Today I've been really busy and got lots of things done but hadn't really achieved anything. So I figured instead of talking about this rather dull today, perhaps a little reflection back to the past, maybe talk about a few things, both past and current and see where we go from there.

I guess the easy place to start (And probably the part that interests you the most) is what I've managed to acquire over these past 12 months. What is it, after all this work, that we actually have?

From the beginning I had nothing, I was just me with a laptop reading everything I could grab from Google on the art market. I dropped the PS3 controller or whatever it was I'd be wasting my time with and got simply to learning. Why? Because I had an idea after I struggled to hire an artist for an idea I wanted brought to life. Because with this idea I knew it would be a brilliant project to start and if it had a future, I would make money from it. Not necessarily to become rich, I'm not too interested in that to be honest, but to simply be deemed successful, I basically want a good life!

So I had nothing, but I started to acquire knowledge on the market. I was enjoying it too because the more I looked into it, the more problems I saw, the idea I had was looking to have even more potential. It was early days too so it was totally flexible, there was a million different ways it could have become. With more knowledge, it followed a more profitable direction, a direction with a bigger potential. What I had then was an idea that, with market knowledge, evolved.

I didn't stop there though, I had made that mistake in the past; Thinking I had an incredible entrepreneurial idea in the past only to find it was completely stupid. I learned from my first mistake on a previous project and so I actually TALKED to people about my idea. E-mailing artists. I emphasise the word 'talked' because of two reasons.

The first is classic with most people who think they have great ideas, they don't talk about it though because they think someone will steal their idea. But secondly and more importantly was I wasn't a social person. I mean I'm a perfectly nice person and if you spend time around me you wouldn't notice much, but I don't fit into the social norm, in fact it's mostly only when I let people see that side of me that they see it. Other times I'm overly confident and relax while I let my dysfunctional side out. So if you're familiar with the INTJ personality, sometimes I can be like Hannibal, other times I can be like Sherlock.

To my count there are at least 2 people who know me well enough to see my dysfunctional in a positive light, the actual number will be less than 10. The fact is if you don't take the effort to understand me, be friendly, you're just going to perceive me in a bad light.

I've sort of diverted off onto a tangent here but before I get to the point I should clarify what I mean by dysfunctional or outside the social norm. There is nothing actually wrong with me, it's simply that I have the kind of personality that doesn't 'follow the crowd'. To give some very poor examples off the top of my head (Inspired from school), I don't care about having the tie loose, if you have it small and tight with the top bottom I'm not going to say you're a geek. That's just you and I'm fine with that. I also don't care about who's going to be having fights afterschool, I won't even be in the crowd but if I was, I certainly wouldn't be cheering. The last example was kind of extreme but it's actually the extremes that show it off better.

But yes, I fit into society like everyone else. If I don't see a good reason to doing something, I won't do it just because everyone else does it. Get drunk and party all night for the 18th birthday? Screw that, who wants a birthday you barely remember? I went sand tiger shark diving. On my 21st this year I'm planning on wing-walking. A recent example today of how I don't fit in was when someone wanted a piece of paper handed over from the over table. Instead of talking to the guy who had his back behind me I just poked his back and asked "Can I have that paper, mate?", the people on my table were laughing at my actions and I didn't even understand why at first. So that's what I mean by socially dysfunctional, this led to me being a pretty quiet person growing up.

Never forgot swimming with those beasts! (Wish I got pictures from my own dive)

So (Back to point now!) because of who I was, talking to people and taking on this socialite personality, even though it was online, it felt really strange, to send off lots and lots of emails to different people everyday. To give each and every one of them a personal message. I liked getting to know these people and seeing what they're capable of (Their artwork) but it was all very weird to me, even behind a computer screen. Over time though I began to enjoy it more and more, getting to talk to people.

It was talking to these artists that gave me so much help. They helped me develop as a person, just simply by taking the time to reply to me and talk with me. They helped by letting me understand their lives, to understand the problems artists face in artistry and (As a consequence), helped to develop the idea even further! The idea had started after one person struggled to bring their dream art to life, then evolved as the market was further understood, then perfected by the lives of artists. This is what we then had near the end of the research stage.

Literally, Hire an Artist was created by artists.