker. I don’t need furniture. Just beadmaking, backpacking, and probably coffee and marijuana.

eBay Charity Auctions

After cleaning the studio, the first order of business is national service. Read about my 100% donation eBay charity auctions program, benefiting food programs around the United States, by clicking here. Link to live auctions by clicking here.

Time for desperate action has arrived. Yesterday’s auction closed at below half of retail. This will keep happening or worse if I can’t find some new audience members.

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I’m not well versed in click bait. This impromptu exercise is all blind effort and no actual benefit. No change on bids. Another ineffective desperate maneuver that might turn off more people than it turns on. Which is not great decision making.

There is nothing to pack and ship. I move on at noon.

Etsy

Shop the Zanfirico Harold Etsy store by clicking here. You buy, I backpack.

Yikes. It’s dead. Even the sound of crickets has faded.

This is not how I earn a living. This is how I starve. I have a traffic problem. There is no traffic because… my glass is terrible, I do not have a consolidated message, and I carry no audience. These are difficult issues to solve. Even if I have an idea worth working with (Zanfirico Hanks) it will take years to get moving. Which is not great.

I get five new listings up on Etsy. Today’s situation roughly follows the pattern (that will hopefully become firm soon) prescribed by the concept of Zanfirico Hanks. Appropriately, I made 4 beads of each pattern yesterday. At today’s split, 3 went to “the board” (Maker’s Collection, names aren’t real yet). 1 went to Etsy. That’s the business.

Erank numbers are scary. For example, $4.2k/241 is no way to earn a living. I don’t understand these numbers. They are wrong?

I move on at 3 pm. Everything takes forever. Lol. Because I’m a wook.

Lampworking

In a progressive future, there will be a link to photograph history or plans or some shit.

I work until about midnight. Moving through the last of the prep I have that was produced outside the new creative controls brought in with a more strongly defined Zanfirico Hanks.

It’s a great time. I smoke cigarettes and weed like a winter chimney. I listen to Lauren Hill and explain to her singing voice how interesting, intelligent, and super hot she is. Or was, I guess.

Conclusion

I retire to my van and chill with my last cigarettes before I quit.

I love living in my van. Simple is magnificent. Summertime, one in the morning, listening to crickets.

Zanfirico Hanks