What Do Campfires and Opossums Have in Common?

Blogging, at least the way I do it, is hard work. I love creating projects and I love writing about them. Both take a lot of effort, but I enjoy them so much that it doesn't feel like I'm working when I'm crafting or writing.

On the other hand, optimizing and promoting my posts is work I do not like. I want to send quality content out into the world and have people magically find it on their own without any effort on my part. 99.9% of the time, that's not going to happen. However, sometimes magic does happen and my posts are found by just the right person at just the right time.

Example #1:

This week, my campfire costume was featured by the Chicago Tribune. I received a request by a reporter out of the blue, asking permission to include my tutorial. Needless to say, this was thrilling. And I absolutely love that the project that was featured was jointly designed and made by Trevor and me, worn by Trevor, and photographed by Steve. It's my name that is published in the Tribune (you guys, MY NAME IS IN THE TRIBUNE!) but all three of us contributed.

Example #2:

Over the summer, I was contacted by a writer for a Portuguese magazine called Amanhecer (in English, Dawn) asking permission to include my cardboard tube opossum in their next issue. My copy arrived in the mail this week. It's in Portuguese, so I can't read it (although there are English and Spanish cognates I can read!). It's very exciting to see my work in a print magazine, especially with them in such a decline. Here's the cover:

And here's my opossum ("a unique marsupial animal that lives on all of the American continent"):

It's all very exciting to have people find and love my content without me having promoted it to them. And in the vein of sharing more happy news, I had my first 7-day streak with Amazon sales this week. Woo hoo! Feel free to help me keep the streak going, LOL!

Oh, and the answer to the question about what campfires and opossums have in common? Well, besides both being projects I recently had published, they are both nocturnal, and they appear together in a traditional folktale.