It’s here once again… The most wonderful time of the year.  Another year almost over and a new one about to begin – A new sales year that is.

I see the end of November dear readers, and I get excited. Excited about the prospect of making good buying decisions that will positively impact your personal business as a creative professional, and at this stage of the game, I really don’t think you can afford not to consider Black Friday as part of your business strategy. Whether you are just getting started making and selling your form of art or well into the thick of it, there are peak sales periods where retailers are offering massive savings in order to make enough business for the fiscal year and stay afloat.

I would say its a rather symbiotic relationship in fact. You get items that you’ve been putting off buying because of the expense, and businesses make enough money so that they can continue to keep the lights on for another year or two.

I wrote another post about this day last year, a more in-depth overview of what Black Friday represents historically and from a cultural standpoint, but this year I wanted to spend a little time on the significance for you, and to give a timely update from my own perspective.

Black Is The New Black

I’ve always been tight fisted with my money. But there have been occasions here and there, where I decided against my impulse to spend money on myself. It’s the paradox of thrift, a theory of economics.

The idea states that an increase in autonomous saving leads to a decrease in aggregate demand and thus a decrease in gross output which will in turn lower total saving. The paradox is, narrowly speaking, that total saving may fall because of individuals’ attempts to increase their saving, and, broadly speaking, that increase in saving may be harmful to an economy.

To put it simply and rather gravely – saving for a rainy day is prudent, but penny pinching breeds a lifetime of poverty. Learning the difference between always living within your means versus always spending more than you have is a difficult lesson, but I will give you this advice, he who never takes risks is guaranteed to stay within his comfort zone.

It’s your responsibility as a creative professional to at least try for your dreams. You’ll never regret trying. To quote one of my favourite movies of all time, Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, “things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It’s not dead it’s just that it’s been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I’m trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day.”

So dream big and dream often, you creative cuties. I might not be doing much tonight because I’ll be up at the crack of dawn for this sale, but I’m truly living my dreams, so I don’t sleep as much as I used to. But that could just be a theory.

Tim!