It's true, this hobby shop owner sounds like kind of a misfit. I'm assuming that all hobby shop owners are misfits, actually, but this guy sounds like he's a misfit even among hobby shop owners. What he needs is a few sessions with a hobby-shop-owner-therapist, which is a very small niche in the psychoanalytical profession, indeed.
It's been years since I've been in a hobby shop, and I guess I'm about due to visit one. The "hobbies" involved with hobby shops are pretty much all about creating and being the boss of miniature worlds, right? Miniature trains and their towns, miniature planes and helicopters, miniature cars and miniature trucks. Little rockets and little boats, and little armies of men. And the owners and workers are mostly bulky, large men, right? It's a pretty funny thing, when you think about it. Most girls get over their dollhouse phase... I guess it's because they successfully transition from moving tiny people and furniture around, to moving real furniture and people around. I wonder if the whole hobby shop business is kind of dying out across America, or is it still a vital, ongoing thing? I imagine it's like stamp collecting, where the few remaining stamp collectors of the world get together to grumble and complain about the state of people today, and wonder why young people nowadays aren't interested in stamp collecting, and blah, blah, blah. You get the same thing among book store owners, with their noses all out of joint because somebody invented a thing called a "kindle." Once in awhile, at auctions or something, I come across cool lots of little painted metal antique soldiers -- knights or British colonial soldiers in India, or whatever -- and I feel a brief tug, and think how fun and interesting it would be to collect something like that. And then I get myself straightened out and think, no, I don't want to go there. I would assume that for a lot of guys these days, the fantasies involved with fiddling around with little trains and cars, have been replaced by digital fantasies -- the thousands of mini--worlds that are available through video games, or whatever they are called these days.
I am thinking the key to Jain McClain's business success -- if she is successful ... is there really much of a market for "art advisors" in Lake Tahoe? -- is never to snort or scoff when her clients tell her what they have in mind, no matter what. That might sound like a hard skill to manage, but it would be a lot easier if she actually didn't have a whole lot of artistic taste herself, which is probably the case. I notice on her website resume that she has taught art appreciation courses at schools like Truckee Meadows Community College. Which could be an important center of art world culture, for all I know, but still. It makes me think that clown paintings might be right up her alley.
Speaking of websites, it doesn't really matter any more if a person is "successful" or not. What matters is that other people think you are successful. And that's where having a website, and about 500 Facebook "friends," and who knows what else, comes into play. Pretty much anyone can slap together a website that makes them appear successful, and once you do that, you just have to provide all sorts of links to your website, and give your website address to strangers in bars, and then presto, you have it made.
And that last paragraph makes me think about another lesson that I've only partially learned in about the last five years. It relates to introverts vs. extroverts, and how screwed introverts are in this world we live in. In a group meeting, for instance, some gathering that is supposed to make decisions for the whole group, the extroverts always blab out a bunch of stuff that sounds good on the surface. As an introvert, I always instinctively assume that everyone is at least a little like I am, that they think before they speak, and actually have good reasons for saying something before blabbing it out to a whole group. But no, it turns out that extroverts are not like that at all. They just talk because that is what they do. But before you know it, the whole group is careening off in the direction of whatever popped into the heads of the extroverts in the first few seconds. Same thing at a social gathering, especially a cocktail party in New York. A couple of extroverts are talking, with me rounding out the group. They make some clever sounding statements to each other. I stand there thinking about what they said. About a minute later, I realize that it's basically bullshit, and I've come up with a clever response. Then I tune in to what they are saying again, and it turns out they are now on a totally different topic, saying some clever sounding things. And on and on like that.
--edward
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