Got my financial aid letter - it's not enough. But since I'm stubborn as a mule, I will find a way. And not with hat in hand, asking for handouts.

I've been down the outside scholarship road, too, but I have my doubts about it. It's kind of like entering sweepstakes in a way. You apply for tons of them, and jump through all their hoops, but you never know until the last minute whether ANY of them are going to actually pay off. Besides, most of them are for high school kids, not 50-year-olds.

So, what this means is that I have to make Internet marketing work for me. No more of my "it's too hard" bullshit. Like my problem with power tools, I've learned that nobody's listening, and nobody cares but me. That's actually a very GOOD thing. Just like when a baby is learning to walk and it falls and cries, if no one pays attention then the baby just gets up and starts trying to walk again. But if someone comes over and says oh you poor thing, the baby just cries louder and sits there waiting to be picked up.

So! Time to dust off my hands and get to work. I'm going to Northwest Encaustic next weekend to get as much work done as I can on my three new art projects - a 16" x 16" op-art photo collage, a 12" x 12" redoing of an earlier project, and a 30" x 22" triptych - but after that it's FOCUS time on Internet marketing.

Internet marketing (and affiliate marketing in particular) is perfect for artists, if you can get past the technological hurdles. It means residual income, giving you both money and time to do your art. And if you're selling e-books, MP3s, or other instant deliverables, you don't have to worry about order fulfillment. Once you get the hang of it, it's largely "set it and forget it."

I've learned a lot about Internet marketing during this stint of unemployment. I've also learned that the biggest hurdle, other than the technological, is staying focused. I now get a ton of e-newsletters every day, each one promising to be the latest and greatest way to make money from home on the Internet. There are many, many that are pure scams, and others for which you truly do have to be a dyed-in-the-wool computer nerd.

But for a stubborn mule like me, there's a way. It IS possible to find that elusive nirvana known as residual income. And I WILL do it, in time to start art school five months from now. I'd say wish me luck, but I don't need it.