Today I shut down the last remnant of the duct-tape-and-chewing-gum system that WS ran on for many years before moving to the current modern ecommerce system. It wasn't really being used in any meaningful manner, it was legacy code of the very worst sort, it was costing a lot of money to keep it running, and it was well past time to let it go. I have backups of most of the photos, which are the only part I really wanted. 

The only real consequence of shutting it down is that I no longer have an easy way to look at everything I've ever made - except honestly, I never did: that system only had photos of the things that made it to the website. There were thousands of pairs of Earring Club earrings that never got documented at all, hundreds of on-the-fly commissions made in person, hundreds of pieces that only existed in my show inventory.  There were hundreds of pieces I made in the very beginning and sold or traded with no record existing. There was the year I used Storenvy, which was... well, the less I say about that disaster, the better, really. 

Living with brain damage makes me more than a little obsessive about trying to document everything. I forget things so easily, often without even realizing that I've forgotten, and having this massive database of things that I made and orders placed between 2005 and 2013 was comforting. It was something I could point to as the body of my work, and I could sift through the data and figure out what I'd been doing during the years I don't really remember.

Looking back isn't useful, though. I've been talking a lot this year about how I've been shaking up my work routines, challenging myself to do things differently, and this is just another piece of that. I don't need to be a data packrat. I need to focus on right now, and next week, and next year. Not last year, not five years ago, not ten years ago.

A few years ago I realized I'd made at least 10,000 pieces of jewelry.  That was a few years ago - I'm actually not entirely sure when. I've made hundreds, probably thousands more since then. I reset my inventory item numbers when I transitioned the store onto Shopify a year and a half ago, and I uploaded item #953 last night - and that's not counting things like Earring Club or neckvines or a lot of commissions, so I think I can safely claim at least 11,000 pieces of jewelry now. 

I think maybe it's time to stop counting. The past is in the past. The future is in the future. Right now, I need to go make some earrings.