...would be a fitting description for a brief period of angst I experienced upon arriving in Santa Monica today. I'm in LA to sell shirts at Cal State Long Beach tomorrow, and I had hoped to pull into Venice Beach today to talk to some retailers and to find out what it takes to sell on the boardwalk.
But traffic was heavy on the way up, and I soon realized that I wouldn't make it to Venice before sunset, so instead I headed to Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade, an open-air mall right near the beach. I was neck-deep in negative thoughts at that point, wondering how my business was ever going to make it in the face of expenses like gas prices and printing costs (I had just got an estimate of $250 for a run of 1000 full-color flyers featuring my catalog of shirt designs). Then I had to abort the Venice mission, and when I got to Santa Monica, it looked like I wouldn’t even be able to get parking without paying for it. With all of these red-ink-stained dollar signs spinning around in my mind, I was pitying myself and my situation pretty intensely for a few minutes...
...but then a free parking spot opened up in front of me, and after parking I grabbed a stack of WackWear shirts and headed to the Promenade. The stores there are all of the corporate mega-chain variety, so pitching them on Wavelength wasn't really an option, but that wasn't my plan anyway. Over the course of an hour, I handed out shirts to each of the homeless people I could find in the Promenade area - probably a dozen in all, mostly men. I asked each person if they'd like a free t-shirt, and each immediately said yes. I asked if it was okay if the shirt had an anti-Bush design on it, and again, each person said yes right away.
From there, I asked the person to choose the size and design of their liking from the pile of shirts I had brought with me. Most seemed excited to wear the new shirt, and all of them were grateful for the gift. When I walked back to my car later, I was buzzing brightly, and those clouds of doubt didn't seem so formidable anymore.
