after this week's various experiences fighting my way successfully through customer service (YET AGAIN) (GOD I'VE DONE THIS SO MANY TIMES IT'S LITERALLY BECOME A RUNNING JOKE WITH MY FRIENDGROUP) i thought about how i keep meaning to write a guide to dealing with bad customer service, and how also sometimes i know stuff now and have something helpful to say. i have gathered EXP in certain areas, enough to speak almost-semi-authoritatively-ish on certain topics. so far i've written:

Merch Photography For Hobbyists and Unprofessionals - a guide to taking decent merch photos with your phone
Shrinky Dink Research Notes - 30 or so pages of rambling about how i made cute handmade keychain charms with shrinky dink plastic
How To Put Your Cheap Tablet On An Ergo Arm - a short tutorial on how to mount your tablet on a monitor arm without shelling out for a tablet that's compatible with ergo arms or shelling out for the ergo arm (IT'S JUST A MONITOR ARM WITH A HIGHER PRICE TAG MOSTLY)
How To Notepad, a video about how i make tear-off notepads SOOOOO easy omg you can just do that in your house
and of course, most recently, my Bluesky Strategy Guide.

these are all free btw, even though they're in my ko-fi shop. you can pay for them but the idea is you download them for free and then give me money if i changed your life for the better (and you can afford to pay me a few bucks) (you literally do not have to though)

so here's a to-do list of things i wanna write up eventually, in no particular order.

• some kind of guide for how to navigate bad customer service and recover your cash when a big company screws with you, how to pursue vengeance against smaller shops that turn out to be scams, and how to best protect yourself from getting fucked with in the future (i have a curse, and thus a lot of experience)
• a guide to buying decent electronics when you're perpetually broke
• a guide/collection of resources for starting a merch shop, specifically targeted at artists in my weeb-y corner of the internet (a lot of the how-to-etsy guides out there are for... idk how else to say it... normie stuff. or like rich WASPy hobby moms with shabby chic craft sheds in the back yard who are selling their pottery)
• a guide to finding free-to-use-commercially-or-otherwise art resources that is NOT just mostly unlabeled link list-- i wanna get into the specifics of what i look for where and what certain sites are best for (preview pro tip: flickr is more alive and more useful than you're probably aware of)
• everything they don't tell you about die cutting stickers at home with a cricut/silhouette/etc. (how to choose one, how to troubleshoot common issues, how to avoid common pitfalls)
• "Anything But GIMP," a guide about alternatives to photoshop that are not goddamn GIMP and also a salty list of reasons that people who are not actually professional or serious hobbyist artists need to STOP recommending GIMP (i fucking hate GIMP)
• a cookbook with all my various recipes i've been slowly posting here (i have more!), probably with a section about Cooking For Beginners Who Think They Can't Possibly Cook Because They Have Anxiety
• how i made sprites for Potion Stand Story using Vroids

i like to be helpful. i've benefited greatly from a lot of free internet resources and guides over the years so i like to try to make stuff like this once in a while too. if any of this sounds interesting, or if you are aware of my various internet activities and are wondering "how does doodlemancy do That Other Thing," let me know and i might add it to the list. i try to stick to stuff that people actually ask me about because they think i know what i'm doing; i'm not trying to be an authority of any sort here, i just like to offer what i can that's useful.