When Things Get Tough... Return to the Old Ways

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Well, that was fun... NOT.

Watching the financial markets crumble is never "fun," unless you perhaps are a short seller. Which I'm not... even though I have on occasion had a remarkable talent for picking ideas and projects that are about to fail, monumentally. But that's a whole other story.

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This is sea glass, or beach glass, and it is how I once made a living...

As I watch the meltdown in both the legacy financial markets as well as the cryptosphere — and ponder the reality that just a few months ago we had $1.62 Hive — I find myself looking backwards to a part of life where crypto wasn't even on the map yet.

Sure, Bitcoin had been "invented," but it was little more than a somewhat exotic attempt at "Invisible Internet Nerd Money."

But I was enjoying my own version of "making something out of nothing," in the form of actually being a beach comber for "a living."

Yes, I was actually able to walk on the beach, pick up "interesting things," and market and sell them to jewelers and artists around the world who work with "found objects."

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A large piece of sea glass, possibly from the bottom of a glass dish with part of a "startburst" pattern still showing

I've already written about this, in the past, so I won't repeat myself... but with economic uncertainty on the upswing, and "blogging on Hive" increasingly off the map (as an INCOME proposition, not as an INTEREST), I am spending rather more time looking at the beach combing business again.

Of course, most of the sea glass is now gone, but I recently had the good fortune to be invited to help a friend — and former customer of by business — sell her lifetime collection of sea glass and other beach treasures.

Of course, we split the proceeds, but the attraction here is that it is something I really enjoy puttering around with... AND selling things that people buy to create things in the hope of making money tends to be a really good place to be, when the economic conditions are a bit sketchy, as they are now.

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Deep red sea glass. Red sea glass is VERY rare, but also sought after by jewelry makers

You might find yourself wondering why anyone would buy what's essentially "broken glass," but there is a certain "mystique" surrounding sea glass... going back many many years.

The glass starts as the usual sharp broken shards we expect when we think "broken glass," but after years — decades, even — of being naturally tumbled in the ocean with rocks and sand, the soft rounded shapes you see in these photos become the result.

I started picking it up when I was a little kid, and we would be living in various more or less exotic locales where glass trash had found its way into the water and gradually became "polished."

Sea glass has actually become fairly rare, since we get most things in plastic these days, not in glass.

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Cornflower blue sea glass, likely from an old "Milk of Magnesia" bottle

Yes, this is definitely a "niche market." The number of people involved in some aspect of trading with or using sea glass is only in the thousands or possibly tens of thousands... WORLDWIDE.

But it's a very dedicated and loyal community of artists and collectors.

So what was my overall point here?

Well, when things get sort of rough, it's perhaps a good idea to take a step or two back and re-evaluate where we are putting our energies. Or rather, where we expect the grocery money to come from.

As for Hive and Crypto? Well, I'm glad I am in this for the very long haul and my reason for being here is more about a love of writing and the creative process... than about actual investing and making money. Definitely not going anywhere, but going to focus more on building than on earning.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Are you likely to "change directions" or "adjust" in some way, in response to current economic changes? Or are things going to be unchanged for you? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 20220614 13:40 PDT

0591/1837



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22 comments
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Watch out for the human traffickers at hivefest. You wont know it until its too late. STAY AWAY! Beware, traffickers can be women or men! They will act nice until they dont. There is human trafficking going on around this type of crypto. I have witnessed it. They literally have attempted my murder and are trying to kill me with V2K and RNM. Five years this has been happening to me, it started here, around people that are still here. Homeland security has done nothing at all, they are not here to protect us. Dont we pay them to stop shit like this? The NSA, CIA, FBI, Police and our Government has done nothing. Just like they did with the Havana Syndrome, nothing. Patriot Act my ass. The American government is completely incompetent. The NSA should be taken over by the military and contained Immediately for investigation. I bet we can get to the sources of V2K and RNM then. https://ecency.com/fyrstikken/@fairandbalanced/i-am-the-only-motherfucker-on-the-internet-pointing-to-a-direct-source-for-voice-to-skull-electronic-terrorism ..... https://ecency.com/gangstalking/@acousticpulses/electronic-terrorism-and-gaslighting--if-you-downvote-this-post-you-are-part-of-the-problem if you run into one of them you may want to immediately shoot them in the face. 187, annihilate, asphyxiate, assassinate, behead, bleed, bludgeon, boil, bomb, bone, burn, bury, butcher, cap, casket, choke, chop, club, crucify, crush, curb, decapitate, decimate, deflesh, demolish, destroy, devein, disembowel, dismember, drown, electrocute, eliminate, end, euthanize, eviscerate, execute, explode, exterminate, extinguish, finish, fry, grind, guillotine, gut, hack, hang, hit, ice, implode, incinerate, kill, liquidate, lynch, massacre, maul, microwave, mutilate, neutralize, obliterate, off, pop, poison, punnish, quarter, ruin, shank, shock, shoot, shred, skin, slay, slaughter, smoke, smother, snipe, snuff, squish, stab, strangle, stone, suffocate, suicide, SWAT, swing, terminate, torture, terrorize, whack, waste, wreck. You better fucking kill me.

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Hello dear friend @denmarkguy good afternoon
Great way to look at things, never would have thought of looking for stones on the beach as a possible income.
I appreciate you sharing your experience on the subject.
Have a beautiful afternoon

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I would never have known @jlufer, except for one time being at a street arts and crafts fair many years ago, and having a conversation with a jeweler who worked with such items. I asked where where she found her beach objects, and she told me she bought them all on eBay, because she actually lived 500+ km from the nearest beach!

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Sea glass is very beautiful. I do love the colors.

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They are quite beautiful, and there are so many possible colors!

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Very cool, I had no idea this was even a thing!

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I knew about it from childhood, but not that there were people actually willing to purchase such things... and yet, it afforded me a livelihood of sorts for 5-6 years.

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I wished there would be only seeglas and no plastic in our oceans And they look so beautiful, although I never found one myself.

Looking back on old plans? Thats a nice input thank you :-)

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I wish there were less plastic, too. When I went beach combing, I always brought along a garbage bag to pick up the alarming amount of plastic items that would wash on shore... a lot of people are — sadly — horrible litterbugs!

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A beautiful perspective in a rough market situation :) Regards to your question, I am also in the long haul for Hive and crypto so the grind keeps on amidst all the noise around hehe. Cheers!

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I'm definitely here for the very long term... in a sense, I am hoping this will all keep building until some manner of "retirement" happens for me. Even so, the wild ups and downs can be a little unnerving.

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I can relate with the feelings :) There's so much faith and hope in Hive and I believe we will be on that manner of "retirement" one day :)

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I don't like having all my eggs in one basket. Honestly, I'll need a significant pay raise to make the time, energy, and commute to the library worthwhile for the next year. Unfortunately, as money loses value and people reevaluate their spending, I'm not sure I can get much interest in my collection of jewelry projects. Nonetheless, I might be interested in sea glass for craft purposes anyway. I can even pay in relatively-stable HBD!

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I totally get the whole "eggs-basket" wisdom... we probably have near a dozen different projects going at any one time... Hive activities represent merely one small corner of the whole picture, albeit a significant part of our "savings" program.

I keep hoping someone will pick up the initiative to create a real peer-to-peer marketplace here, likely denominated in HBD... that would be a great asset to our ecosystem, I think.

I have a fair bit of what is called "craft quality" sea glass, which basically has small flaws jewelry makers don't want. If you decide you ever want some, we can totally work something out... you can get a surprising amount of sea glass into a small Priority Mail box!

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Wow, thank you very much for sharing this post. I just know about sea glass from your post. They are so beautiful, never found them on the beach before. Or I just ignore them when I see them because I don't know what is it and their value.

Next time I visit the beach I'll try to see if there is any sea glass there if I am lucky enough. 😃

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Sea glass isn't everywhere; you have to have a beach that is near where there has been a population for some decades, so glass garbage was created 50-100+ years ago.

Often, we don't look down on the beach unless we are looking for something specific, so it is entirely possible you have seen it, and not known.

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So there are some conditions in order to find sea glass not just a random place at the beach.
It means you just visit a specific beach to looking sea glass. Very interesting

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Yeah, watching you get pumped about seaglass again has made me a little nostalgic.
Makes me want to shout "ORANGE!" wink

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ORANGE!!!!

(Not so much...)

Yes, those were the days!

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I know a chick that makes wind comes out of sea glass, and she's making good money doing it

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So many creative possibilities! I see a LOT of different creative expressions with seaglass at some of our local street fairs.

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I love collecting sea glass. Beautiful, and also there is that romantic feeling of imagining the story behind how it got there and what it was once a part of. I appreciate how you have an idea of where the blue glass may have come from. I have a very small collection, but I think most are from beer bottles. Brown, white, green...

Hi from Portland.

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