I have recently started a print-on-demand (POD) t-shirt website store. And first thing every morning I mix a half bag of cement to make a dozen patio stones for my new greenhouse floor.
July 11
Life in the jungle: If it wasn’t for some rain after I made my patio stones, I might have cut grass today. I headed to the village for groceries and six more bags of cement. After yesterday evening’s issues with my print-on-demand website and some recent late nights, my motivation was lagging. I napped in my hammock most of the afternoon. But I couldn’t hide from my website forever. I started going through the products and numbers. Everything was significantly out of wack with the costs thanks to a glitch in the POD website platform I discovered yesterday. I reached out to tech support again. It turns out my fears are realized. The original costs that I was working with are much higher. These new costs will significantly kill my t-shirt design profits. Can nothing work out? Twenty months and counting of daily grief. How does someone complete two years of an epic bike ride and then 20 months (and counting) of grief and nothing going smoothly? Absolutely nothing is going smoothly in my life.
Baby spiny tail iguanas are green
July 12
Life in the jungle: After making my dozen patio stones I cut grass for the entire day. I had no interest in facing my POD website. I don’t think I have ever cut the entire yard at one time. The grass and weeds were so tall that I almost pushed the lawnmower over an adult Central American Wood Turtle. No rain today and I am exhausted.
July 13
Life in the jungle: I thought someone stole most of my chickens this morning. The coop was empty and the door was slightly open. I never heard the rooster all morning. I didn’t see any sign of them for a long time. Usually, I can hear the rooster all morning even when they wander. It turned out they were over at Jill’s. They visit Jill multiple times a day but my rooster makes his rooster calls all day regardless of the time of day it is. I must not have latched the coop door properly last night.
After making my dozen patio stones, I went back to working on my t-shirt POD clothing website. I had to redo all my t-shirt mock-up designs to accommodate all of the unexpected cost increases I discovered the other day. I had to compromise my graphic placement and profits. But I am too far into the project to abandon it now. I synced my 15 mock-ups to Shopify but now I am having a hell of a time trying to get the products (t-shirts) to display on the website pages. I am extremely frustrated (as usual).
Adult spiny tail iguanas lose the green coloration
July 14
Life in the jungle: After making my dozen patio stones, I was back in front of the computer. After spending a lot of time trying to fix my current website issue, I contacted Shopify Support. The solution was a quick fix. I couldn’t help but be pissed. It was two clicks per product to fix. In none of the tutorials I came across was this explained but even worse there was no reason for this particular step to be manual and the platform should have automated this step. My products finally showed up on the website pages except for some reason not all the products are showing up on the appropriate pages. I then made up more mock-ups to see what would happen when I added new products. It says the products are there as it says “4 of 5” are displayed with no apparent reason why the fifth product is not displaying. Something is not formatted properly.
This evening, I had no idea it was Friday night. The week is over already.
July 15
Life in the jungle: After making my patio stones I vacuumed my (two) small tool rooms under my house. I must have vacuumed half a dozen scorpions up. Knock on wood. I know the day is coming but I have yet to be stung by a scorpion. And under the house tons are living there.
I have tons of scorpions living underneath my house
After breakfast, I tried everything to fix yesterday’s website issue. I again reached out to Shopify Support. It turned out to be a coding issue which is on their end, not mine. They fixed the issue. At least I wasn’t screwing something up on my end. By the end of the day, I may have actually finished my Shopify site. I just have to do some tests on Monday.
Some t-shirt mock ups
There were a few on-and-off short rain showers throughout the day into the night. This is the driest rainy season I have ever witnessed. Last year in May the road was flooded and my front yard ponds were full. There is not a drop of water on the road or in my front yard ponds and we are in the middle of July now.
July 16
Life in the jungle: Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. I woke up thinking about a Facebook short reel that I saw about happiness. It kept me up for hours. That kind of shot my entire morning. Being my day off, when I finally got out of my hammock I wrote and published a blog post about Happiness, you can read it HERE. I also published a Belize blog Part 26.
I went to the ponds for a night walk looking for baby iguanas. I was surprised to only find two. The other week I found 20 in less than 10 minutes. Considering that we are in the rainy season I was also surprised not to find any snakes.
Baby green iguana
July 17
Life in the jungle: After I made my dozen patio stones, I then made four new patio stone molds. I feel like I get good use out of my patio stone molds but eventually, they start falling apart. After lunch, I sort of took a small nap. I worked out some bugs on my clothing website. But I didn’t feel productive.
4 new patio stone molds
This evening a hen did not return to the coop. I walked around the property twice I finally found her with a missing head. This is quite frustrating as this was one of my newer hens that was laying eggs. Most of my older hens don’t seem to want to sit on eggs. I had great expectations for this hen.
After supper, I was motivated to work on my clothing website. That was when I realized that I kind of goofed on a design. I had released an (obvious) men’s design as unisex when I already had the woman’s design designed. So, I had to mock up a few women’s designs for the website. While I was at it, I designed a few coffee mugs to add to my store. By the time I added everything I realized that there was no reason that I could see for not making my website go Live. So, I set it for Live and ended up going to bed rather late. [A year later I would shut the website down, as the POD t-shirt business was an utter failure that I would end up having no time for anyway.]
Breadfruits are starting get bigger
Belize Part 85 (June 23 to 30)
Of Note: At this time I am currently 11 to 12 months behind in posting my Belize blog posts due to having no internet for the first 18 months of living in Belize.
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of words or people that may or may not be part of this blog post. This glossary will be at the bottom of every blog post for Belize.
Jack & Jill – These are my ex-property managers (names changed). They are Canadian, they introduced me to Belize in 1997, sold me their house in Belize in 2003, and rebuilt my house from 2014 to 2018. I have known them for over 30 years. After almost 20 years of me supporting their life here in Belize Jack decided quite unexpectedly to declare “war” on me right before Christmas 2021. They would end up stealing my business license and causing me a lot of grief. They live on the farm, but not on my land.
Wayne – He is the son of the original owners of the farm (both owners are deceased). The original farm was 2 – 30 acre pieces minus 2 – ¾ acre parcels for my house and 2 – ¾ acre parcels that Jack & Jill own which were all originally purchased from the original owners. In 2017 Wayne sold me 40 acres of land from the original 60 acres (30 acres plus 10 acres). Wayne lives in his parent’s house and has a few cows on his remaining 17 acres of land.
The ponds – I have 2 large (300ft long x 50ft wide x 10ft deep) ponds on my 30 acre parcel of land which is basically a jungle. I have about 60 coconut trees (mostly mature) around the ponds. In my first 2 years of living in Belize, I also planted about 250 assort fruit tree seedlings (Lime, jackfruit, custard apple, pomegranate and avocado).
The coconut field – I have about 400 coconut trees planted (various growth states) on about 3 acres of cleared land of the 10 acre parcel. I plan to add various fruit trees to the same field as soon as I can.
The river lot – my house sits on an ¾ acre lot. I have a second joining ¾ acre lot that allows me river frontage on the Belize River. I call that my river lot.
The dry – Belize has 2 main seasons. The rainy season and the dry (no rain). The wet is obviously the rainy season.
Chopping – using my machete to clear brush, vines, weeds and unwanted trees.
