It’s high time for a letter from me, Pyragraph’s Publisher and Editor, to tell you what’s going on with our little-but-growing creative career magazine.

Balancing music with needing to put my daughter first is tricky. I have to admit, there’s something about playing music that feels self-indulgent.

You are going to take those companies on. Really, it’s a race to first place. And through systematic effort, you can totally do it.

Try to think creatively about business, not just your artwork. You might be surprised at what you learn.

Demo reel editing can be full of surprises: follow your best with your third-best; your logo might hurt more than help; and music can be terribly tricky.

Would worrying about my vendor’s delay make the oil ship sooner? No. So why worry about it?

If you are an animator, visual effects or motion graphics artist, editor, actor—you’ll need to make your demo reel to showcase your best work.

David asks: How can I get into selling my artwork as CD covers?

When I posted about Unicorn Poop, I just sat there slack-jawed as the “share” count clicked up and up over the course of the day.

Invention (contributing to your field) can help you find your resilience, rather than focusing you only on the obvious markers of success.

Analytics do more than just tell you how many people visited your site. In my case, they tell me how bacon soap has made my business flourish.

One day, I set the soap down with the ingredients facing me: Seven ingredients. That’s all. How complicated could seven ingredients be?

Staandup Desk received valuable input on design and materials from USA-based fabricators that it did not get from the factories in China.

Local manufacturing can lead to greater innovation, it can be better suited for smaller production runs, it is often faster, and can even be cheaper.

Sit back and get comfortable, I’m going to tell you a story about when everything actually goes the way you hope it will.

I may not be on top of the world, but I’m happy with what I do, and that’s kind of a big deal.