Sick After Another Market
Because of COVID, I’ve had to figure out ways to sell my art in-person at local arts markets. This has been a significant challenge for me for a number of reasons:
My ankle injury prevents me from doing set-up and break-down quickly and from standing on concrete for long hours.
Weights are heavy. And I mean HEAVY.
No matter what I do, my tent still “breathes” (I’ll talk about these tent things some other time).
Gridwall is heavy and awkward.
Things break far more frequently at arts markets than at conventions or indoor vending opportunities.
There’s always something significantly different that affects my ability to vend, the conditions of the market, the ROI of each market, and how I feel during and after the market.
The heat.
The frequency.
I’m solo.
I’ll talk about all of these and their individual challenges at some other time after I’ve collected my thoughts on them a bit better. It’s possible these make for better YouTube videos, but then I run the risk of rambling even more!
However, last night, I vended at Vagabond and was without power so I had no lights and no fan. I thought it was going to be cooler (because it certainly felt cooler when I left the apartment), but it was sweltering because of my booth’s location and how I had to set up to capture the sunlight because I had no electricity. This was mostly my own fault and primarily because I simply cannot afford expensive battery lighting.
The first hour of set-up, I was fine. That was mostly unloading my car, moving my car, raising the tent, and determining how I was going to face/set-up the tent because of my booth’s unique position and the lack of lighting.
At Vagabond, we have to set up within 2 hours. For comparison, most conventions I have 4 - 6 hours or even an entire day. And, as a more comparable point of comparison, at the Riverside Arts Market, I have anywhere from 3 - 4 hours. My booth typically takes 3.5 hours to set-up. On a good day.
By the second hour, I was starting to feel fatigued. Fortunately, my SO had packed me some Powerade Zero and water. So I took a 3 minute break and sat down to drink some.
I felt a little better, but lifting the weights twice each (for a total of 8 lifts) made it difficult to walk again because of my ankle injury. I had to start moving more slowly.
By 3:00 p.m. (1.5 hours into set-up and 1 hour before the market would open), I felt like I was going to die.
Over the past 6 months, I’ve become very familiar with this feeling because it started happening to me at the Riverside Arts Market. There’s nothing that they’re doing wrong to make this happen. It’s the heat and the sun combined with the Florida humidity.
Every weekend since roughly June, I’ve been suffering from heat exhaustion and sometimes heat stroke symptoms at markets. I’ll talk about this in more depth in another post, but suffice to say it happened again. I was too hot to adequately vend and I’m even too fatigued now (the next morning) to study for my exam this Tuesday. I’m now in danger of being unable to stream on Monday and Tuesday again because I have to study for this exam or I could lose scholarships. This puts Project Mongoose’s Phase One goals in jeopardy because I need to get done with at least 2 more commissions this week. Losing Monday and Tuesday because of this fatigue would be catastrophic.
And I have somewhere I have to be tonight… in less than 12 hours. It’s a drink and draw even that I’m really looking forward to, but I won’t be drinking now. I’m too ill and it would only dehydrate me more quickly.
I feel so sick. I just don’t know how much I have left in me.
I’m so tired of feeling like this. Like my face is burning. Like the bones and muscles in my face are bruised, swollen, and throbbing. Like lights are burning my eyes. Like my lips are swollen and cracked. Like my fingers are bruised. I’m tired of feeling so disoriented after these markets that I cannot even get home without help navigating the roads. And, even then, I still somehow get lost.
Something has to change.
