"An artist needs to take many tiny baby steps to achieve and maintain quality and continuity. " (Elizabeth Azzolina) My ebay journey began in may of 2001. My life, and the world have changed considerably since then. buying and selling world coins on ebay was actually my main source of income at one point. various personal setbacks arose in the spring of 2002, and i hadn’t yet become reestablished as a college art teacher. i also hadn’t started doing photography in the vermont newspaper i write art reviews for - so basically, the $1000 a month in sales i started earning from my little coin business in cyberspace was a true lifeline. of course - that is $1000 gross. my net, after buying inventory, and paying fees was probably about half that. nevertheless i was an active proselytizer of the gospel of ebay, in those heady days, and remain so whenever the topic arises. more on that part of my story in later blog posts. i’ll probably also use this space to brag about some of the great purchases i made - like coins resold for hundreds of dollars, purchased for next to nothing. the interface between ebay and a real life doesn’t get noted very often in ebay propaganda, and such might be worth writing about. ebay is an example of how the internet is changing everything in our society. as a writer, musing in print about how to cope with such changes an occupational hazard. and the notion of using this wonderfully unlikely location for self reflection, that then get cast adrift in a bottle of blog space offered by mother ebay, seems like a particularly enjoyable past time. while there is much hoopla about success stories, and even multimillionaire dick chaney praised the initiative of “ebay entrepreneurs” during the 2004 campaign - i was an ebay entrepreneur from necessity not choice. i suspect most of us are little people, just doing the best we can. and like me, many of us don’t quite fit into the paradigm of a one size fits all universe. so we have embarked upon a million ebay odysseys - as buyers, sellers, and resellers. ebay is a break from the pressures of the real world. but its unique take on commerce has also been instructive, for me at least, in many areas of my life. life is all about one form of commerce or another isn't it? we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide - such is a form of commerce. vtcoin burlington